Publisher: Ravensburger
Release Date: August 1, 2025
Price: $19.99
Creators: System designed by Prospero Hall; expansion designed by Mike Mulvihill.
Format: boxed board game expansion, standalone for two players or as expansion for base set.
Age Rating: 10+
Game Length: 40 minutes
ICv2 Rating: 3.5 Stars out of 5
This new expansion for the Villainous system adds characters from two popular franchises that had previously not been represented. Davy Jones, from Pirates of the Caribbean, and Tamatoa from the Moana animated movies. Since Pirates of the Caribbean and its sequels were live action films, this is an unusual step, but artistically it works. The artwork on the cards for that villain are nicely done, with designs that are recognizable as the characters without being photos of the actors. The artwork for the Tamatoa decks are very much in the style of the animation from Moana.
For those not familiar with previous games in the Villainous system, each player has a board, and that part is a “villain placement” system in which a miniature of the villain is moved to available action spaces. There are also two decks of cards per player normally, one which determines actions and another which is the interference from heroes. Each player’s hero deck is played their opponent, or one of them in a multi-player game. Heroes can block action spaces and generally get in the way of the villains in an assortment of ways. This expansion features an extra deck in addition to Tamatoa’s fate deck (more on that later).
The boards, as usual for this series, are simple to understand, but in this case the one for Davy Jones is both visually more attractive and more clearly thematic. Only serious Moana fans will associate the names of the locations with the visual imagery on the Tamatoa board. It could be argued that there are more players wanting to play Davy Jones than Tamatoa, but wanting to have water-themed villains for this set left few choices, since Ursula had already been used.
The only weakness to the mechanics seems to be the Maui deck of cards for the Tamatoa player. The Maui deck only comes into play once the opponent plays Maui as a hero opposing Tamatoa, but the action which triggers the Maui deck cards in a way most likely to benefit Tamatoa comes from Tamatoa’s own actions. The somewhat random results are thematic in terms of Maui being sort of a force of chaos, but it can make the game feel like the Maui action is outside the control of the player who played Maui. Without that problematic effect, this expansion would have been rated a 4 out of 5.
The price point for this small expansion is quite low, and fans of the initial big set may want it, to give them the option of playing either of these two against Ursula. It may not be an attractive entry point, but as an expansion it will probably attract fans of either Moana or Pirates of the Caribbean.
-- Nick Smith
