By Adam Roffel
In July, Ravensburger released a brand-new Villainous set called Success at Any Cost. This new set included two brand-new characters, Ernesto de la Cruz from Pixar's Coco and Prince Hans from Disney's Frozen. These new characters brought new ideas to the table, but do you really need more villains in your collection?
The short answer to that question is simple, maybe. Villainous is a game my family plays quite frequently. Having a wide variety of characters to choose from is important to us. Ernesto and Hans bring enough new ideas to the table to make this an easy recommendation from us.
Ernesto de la Cruz - Create That Portrait
Removing any trace of Héctor and the Rivera family is Ernesto’s goal in Villainous. He begins the game with a bunch of photo cards face up, revealing the entire Rivera family. As he performs actions, he can flip those photo cards face down. This erases the Rivera family from memory while retaining his legendary musician status.
Ernesto also needs to make sure that Héctor is not in play. It will be up to other players to Fate Ernesto often to reveal Héctor and play him into Ernesto’s domain.
Thematically, this all works really well. If you have seen the film Coco, Ernesto has done a lot of work to erase any past that would challenge his legitimacy as a musician. The one person who can unravel his lies is Héctor. Ernesto poisons him in Coco to keep his secrets.
Ernesto as a character in Villainous is pretty straightforward and doesn’t require a ton of strategy. You will just continue to take actions that allow you to flip photo cards. The challenge here is that even if players don’t find Héctor to play him when Fating Ernesto, they will start flipping his photo cards face up. You then have to outpace the cards being flipped face up by getting cards turned face down.
Prince Hans - Let’s Freeze All of Arendelle
Prince Hans, the youngest of 13 kids, wants a kingdom of his own. He will need to remove both Anna and Elsa if he wants control of Arendelle. The goal for Hans is to place Frozen Rings on all his action spots to fully freeze his domain. Once that is done, the player board is flipped. Hans will then need to vanquish both Anna and Elsa at fully frozen locations. This will require even more Frozen Rings to be played.
Thematically, I was a bit disconnected from this one. While Hans does use a frozen Arendelle in the Frozen film to justify his desire to remove Elsa from the throne, he is not the cause of the never-ending winter that falls on Arendelle. I think the idea of Hans placing Frozen Rings on locations makes sense from a gameplay perspective. It works quite well, but thematically it doesn’t quite hit like other Villainous characters have.
Hans was a lot more frustrating to play than I initially thought he would be. I would make great progress freezing locations on my player board. Other players would quickly wipe out all the work I had done. It didn’t seem like I could get ahead. Hans was played multiple times by a variety of people. In both of my plays, I hadn’t even flipped my board yet and someone had already won.
I’d Buy This for Ernesto, Not Hans
Ultimately, I’d still invest in Success at Any Cost as I think Ernesto is one of the stronger and more thematic characters you can play in Disney Villainous. I think the gameplay of Hans is pretty good, but it seems like it’s quite hard to win. Thematically, it just doesn’t work for me.
The good news is that if this set doesn’t appeal to you, Ravensburger has a ton of other Villainous boxes you can sink your teeth into. One of those is the relatively new Darkness Brewing set, which launched as a Target exclusive and combines returning Villainous characters with the Sanderson Sisters. Play as Ursula, The Evil Queen, Maleficent, or the Sanderson Sisters, all with their own stories and missions to complete.
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