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If you’ve been in the board gaming hobby for any time at all you’re more than likely familiar with Disney’s Villainous Games.
There have been numerous iterations featuring an array of characters we love to hate, from Maleficent to Captain Hook, Lotso to Oogie Boogie, and plenty in between.
What you might not be quite so aware of though, unless you’re invested in the series, is that there are actually three distinct strands to the Villainous bow.
The first, and largest, is the ‘Disney’ series. Including the aforementioned array of meanies from Disney’s core catalogue of franchises, these are the easiest to pick up. Players each have their own objectives and their own regular and ‘fate’ decks.
Star Wars is the latest franchise to be dragged into the Villainous universe, which is a step up in complexity due to its introduction of ‘Force’ as a commodity.
But in between the two came Marvel, which is by far the most complicated, largely due to a shared fate deck that changes the way the game is played quite significantly.
Underwhelming Roster
Twisted Ambitions is the latest release on the Marvel timeline, and unlike its predecessor ‘We Are Venom’ is an ‘expandalone’; meaning it can be played in isolation or combined with one of the previous Marvel sets.
Doctor Octopus of Spider Man fame is the poster-boy for this set, and when you see who else has been included it is easy to see why.
Titania, arch-nemesis of She Hulk is the second name on the roster, and Kang the Conqueror rounds out this fairly obscure collection of nair-do-wells.
Titania may well have been chosen to piggyback off the expected success of the She Hulk TV series, but that was success that never materialised.
Similarly, Kang the Conqueror had been positioned to take over from Thanos as the main villain in ‘Phase 5’ of the MCU, but a profusion of different issues saw the studio go in a different direction and quietly give up on plans for the time travelling TVA founder.
This all leads to a relatively underwhelming line-up… or at least underwhelming for the more casual Marvel fans, of who Villainous is primarily aimed at.
If you’re fond of slightly deeper Marvel lore, or you were one of the dozen people who actually liked She-Hulk, you’ll appreciate Twisted Ambitions. If not, you’ll be arguing amongst yourselves to see who plays as Dr. Otto Gunther Octavious.
The Doctor is In… Demand
Being recognisable probably won’t be the only reason everyone is fighting to play as Doc Ock though, as he is also by far the easiest to score a victory with… at least in our experience.
The Doc has to complete 5 out of 6 objectives that are scattered through his Twisted Ambitions deck, and these range from the classic power-based ‘Revenge on Spiderman’, to the luck based ‘The Master Planner’, which requires the player discard one Ally and then hope to find at least 2 more in the top 5 cards of their deck.
Octopus’s real power comes from his Tentacles card though, which lets him use an action from the Tentacles location once per turn without having to be there himself.
Multiverse of Madness
Kang the Conqueror’s objective sounds pretty easy at first; conquer 4 different locations. Easy, right?
Well no, because those 4 locations have to be on OTHER players realms. To achieve this, robotic Kang variants are shuffled into all players decks and can will be played onto their locations where they can then be vanquished by various other cards in Kang’s deck.
Kang is also able to traverse the ‘Multiverse’ and visit other people’s realms to use their actions, provided there are no Heroes in his own.
This seems to be the hardest win condition in this set, mainly because it feels like there is a lot of luck required for the right cards to come out of both yours and your rivals’ decks, and it leans more on what your opponent does than a lot of the other Villainous characters.
Some of this can be negated by using other cards, but it still feels quite difficult.
That said, when something goes well for Kang it FEELS like you’re playing as an all-powerful master of the multiverse, so thematically it hits the spot.
Putting the Power in EmPOWERing
Finally, we come to Titania. She is probably the simplest to play as, at least in terms of what her end goal is. She just wants to get stronger and then beat She-Hulk.
Titania achieves this by increasing her strength tracker by vanquishing heroes herself. Rather than using Allies, she can take on the hero cards herself by using whatever strength she has already accrued on the tracker.
The cards in her deck can be used to momentarily increase her strength and defeat stronger foes, but the ‘Wedding Day’ event card in her fate deck will actually decrease her strength level and hinder her plans significantly.
But when it comes to fighting She-Hulk, this has to be done alone and for that her power tracker has to be on maximum AND She-Hulk has to have been revealed and played on the board.
This is where a lot of the challenge comes in for Titania, as players need to cycle through their fate deck to find her arch rival, and this almost always results in the ‘Wedding Day’ card knocking her power back down.
Too Twisted? Too Ambitious?
Twisted Ambitions has all the hallmarks of Villainous titles; high quality components, thematic deck contents and win conditions, relatively well-balanced additions and excellent compatibility with other releases in the Marvel line – which is all the more impressive here given how much integration there is between characters.
Personally prefer the style of play in the ‘Standard’ versions of Villainous rather than the Marvel or Star Wars variants, but I do appreciate how these characters play, and I think Ravensburger have done a fantastic job of making them play completely differently to all the villains that have come before them.
If you’ve never played the Marvel variants this is a decent place to jump in, especially as for a ‘standalone’ it is very cheap. And if you’re already invested, Doc Ock, Kang and Titania are worthy additions to battle against the likes of Venom, Thanos and Ultron who are slightly more well known.
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