Cookies Not Included..."Star Wars Villainous"

Disney Villainous kinda surprised me. Up until recently, 99.9% of intellectual property board games were such hot trash that it left fans of said IP feeling skeptical of the entire gaming industry. Needless to say, when I discovered how comparatively deep Disney Villainous was, I was pleasantly shocked.

As such, when they released a Star Wars version, I was all over it!

In this particular iteration, players take on the role of either Asajj Ventress, General Grievous, Moff Gideon, Darth Vader or Kylo "I'm-The-Best-Thing-About-This-Shitty-Sequel-Trilogy" Ren. The "Revenge at Last" expansion has since added Darth Maul (*yawn*) and Captain Phasma (*double yawn*) while "Scum and Villainy" brought us Boba Fett as well as the Seventh Sister from Rebels and one of my favorite Clone Wars era characters: Cad Bane. 

Each villain has their own unique objectives of varying difficulty. For example, Vader has to make his boi Luke "Conflicted", lure him to the the Emperor’s Throne Room and then complete his conversion to the Dark Side by paying 6 Ambition while both Papi Vader and Palpatine look on. Meanwhile, all Grievous needs to do is put eight Jedi Knights in the dirt and*'yoink* their lightsabers. 

After collecting one free Ambition per turn, players further their schemes by moving to a new Location on their Sector boards and then performing the actions depicted there in any order they want. These actions include:

• Collecting Credits.
• Using said Credits to play Allies, Vehicles and other helpful cards.
• Taking powerful Ambition actions.
• Discarding to hopefully top-deck the cards required to complete your win conditions.
• Using a Fate Action to throw a monkey wrench into their opponent's plans. 
• Moving Allies around.
• Vanquishing pesky Heroes with those aforementioned Allies.

Players keep taking actions until someone fulfills their objective!

Looking for info beyond the title crawl? Well, just plug your astro-member (?) into the following scomp link to get the full technical readouts of this particular battle station!  

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PLAY-THROUGH

Darth Vader versus Moff Gideon 

versus Boba Fett!

Turn One - Darth Vader

Collects one Ambition (1). 

After jetting off to his summer home on Mustafar, Vader collects 3 Credits (3). There's nothing to Vanquish so he Discards "Imperial Officers" and then targets Moff Gideon with a Fate Action. After pulling "The Bounty" and "Bo-Katan Kryze", he opts to play the latter at Nevarro City. 

To signal the end of his turn he draws a Card and then passes the turn. 

At the end of Turn One Vader has 1 Ambition and 3 Credits.

Turn One - Moff Gideon

Collects an Ambition (1).

He moves to Tython, collects 2 Credits (started with one) and then pays 3 to Play his "Outland TIE Fighter" into Deep Space. Vanquish is ignored, but he does Discard three cards, hoping to kick-start his plot.  

To end his turn, Moff Gideon draws 4 new cards!

At the end of Turn One Gideon has 1 Ambition and 0 Credits. 

Turn One - Boba Fett 

Collects one Ambition (1). 

After strutting onto the Executor Bridge, THE FETT collects 3 Credits, bringing him up to 5 (he started with 2). Doesn’t do any Ambition action or Play a Card but he does Fate Vader. Plays "May the Force be With You" (over "The Force is Strong With this One") and Vader loses his one and only Ambition (0)!

At the end of Turn One, Fett has 1 Ambition and 5 Credits. 

Turn Two - Darth Vader

Picks up one Ambition (1). 

Vader pops into the Death Star and gains two Credits (5). He doesn't perform an Ambition Action or Play a Card but he does turf "Friends in Trouble" and "The Power of the Dark Side", hoping to produce the cards he needs.

*** CONDITION *** 

In reaction to Vader's Discard, Gideon plays “Long Live the Empire”, shuffles his discard pile into his deck and gains one Ambition (2)!

Vader then draws two new cards…but they're the exact same cards that he just threw out! 

* facepalm *

At the conclusion of Turn Two Vader has 1 Ambition and 5 Credits.

Turn Two - Moff Gideon 

Gains one Ambition (3). 

After crawling into the cockpit of his TIE Fighter, Gideon doesn’t do any of the actions, but he does activate the Vehicle’s Special Ability. He draws until he gets Koska Reeves, which he plays at the Old Imperial Base with a -1 Strength. 

As per the rules: now that he’s finished revealing cards, those cards are added to the Discard Pile then this discard pile is shuffled back into the deck!

Gideon ends his turn by drawing a single card.

Gideon's Turn Two Tallies: Ambition 3 Credits 0

Turn Two - Boba Fett 

Collects one Ambition (2). 

Fett arrives on Corelia and gains a single Credit (6). He then Plays Dengar in Jabba’s Palace for two Credits (4) and Discards 4-LOM. 

He completes his turn by drawing two new cards.

At the end of two turns, Fett has 2 Ambition and 4 Credits.  

Turn Three - Darth Vader

 Vader picks up a new Ambition, bringing him back up to two. 

He travels to Mustafar, gaining three Credits (8). No need to Vanquish, but he does Fate Monsieur Fett. Han Solo appears in Corelia and Dengar switches over to the Hero side at Jabba’s Palace! With no cards in hand to advance his objectives, he Discards "Friends in Trouble" and "The Power of the Dark Side."

The Dark Lord of the Sith refills his hand to 4 cards.

Vader Turn Three Tallies include 2 Ambition and 8 (!) Credits. 

Turn Three - Moff Gideon 

Gets his fourth Ambition!

The not-so-good Moff Moves to Tython, gets two Credits (2), Plays a Stormtrooper for one Credit at the Old Imperial Base then does a Vanquish Action. They defeat Koska Reeves but are killed in the process. He then Discards "You Have Something I Want." 

Gideon Draws two new Cards, taking him back up to four. 

At the end of Turn Three, Gideon has 4 Ambition and a single Credit. 

Turn Three - Boba Fett 

He gains an Ambition (3)!

After returning to the Executor Bridge, Boba performs a free Ambition Action: "Waiting on the Next Job." He shuffles his Discard pile back into his draw deck then pulls 3 new cards. He then accepts 3 more Credits, bringing him up to 7. He doesn’t Play a Card but he does Fate Vader, playing "Obi-Wan Kenobi" (over "More Powerful Than You Can Possibly Imagine") and forces L'il Orphan Annie to turf his entire hand! Yikes! 

NOTE: if you draw extra Villain cards I presume you don't have to discard down to 4 at the end of your turn? 

Fett’s Turn Three resource count: 3 Ambition and a whopping 7 Credits.

Turn Four - Darth Vader

He picks up an Ambition, bringing him to 3. 

With no cards in hand, there aren’t a lot of options! So he zooms off to Cloud City, ignores the option to Play a Card or perform an Ambition Action and continues his Fate war with Fett. "Leia" is played in the same place as Han and a bonus card is played off the top of the Fate Deck…it’s "Luke"! He’s played in Corelia as well…cuz why not? Vader then picks up a single Credit from that location, bringing him up to a whopping 9!

Vader refills his empty hand back up to 4 cards.

Going into the end of Turn Four, Vader has 3 Ambition and 9 Credits. 

Turn Four - Moff Gideon

He picks up one Ambition for a total of five. 

He then goes to the Old Imperial Base and snags 2 Credits for a total of 3. He then plays "Dark Troopers" at Nevarro City for 3 Credits (0) and opts out of the Ambition or Maneuver options.

Gideon draws a new card.

His Turn Four Tallies include 5 Ambition and zero Credits.

Turn Four - Boba Fett

Fett gets an Ambition, bringing him up to 4!

He flies to Corellia, ignores the Vanquish Action but Discards 3 cards. 

He draws one card…Zuckuss. 

Fett's Turn resources include 4 Ambition and 7 Credits.      

Turn Five - Darth Vader

Vader collects one Ambition (4).

He moves to the Emperor's Throne Room, oversees the launch of The Executor for 3 Credits and then takes an Ambition Action to play Palpatine in his Throne Room for free. 

Two cards are drawn to signal the end of his turn. 

At the end of turn five, Vader has 4 Ambition and 6 Credits.

Turn Five - Gideon 

Picks up one Ambition (6).

He then moves to Tython, collecting 2 Credits (2). He does a Vanquish Acton and his Dark Troopers are sacrificed to defeat Bo-Katan. 

*** CONDITION *** 

In response to a Hero being defeated, Vader plays “You Are Not a Jedi Yet” and Luke becomes “Conflicted.” 

After passing on the option to Play a Card, Gideon then Discards, throwing out "Experimentation" and "Long Live the Empire."  

Gideon’s Turn Five assets include 6 Ambition and 2 Credits. 

Turn Five - Boba Fett 

The bounty hunter picks up an Ambition (5).

After arriving on the Executor Bridge, he gains 3 Credits (9) and then pays 4 to Play Zuckuss to Jabba’s Palace, juiced with +1 Power because Dengar is a Bounty Hunter. The subsequent Vanquish Action wipes out both mercs! The Ambition action is ignored.

Fett draws a new card.   

His Turn Four tallies include 5 Ambition and 5 Credits.

Turn Six - Darth Vader

Vader scores one Ambition (5).      

The Dark Lord of the Sith visits the Executor. He performs an Ambition action, spending 1 (4) to play “Join Us or Die” to shift Luke one space towards the Throne Room. Next he Plays "Imperial Officers" to the Death Star for 2 Credits (4). Finally he attempts a Fate Action on Gideon, but neither "The Bounty" nor "Self-Protection" can be played so they are discarded. 

The Executor’s special ability triggers, resulting in R2-D2 appearing in Cloud City. (NOTE: Vehicle Abilities technically trigger first.)

Vader draws two new cards.  

His Turn Six assets include 4 each of Ambition and Credits.

Turn Six - Moff Gideon 

He collects an Ambition and now has a whopping 7!

Off to the Imperial Base! He collects 2 Credits (4) and then Plays an "Imperial Light Cruiser" for 3 Credits (1). He ignores the Maneuver and Ambition options.

Draws a new card to get up to 4.

Gideon’s end-of-Turn-Six Ambition is 7 and he has 1 Credit.  

Turn Six - Boba Fett 

Boba collects one Ambition, bringing him up to 6.

Arriving in Cloud City, Fett uses an Ambition Action to play “Waiting on the Next Job.” He cycles his discards back into his draw deck and then pulls three new cards…but he still doesn’t have a Contact yet! 

Having gotten precious few playable cards so far this game, Fett now has a hoard of 6 Ambition and 6 Credits.

Turn Seven - Darth Vader

Vader gets an Ambition (5).

The Sith Lord moves to the Emperor’s Throne Room and does an Ambition Action: “I Find Your Lack of Faith Disturbing.” This strangles the Imperial Officer at the Death Star and nets Vader 2 Ambition! He then Plays Imperial Stormtroopers at Cloud City. The subsequent Vanquish action turfs both the Troopers and R2! The loss of R2 inspires a conflicted Luke to move into the Emperor’s Throne Room. 

Vader then pays 6 of his current 7 Ambition to win the game! 

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REVIEW

PROS

• Overall, the game's graphic design is decent. I sincerely like the Sector Boards and the look of the cards.  
• Like its Disney counterpart, this game is surprisingly deep. Regardless of what you think about it, it's no flyweight throwaway title. There's actually a fair amount of strategy RE: what you need to accomplish on your next turn and the most efficient  location to help you do it.
• Thematically it has its moments. When your plans start coming together, it does feel as if you're working your way towards some grand scheme. The Fate decks are also a cool reminder that you are still a galactic scumbag with the forces of good out to foil you.
• The varying difficulty between Villain objectives certainly aren't created equal, but it’s actually a great way for experienced players introduce noobs to the game. Since the goals are highly asymmetrical, it's critically important that all players read their Villain Guides out loud before play begins to lock in those win conditions and signal to your opponents when you're close to victory.  
• Mechanically its pretty easy: just move to a location and take actions in whatever order you want.

CONS  

• Sadly Star Wars Villainous kinda boils down to how quickly you can cycle through your deck for the cards you need. My playthrough really illustrates what annoys me about the game: despite a loss of Ambition and forced discards, Vader lucked into a fortuitous early combination of circumstances and assets. Meanwhile, both Gideon and Fett failed to accomplish anything of merit after six phreakin' turns - despite cycling through their decks pretty aggressively! Even after playing through a full game I can't appraise Boba Fett's worth as a character. Instead of knitting together some Machiavellian scheme, half the time you're pulling your hair out, making agonizing decisions about which cards to keep and which ones to chuck out. You're constantly thinking: 'Okay, eventually I'm really gonna need this card I've got in my hand...but I can't even play it until I unearth and play a prerequisite card first!' If you're struggling with this and your opponents are mercilessly Fate-ing you, anger will most definitely lead to hate, suffering...yoda, yoda, yoda....     
• There’s a lot of nit-picky, easy-to-miss rules to remember. Arguably even more so in this version of Villainous 'cuz Vehicles give players even more options while threatening to curtail a rival’s hand size.
• For all that's holy, I really wish the designers had found a better way to distinguish Credits and Ambition. First off, it sucks that the game has two different types of currency to keep track of. It's way too easy to mix up the Ambition / Credit cost on cards, the Ambition / Credit tokens themselves and what Locations let you play one card over another. There had to be a better way!  
• Speaking of confusing: a lot of the Villain Card verbiage runs contrary to established industry standards / common sense. For example: since Conditions are played in response to an opponent's action why not call them something different? Like, I dunno...maybe "REACTIONS"???   
• The art is a mixed bag for me. If I didn't know any better I'd say the graphics design team just slapped an art filter over a bunch of movie stills and / or poached frames right from the animated shows.  
• There are some real "chicken-or-the-egg" vagaries between card text. For example: the "Revenge" Bounty requires you to find and place a Bounty Hunter in the Hero side of the Sector. Well, what if the first Bounty Hunter you pull is "Greedo" who can't be placed in the Hero section?  
• The movers suck. I know they were going for some "battle-worn" statue crap, but I really wish they'd given us something swanky like the pewter figs which came with Star Wars Monopoly or the Clash of the Lightsabers card game. I mean check out V here: it looks like a flying mynock took a crap all over his helmet:

Thematic, yet overly-fiddly and periodically frustrating, Star Wars Villainous scores three pips out of six with a slight tilt up towards Trump Palpatine Tower. 

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BONUS: Rules Clarifications / Reminders

• Asajj can use an Ambition Action and pay Ambition equal to the number of face-up Mission Cards to reveal a new Mission. The other Missions remain active. If two Missions have the same tasks, you can only play an Ambition Token on only one of the Missions once completed.
• If a Mission Card asks you to find and place Fate cards, their “when played” game effect is not triggered, because the card was technically "placed" and not "played." However, any other effects do work as normal. For example: Anakin Skywalker’s Hero Card indicates that “Allies at Anakin’s location get -1 Strength”, so this would still apply. They also still cover up the top two Action options as per normal.
• Place an Ambition Token on Asajj’s missions as she completes her progress.  Once the mission is complete, collect the Ambition tokens that have been accumulating.
• When prompted to "find a card or card type" first check to see if it’s already in play, then relocate it if instructed. If it’s not there then look for it in the discard pile and if not there, reveal cards from the appropriate deck.
• If you do need to Reveal Cards from your deck, flip them up so everyone can see. Once the cards are located, put them in play and then shuffle the discard pile back into its appropriate deck.  
• Remember: "Effects" are played on your turn, trigger their game text and are then discarded. "Conditions" are played in response to an opponent's Action, have their game effect and are then discarded.  
• Location actions can be performed in any order you wish and any are optional.
• “Sector” refers to your entire board while “Location” is a specific space.
• Although a Hero’s Strength can be reduced to zero their effects are still active.
• When played, Fate Hero Vehicles immediate engage your vehicles. If you play a Vehicle in Deep Space and there’s already a Hero Vehicle there, you either choose to Engage it or not Engage it.
• The only cards that can be played with the Play a Card action are those with a credit cost in the upper left hand corner. You can only play one card per action taken.
• Any number of Vehicles can be in Deep Space at once.
• You can use a Maneuver action to move one Ally to a different location or Engage or Disengage Vehicles.
• You can use a Fate Action to Engage a Fate Deck Vehicle with an Ally Vehicle. NOTE: you can't draw and play Fate Cards if you do this.
• You can only target a single Hero card with a Vanquish Action. A Vanquish Action can also be used to discard two Engaged Vehicles.
• Every un-engaged Hero Vehicles in Deep Space limits the number of cards you draw back up to. For example, if you have two un-engaged Hero Vehicles, you can only draw back up to two cards.