I have already commented here on more than one occasion to what extent I am a big fan of Disney. I adore animated movies, I grew up with their videogames and I even took my first steps with languages with that mythical collection that they sold in kiosks. In table gameshowever, it had never brought me any joy.
I speak in the past tense because when Disney Villainous arrived at the stores by the hand of Ravensburger, that situation changed completely. Despite how much it may throw back that being based on a children’s franchise, that of the Disney villains It is one of the most fun and well-matched games I have on my shelf.
Disney Villainous is much more than meets the eye
With six characters available to play, the great asset of Disney Villainous is that the game changes completely depending on who you choose. Far from being a simple meeple that you move around the board, here each villain not only has his particular figure (pretty to rage, by the way), but also changes everything else.
Your own board, your own cards, your own skills and, above all, your own goals. While the winning condition for a villain is to accumulate x power tokens, for another the objective is to eliminate X hero in a very specific location. Let’s say you’ll have to play each of the six before giving up the game, but the grace is that it doesn’t end there.
It also influences which villains you are playing against and what their objectives are, because although you can go completely to your ball in search of your objective, the rest will be doing the same while trying to torpedo your progress, and as you will see below, the board of each of them also marks the extent to which they can be a china in the foot after having put on and tied one of those mountain boots that require a superhuman effort to put on and take off.
With special actions, items, enemy heroes and allies, Disney Villainous is one of those games that manages to mix worker placement with card fighting while adding a generous but accessible layer of depth when it comes to planning your moves and what cards to play.
How to play Disney Villainous
With games of between 40 minutes and two hours for 2 to 6 players, when you start playing Disney Villainous The first thing we will do is choose our favorite villain. With a small rule book and a system that is explained and understood in less than five minutes, we will take our board and separate our deck of cards in two.
On the one hand there will be ours that we will steal at the end of each turn until we always have four before jumping to the next player. On the other, there will be the destination cards. Special cards intended to slow us down by placing heroes at the top of our board.
The problem is that by placing them, they will prevent us from carrying out two of the four actions that we have in each of the areas of the board, thus slowing down our game and forcing us to play our own allies so that they fight against those enemies with the intention of clearing the space. board.
Far from breaking the magic, the game is designed so that the cards the rest play against you are also from your own universe, so a character like Jafar you will never see the faces against another like Peter Pan. One more reason to want to play other villains after the first game and thus see what own and contrary cards you are going to find.
Incredible as it may seem, things don’t go much further and, far from being a very complicated game to assemble or play, it is accessible enough so that playing with children is not a problem as long as they know how to read and have some capacity for anticipation. A little gem that, due to the quality of its materials and the fun it is when playing with the family, is one of those games that should be on your wish list to give it a try.
Ravensburger- Disney Villainous, Spanish Version, Board Game, 2-6 Players, Recommended Age 10+
