Disney Villainous: Bigger and Badder is a stand alone expansion to the original hit Villainous, the fifth such expansion to be released by Ravensburger. Each villain is different and requires the player controlling it to accomplish different goals. In Villainous: Bigger and Badder, the game includes Syndrome from The Incredibles, Lotso from Toy Story 3, and Madam Mim from The Sword in the Stone. You get your own specific deck related to your villain, and a fate deck of other heroes, items, or allies related to your story. Villainous has been a very successful system with multiple expansions so players can choose which bad guy they want to play as. Villainous: Bigger and Badder can be played with 2-3 players, but when combined with others, you can play up to 4 players taking about an hour to play. The game is published by Ravenburger, and you can check out other games we have reviewed from them here.
What’s in the Box?
- 3 Villain Movers
- 3 Player Boards
- 3 Villain Decks (30 cards each)
- 3 Fate Decks (15 cards, 8 cards, and 15 cards)
- 3 Omnidroid Tiles
- 1 Merlin Fate Deck (7 cards)
- 1 Buzz Lightyear Tile
- 3 Villain Guides
- 3 Reference Cards
- 15 Strength Tokens
- 25 Power Tokens
- 1 Fate Token
How’s it Play?
Villainous: Bigger and Badder is just like the other Villainous games except you have 3 new villains to play as, which require different objectives to win.
If you have never played Villainous, then let me give you an overview. On your turn you will move your villain mover to different locations on your player board and perform the actions listed. You can never stay in the same location, so you will be choosing different locations and taking different types of actions each turn. Each player starts with 4 cards from their villain deck in their hand.
There are usually 4 different actions you can perform in each location, but sometimes some can become blocked. What type of actions are you going to be performing?
- Gain power – take power tokens from the supply
- Play a card – you will play a card from your hand, pay its cost in power tokens if listed, and do what it says. An ally and item may be played in any location.
- Activate – Choose a card in your realm with an activate symbol, pay its cost, and resolve its ability.
- Move an item or ally – Take a item or ally card and move it to any other location in your realm adjacent to its current location. Items attached to ally move with the ally.
- Move a hero – Move a hero at any location to an adjacent location. (This action is not used with the 3 villains in this game, but with other villains in other expansions.)
- Fate – Choose an opponent to target, reveal 2 of their fate cards from their deck, choose one to play and discard the other. Try to use this fate card’s ability against them.
- Vanquish – Defeat one hero at any location using your allies in the same location. Compare strength, and your allies need to be equal to or higher than the hero.
- Discard cards – discard as many cards as you wish.
After you take your actions, you draw up to 4 cards. The next player then performs their turn following the same steps.
Now, remember you are the villain, so don’t get confused when one of your favorite heroes show up, they are there to hinder you.
The first player to accomplish their objective, which is different for each player wins the game.
So, how do each of the 3 villains play?
Syndrome: Defeat Omnidroid v.X10 and have no Heroes in your Realm.
Omnidroid v.X8 starts at Nomanisan Island. You will need to use the vanquish action to defeat Omnidrioid v.X8 and X9. They will move from version X8 to version X9 to version X10. Upgrade the omnidroids by removing the correct number of major modifications from your realm and placing the new omnidroid in the location indicated. Only one omnidroid is in the realm at a time. Syndrome needs to have Syndrome’s remote in the same location as the omnidroid and needs to move his marker in that location, then the remote can be activated to win.
Lotso: Have 4 Heroes with a strength of 0 and Buzz Lightyear in the Caterpillar Room.
Strength can be lowered with the vanquish actions and with cards.You need access to all strength modifier tokens. If a hero is at a strength of 0, they cannot use their abilities. And the Vanquish action doesn’t discard the Hero, instead it reduces the strength to 0. Several cards can be used to move Heroes to the Caterpillar Room. Watch out because Buzz Lightyear can be either Lotso’s Ally or a guardian to the Heroes. Demo mode Buzz versus normal Buzz Lightyear.
Madam Mim: Defeat all of Merlin’s Transformations. Win the Wizard’s Duel by defeating all of Merlin’s transformations with Mim’s transformations.
She has no allies. Instead, she has transformations, and Merlin has them too. Each of Merlin’s transformations can be defeated by Mims’. Her transformation cards are treated as allies for the sake of opponents’ condition cards. After defeating a Merlin Transformation, discard it and draw a new one. Lastly, she has no vanquish actions, but instead, each of her transformations adds a vanquish action to its location.
The Verdict
Villainous: Bigger and Badder has a solid system with different characters that might work better or worse. So let’s get into what you most likely want to know.
Syndrome
The idea for Syndrome sticks to the movie script with the omnidroids, and it can switch from being an ally or an enemy, as it will fight whoever is trying to defeat it with the remote. But to understand fully what you are to do, you will need the villain guide and the information on the omnidroid tile to really know the rules of the omnidroids and the remote and how they work together.
There is a really powerful fate card that causes you to discard all allies and items from your realm except hero items. So losing key items to just have to find them again is just horrible.
Lotso
There are 2 rules changed with Lotso. Heroes that are vanquished have their strength reduced to 0 instead of being discarded. And heroes at 0 strength are considered to have no abilities.
These changes make sense with Lotso’s objective and his story. When playing in Lotso’s world you will want to jump between locations with fate spots, as this can hurt other players. Lotso’s task can take a long time to complete, just a heads up.
Madam Mim
Her fate deck also has cards that can make you start again with discarding everything, but there are other ways to avoid this as well. Her objective is to defeat heroes with specific allies. She can create combos with transformations and use other effects to help. Gameplay is pretty straight forward with the addition of the transformations and fate card effects. She is probably the best designed of the 3. And she also has won the most versus the other two.
Overall, the basics of Villainous: Bigger and Badder is amazing, but as for this expansion that includes these 3 new characters, I think I’d rather play with the others. These characters looked to be fun but their mechanics just didn’t feel better than others I’ve played.
You can grab Disney Villainous: Bigger and Badder from Amazon, Target, or your FLGS!
Images via Ravensburger
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