Disney Villainous – Sugar and Spite Expandalone

The latest addition to the ever-expansive raft of standalone expansions for Disney Villainous, Sugar and Spite introduces an interesting pairing of characters from Disney’s catalogue of nefarious baddies; one a classic from the studio’s vintage years in the form of Jungle Book’s sinister Shere Kahn, the other a relatively recent specimen with King Candy, the manipulative racer from Wreck it Ralph. The set continues the core premise of Villainous, with each player taking on the role of one of Disney’s antagonists, each with a bespoke style of play, mechanics and goals, the first player completing their individual targets for defeating the heroes thereby winning the game.

The Basics

Like many of Villainous’ expansions, Sugar and Spite can be played as a standalone experience for two players (and contains the rules for the core gameplay along with all the necessary components) or combined with other characters from the various sets available if there are more players (or just for more variety).

As a brief outline of Villainous’ structure, each player has a board split into various locations (usually at least; more on that later), each respective location having a variety of available actions. Each turn, they will select a location and move the statuette of their villain to that space and can then proceed to perform any or all of the actions shown in that specific zone (such as collecting Power; Villainous’ currency used for performing many actions, Play a Card from their hand, Discard cards, Move a card between locations, Activate a played card’s ability etc.). Each player will have a unique deck of cards representing actions, effects, allies and items which will help them fulfil their specific objectives and a Fate deck which represents their chosen villains opposing Heroes and associated hindrances to their schemes. Fate cards are often inflicted on them by opposing players and can cover up some of the location actions on their board (making them temporarily unavailable) or otherwise slow down and frustrate a villain’s progress. Each Fate deck is likewise unique to the given villain and offers a nice narrative tie to the story of their respective movie or show. The flipside is that many of the villain objectives require certain Fate cards to be in play in order to them defeat them (for example Shere Kahn needs to defeat Mowgli to win the game), so there is risk that playing a Fate card on an opposing player can help them reach their overall goal, even if it often also provides a substantial barrier to them doing so.

Villainous is relatively simple in its core structure, the rules and actions are typically clear and the turn process can be picked up with satisfying ease. The recommended age is 10+ and the basics of the game feel about right for that suggestion. Sugar and Spite is no exception to this (even if it does offer a unique bit of diversity; again, more on that later) and the subtlety and complexity of the system comes from the bespoke content for each villain character; something that this particular expansion showcases perhaps more definitively than most.

The Spite

Shere Kahn, the tyrannical tiger of 1967’s Jungle Book is one Disney’s classic villains; calculating, sinister but physically dominant in the context of the film’s narrative. Villainous is designed to reflect these aspects in a character’s gameplay and with Shere Kahn, the developers have created a playstyle that is, in some respects, very ‘conventional’ as a Villainous experience (perhaps rather suitably for such a vintage villain from Disney’s classic era). Shere Kahn’s objective is fairly straightforward and aggressive; he must defeat Mowgli (who is a Hero in the Fate Deck) whilst there are no Fires (his one real weakness, represented by unique tokens) in any of his Locations. Compared to many villains (and particularly to his compatriot in this expansion), Kahn has relatively few Allies to assist him; King Louie, Kaa and multiple Monkey cards, the latter of which are essential for putting out Fires. Louie is himself relatively tough (and very handy for taking on Heroes on his own, a rarity in Kahn’s allies) and can also be activated to move Monkeys about the locations (helping to get them where they need to be to put out Fires). Kaa can be made progressively stronger and more durable by the addition of item cards (essentially his eyes and his tail) and can move opposing Heroes to different locations with the right upgrade (an ability that is natively available on any of Shere Kahn’s board actions).

The Fate deck contains multiple cards for adding Fires, along with Mowgli’s animal friends from Jungle Book; Baloo is a particular annoyance as Kahn’s player as he essentially acts as a Bodyguard for other Heroes and needs to be dealt with and defeated before attempting to vanquish Mowgli. There are 4 Fire tokens and removing them isn’t always difficult in of itself but can often mean the Shere Kahn player is constantly being dragged into locations they don’t necessarily want to be and can’t always focus their Monkey allies into positions to deal with enemy Heroes. Kahn’s deck does offer some useful cards for making very direct responses to Fire or Heroes but they are often expensive in terms of Power or reliant on Shere Kahn being at a particular location and the Kahn player is seemingly always just on the cusp of making significant progress (or indeed winning the game). With a favourable set of card draws early on, the Shere Kahn objective can be achieved relatively quickly; if opponents aren’t putting fire tokens down and Mowgli appears early (and unprotected by other Heroes), the Kahn player can conceivably win before some other players have really gotten going (and if playing Sugar and Spite as a standalone experience then this might be accentuated even further as King Candy takes a fair degree of ‘setup’ in order to achieve his objectives). It is perhaps one of the (occasional) flaws of Villainous’ design that, as every villain plays at their own bespoke pace, there is an element of randomness to their success and a good or bad draw near the start of the game can have a much greater impact on some characters than others. Shere Kahn, with such a direct objective and requiring relatively little setup, can probably be one of the quickest wins for a player in the game, with a favourable deck (especially as they have ample means of finding Mowgli from the Fate deck and moving him around the locations as needed). Experienced opponents can likely find ways of hindering this but from a gaming perspective it could potentially be somewhat unsatisfying. That said, Villainous is a fairly short game (the playtime on the box for Sugar and Spite suggests 40 minutes and this is probably a fair assessment) and one of the key ideas of the game is the variety of play experience between the various villains so this scenario of dissatisfaction isn’t likely to be common. There is also something positive to be said for how well the objective play represents the calculating, predatory character of Shere Kahn; some careful planning and patience can go a long way and can quickly turn into a victory with moderately favourable circumstances.

The Sugar

The modularity of Villainous is one of its greatest strengths; with each villain offering a different set of objectives, pace and tweaks to the systems meaning that any combination of characters is viable. Sugar and Spite is a prime example of this and the King Candy package offers one of the most unique mechanical experiences in the game. The distinct premise of Candy’s objective is, appropriately for his character, to win a race against his rival; Vanellope von Schweetz. This isn’t just expressed as a thematic or aesthetic goal within the rules of Villainous, the game board for King Candy is set up as a figure-of-eight pattern race track, with spaces along the route denoting Candy and (eventually) Penelope’s progress, each space also including one of the standard actions that are common to most Villains within the game. The board is split into 4 locations (as is usual) but these exist for the purposes of placing allies and heroes (the latter of which will still cover up an action). Candy doesn’t move between locations however, on his player’s turn, they will choose a number of spaces (between 1 and 4) to progress along the race-loop and they may then perform the actions on the space they then occupy and the two adjacent. This generally means that Candy will be performing less actions per turn than most Villains (as most standard locations have around four) but gives his player a greater degree of control over what those actions are. It’s an intuitive change from the usual Villainous experience, within enough baked-in familiarity that it isn’t jarring.

The overall pace of a King Candy game is also somewhat different however; often likely to require a degree of patience and setup whilst his player finds a way to get Penelope into play (and importantly to get an essential Glitch card on her), followed by a mad sprint to complete a full circuit of the race-track, with Candy’s Fate deck offering multiple ways of hindering his progress (or speeding up Penelope). The Candy player doesn’t have a finite number of attempts to win the race and therefore the game but once that ‘phase’ of his objective begins then it is a very fun change of pace for the game as all players should be conscious that they only need one good run of the track to win and the goal is far more visually distinct than is often the case with Villainous. With most villain’s games being more subject to the fortune of their card draws, it’s not always clear quite what stage a player is at in terms of reaching their objective; with King Candy, once the race begins, it’s obvious to all how close his player is and it can be an exciting uplift in the tension as the endgame kicks in and other players have to accelerate their own plans.

The Product

Sugar and Spite, as one would expect of a licenced property from Ravensburger and Disney has an excellent degree of polish and production quality in terms of its components. The game boards, tokens and cards are durable and contain some vibrant artwork and the statuettes that the player uses to denote their character’s location on the board are often a highlight of Villainous. I have occasionally found some of these in previous expansions to have some questionable choices made in their ‘finish’ (to the extent that I’ve actually painted them) but the pair in this set are high quality and look great on the table.

Villainous inherently has a fairly high margin for replayability; games are relatively short so there’s little barrier to swapping around characters and having multiple rounds in the same sitting. Purely as a standalone, two-player expansion, Sugar and Spice alone might have limited value in that sense but with the potential to mix and match alongside the enormous range of other sets, there’s a huge amount of usage that can be had out of this set when viewed as part of the overall Villainous catalogue of content. The uniqueness of King Candy’s playstyle in particular is a strong selling point of this expansion for existing fans of the game, particularly is its distinct pace can impact a whole game in a way that many other Villains wouldn’t necessarily do and offers a variety of experience that is very worthwhile in the context of the franchise as a whole. Shere Kahn is a far more ‘classic’ Villainous experience and offers a nice juxtaposition for the less familiar King Candy game without detracting from the value of Kahn’s own playstyle, which might not be as innovative but is certainly enjoyable in its own right.

Sugar and Spite is, in summary, a worthwhile investment for any fan of Villainous and King Candy in particular offers something truly unique within the design space for the game and I would love for more ambitious expansions in this vein.