EntertainmentBoard GamesStar Wars Villainous: Power of The Dark Side review – this board game is the one you’re looking forIs this board game a force to be reckoned with?When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.(Image credit: Future)T3 VerdictNew resources and board space create a lot more strategic options to work with in Star Wars Villainous, adding to the excitement and replay value. It’s not the quickest or simplest game, though, which may put off younger players. For adult Star Wars fans, however, it’s a great option that’s sure to lead to hours of far, far away fun.Reasons to buy+Unusual evocation of villain plot lines from Star Wars+Considerable strategic crunch for a mass-market title+Packed with fun Star Wars art and referencesReasons to avoid-Quite complex for a family-friendly franchise game-Not much player interactionWhy you can trust T3Our expert reviewers spend hours testing and comparing products and services so you can choose the best for you.Find out more about how we test.
EntertainmentBoard GamesStar Wars Villainous: Power of The Dark Side review – this board game is the one you’re looking forIs this board game a force to be reckoned with?When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.(Image credit: Future)T3 VerdictNew resources and board space create a lot more strategic options to work with in Star Wars Villainous, adding to the excitement and replay value. It’s not the quickest or simplest game, though, which may put off younger players. For adult Star Wars fans, however, it’s a great option that’s sure to lead to hours of far, far away fun.Reasons to buy+Unusual evocation of villain plot lines from Star Wars+Considerable strategic crunch for a mass-market title+Packed with fun Star Wars art and referencesReasons to avoid-Quite complex for a family-friendly franchise game-Not much player interactionWhy you can trust T3Our expert reviewers spend hours testing and comparing products and services so you can choose the best for you.Find out more about how we test.
Is this board game a force to be reckoned with?
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
(Image credit: Future)T3 VerdictNew resources and board space create a lot more strategic options to work with in Star Wars Villainous, adding to the excitement and replay value. It’s not the quickest or simplest game, though, which may put off younger players. For adult Star Wars fans, however, it’s a great option that’s sure to lead to hours of far, far away fun.Reasons to buy+Unusual evocation of villain plot lines from Star Wars+Considerable strategic crunch for a mass-market title+Packed with fun Star Wars art and referencesReasons to avoid-Quite complex for a family-friendly franchise game-Not much player interaction
(Image credit: Future)
(Image credit: Future)
T3 VerdictNew resources and board space create a lot more strategic options to work with in Star Wars Villainous, adding to the excitement and replay value. It’s not the quickest or simplest game, though, which may put off younger players. For adult Star Wars fans, however, it’s a great option that’s sure to lead to hours of far, far away fun.Reasons to buy+Unusual evocation of villain plot lines from Star Wars+Considerable strategic crunch for a mass-market title+Packed with fun Star Wars art and referencesReasons to avoid-Quite complex for a family-friendly franchise game-Not much player interaction
T3 VerdictNew resources and board space create a lot more strategic options to work with in Star Wars Villainous, adding to the excitement and replay value. It’s not the quickest or simplest game, though, which may put off younger players. For adult Star Wars fans, however, it’s a great option that’s sure to lead to hours of far, far away fun.
T3 Verdict
New resources and board space create a lot more strategic options to work with in Star Wars Villainous, adding to the excitement and replay value. It’s not the quickest or simplest game, though, which may put off younger players. For adult Star Wars fans, however, it’s a great option that’s sure to lead to hours of far, far away fun.
Reasons to buy+Unusual evocation of villain plot lines from Star Wars+Considerable strategic crunch for a mass-market title+Packed with fun Star Wars art and referencesReasons to avoid-Quite complex for a family-friendly franchise game-Not much player interaction
Reasons to buy+Unusual evocation of villain plot lines from Star Wars+Considerable strategic crunch for a mass-market title+Packed with fun Star Wars art and references
Unusual evocation of villain plot lines from Star Wars
Considerable strategic crunch for a mass-market title
Packed with fun Star Wars art and references
Reasons to avoid-Quite complex for a family-friendly franchise game-Not much player interaction
Quite complex for a family-friendly franchise game
Not much player interaction
Why you can trust T3Our expert reviewers spend hours testing and comparing products and services so you can choose the best for you.Find out more about how we test.
Why you can trust T3Our expert reviewers spend hours testing and comparing products and services so you can choose the best for you.Find out more about how we test.
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(Image credit: Future)
(Image credit: Future)
Star Wars Villainous: Power of The Dark Side review: price and who it’s for
This is a mid-sized box game with some hefty content, including sculpted statuettes of your favourite Star Wars villains, for which you can expect to pay about £40/$40. Because it’s Star Wars and it’s going to be on sale in mass-market stores, it’ll no doubt get a lot of interest from younger fans of the franchise. The bad news is that Star Wars Villainous is a fairly meaty game with a lot of rules: the original was moderately complex, and this has a slew of new options that players will need to learn. As such it’s not as family-friendly as you might imagine and is better suited to game fans.
(Image credit: Future)
(Image credit: Future)
Star Wars Villainous: Power of The Dark Side review: How it plays
Each player chooses a character and gets a dedicated board for that villain together with two decks of cards. One is their villain deck which contains allies, items and events that the character can command. The other is their fate deck which has their heroic adversaries and setback events. These are all tied to the villain’s storyline. For example, Darth Vader’s board has locations like Cloud City and the Emperor’s Throne Room, his deck is full of Stormtroopers and his fate deck sees him facing down Han Solo and Obi-Wan.
(Image credit: Future)
(Image credit: Future)
Fate is an interesting mechanic that’s clearly supposed to bring a degree of interaction to what’s otherwise something of an insular game, with each player choosing their own goals. And it succeeds, but only to an extent. Most of the time, fate actions will be incidental: you’ll take them because you want other actions in the same space that advance your agenda. That makes it feel more like a bonus than a direct attack, but it’s still fun and thematic to choose a setback for an opponent and choke their board with it. And of course, it gives you a chance to peg back a runaway leader, too.
There’s a fifth space on your board, deep space, which is new to this version of Villainous and is the source of a lot of the extra complexity in the game. It can’t be accessed until a vehicle card has been played into it, at which point it gains the action icons and a special effect listed on the card. However, there are also vehicle cards in the fate deck which can potentially block a villain’s vehicle like a hero card, and which can be discarded through the use of a vanquish action.
(Image credit: Future)
(Image credit: Future)
Star Wars Villainous: Power of The Dark Side review: Verdict
For strategy game fans, Star Wars Villainous is a definite step up from the original Disney Villainous game. The new resources and board space create a lot more strategic options to work with, adding to the fun and replay value. It’s a shame the price we have to pay for this is shutting out some younger or less patient fans of the franchise. But if you’re up for the challenge, this is a compelling addition to the Star Wars tabletop line-up.
Star Wars Villainous: Power of The Dark Side review: Also consider
If you enjoy the Star Wars licence there are lots of other games to consider but they’re all very different from Villainous and most are as much, if not more, complicated. Perhaps the most accessible is Star Wars: X-Wing, where you fly ready-painted models of iconic ships in deep space dogfights. It looks great and plays great but be aware that it’s the thin end of a wedge, with eye-popping numbers of additional ships available if you want them.
For more accessible family play, the same design team bought out Horrified, a fun cooperative game of monster hunting. It’s based on hokey Universal horror movies from the sixties so it’s not at all scary, but it does a great job of being easy to learn while still ramping up the excitement and piling on some pressure as the game progresses.
Ravensburger Star War Villainous: Power of The Dark Side: Price Comparison
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