Marvel Villainous: Infinite Power

30th January 2022

Sunday and we're at The Sovereigns for a rare afternoon of gaming and the beginning of a day of gaming.

Twirl your moustache and laugh your evil cackle! It's time for Marvel Villainous: Infinite Power, a game about the poor misunderstood bad guys of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

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What's in a game?

• Player pawns: The most eye-catching component of Marvel Villainous are the oversized pawns, which are busts of 5 Marvel's villains; Hela, Killmonger, Taskmaster, Thanos and Ultron.
• Token holder: The next most noticeable component is the oversized token holder called the Vault by the in game text.
• Player board: These are long, rectangular boards. At the left end is a portrait of the pertinent supervillain, going rightwards are 4 central spaces or locations and then a 'speciality' space at the other end.
  Each central location contains 4 icons of some sort or other. Some icons will be in the top row of a location and some on the bottom row. There are also spaces to place cards at the bottom of each location or to cover the top row of each location. More on this below.
  Icons represent the actions that will be available for the player to perform.
  Marvel Villainous features asymmetrical gameplay and this is apparent in the player board. They all display broadly similar layout but with different details in the central locations.
• Villain guides: Each villain in the game has their own objective and own manner to reaching it, so there's one of these little guidebooks for each villain and they explain what the player needs to do to win.
• Cards: Marvel Villainous makes use of 2 types of deck.
  Villain decks: There's a unique deck for each villain. Cards have cost to play in the top left corner and if they're allies, they'll also have a strength score in the bottom left. Villain decks contain the following types of card.
  Fate decks: These decks are used to provide extra, unpredictable challenges for the players to overcome. There are actually 6 decks here, as well as decks tailored to target each villain, there's also a common deck.
• Tiles: There are 3 sets of speciality tiles which are used by the Killmonger, Thanos and Ultron player.
• Tokens: These are standard round card tokens and come in 3 types.
  Power tokens: Used as the game's currency to pay for actions and card activations.
  +1/-1 tokens: These double-sided tokens are used to modify characters' strength scores.
  Soul mark tokens: Soul mark tokens! These are actually only used if Hela is being played.

The quality of the components is good, nothing felt flimsy or cheap. The tokens, tiles and cards all felt suitably good, the oversized pawns in particular are chunky but they look suspiciously like they're 3d printed as they're single coloured. Having said that, I don't  see it as a drawback, they are pawns. I found the addition of the 'Vault' token holder a bit strange and unnecessary, not that it's unwelcome, it's always good to have something to organise tokens.

It's clear that the game's art direction draws influence from the Marvel films but wisely steers clear of actually using stills from them. Instead the art looks familiar but also comicbook-like, which means it's mostly brash and colourful. There's a lot of illustrations throughout the cards and none of it seemed bad.

Marvel Villainous uses a fair amount of icons and to be honest they weren't very clear initially but the reference sheet provided meant that it wasn't an issue and after a coupe of turns it was pretty clear.

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How's it play?
Setup

• Villains: All players should select a villain. They should then take the relevant pawn, villain cards, player board, tiles and guide.
  The villain deck should be shuffled into a face-down deck and 4 cards should be drawn.
• Fate deck: Take the common event cards and the event cards specific to the villains being used in the game, then shuffle them all into a face-down deck.
• The Vault: Put all the pertinent tokens into the Vault token container.
• First player: Determine a first player.

On to play
In Marvel Villainous, the active player moves their pawn to a location performs an action from that new location, play then progresses clockwise to the next active player.

• ​​​Move pawn: The active player moves their pawn to one of the 4 locations on their board. They can them perform 1 of the actions displayed there. If the top row of actions are covered by a card, then they cannot be used. Furthermore, a pawn cannot​ move on to it's current space, it must move to a different location, although the player can use the same action if it's both on the location they're leaving and the one they're heading to.
• Actions: Once the pawn has been used, the active player can use one of the available actions.
  • Activate: The active player can spend the required amount of power to activate any card With an activation icon on it to trigger it's ability.
  • Discard cards: The active player may discard any numbers of cards from their hand.
  • Fate: The active player may reveal a card from the fate deck and resolve it.
    ​There are several types of fate card, when a fate card is drawn it never costs power and the active player is free to use it how they wish unless it targets a specific villain.
    Effects: Similar to the villain deck equivalent.
    Events: There are 2 types of event, global and targeted - which only affects it's specified villain.
    ​When an event card is put into play, it will penalise the villain(s) in some way, this is a ongoing condition until the event is vanquished.  As with villains and heroes, events also have a strength score and when they are 'vanquished', they confer a reward.
    Heroes: You can't have villains without heroes. Hero cards can be placed along the top row of a player's locations. Like allies, hero cards have a strength score.
    Items: Also similar to the villain deck equivalent.
  • ​Gain power: This action allows the active player to gain one or more power tokens.
  • Play card: There are several types of card the active player can put into play.
    Ally: As explained above, ally cards have a strength as well a cost. Strength is used when vanquishing, as explained below. Allies are played on the bottom row of a player's 4 locations to assist them in various ways or on an event if ones  is active. Alternatively, sometimes they can be placed on to the top row of opponents' locations (Covering any top row actions on that location.). Many allies also have some sort of special ability, they may have a activation cost though.
    Item: Item cards have a cost and will also have some sort of bonus or special action. Item cards must be played on to an ally. Item cards may have an ongoing effect or a activation cost.
    Effect: These are one-and-done special actions, once played, they're put into the discard pile.
    Speciality: These are the opposite of one-and-done, when a speciality card is played, it's put into it's pertinent space and its effects are ongoing. Sometimes, speciality cards are tied to a character's unique objectives.
    Relocate: When performing this action, the active player is able to change the position of an ally or item card, Usually this is to the bottom row of their player board or to an event.
    Vanquish: This action can be used equally on heroes/enemy allies that are hindering the active player's board or used on an event, the process is more or less the same. This action does require the active player to have allies in the relevant areas.
    To vanquish cards covering the top row of a location, the active player must have 1 or more allies in the bottom row the same location. To vanquish an event, there must allies assigned to it.
    In either case, the strength of the active player's allies is compared the strength of the card being vanquished and if the allies combined strength meets-or-beats the opposing strength, then the target card is vanquished. All cards involved are discarded.
• Draw cards: If the active player has less than 4 cards in their hand, they draw from their deck until they have 4.
• Next player: Play progresses to the plyer on the left who now becomes the active player.

There are some other rules, but that's the gist of how the game flows

Endgame
The first player to complete their objectives immediately wins.

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Overall
In Marvel Villainous, players for the most part will be concerned with advancing their own particular objective (Unless they're playing Thanos!) and will look to optimise their plays. Since a pawn cannot stay on the same location for 2 consecutive turns, players will also want to think at least a turn ahead.
Occasionally the opportunity to mess with other players will arise. Players can also employ the fate deck to interfere with opponents as well but this has the chance to backfire. Having said that, players will need to keep an eye on their opponents who might be close to completing their objectives, in which case priorities will no doubt change, forcing players to decide which is most important.

Thematically I think the game is strong and I like the asymmetrical play and objectives, how they follow the storylines from the related films is well done and shows some flexibility and scope in the game's mechanics.

The core mechanics are pretty solid but I did have few issues with the game. The asymmetrical objectives are good, it also didn't feel very well balanced. Certain supervillains had easier objectives to complete, or so it seemed. I'm not 100% on this though
I found the event cards slowed the actions down without adding any noticeable value to the game, they're just added obstacles and resolving them is identical to vanquishing enemies, only with a harder, higher strength to overcome.
Consequently, it probably extended game, making it a little too long.

I also found the game perhaps a little unengaging. I think this is down to how each supervillain has their own deck and that deck never changes. It means the only strategies available are the ones granted to me by the deck and it feels like the game is holding my hand.
There's definitely some card synergy going on in each deck but a hand size of 4 feels like it limits that synergy and is something I feel was a deliberate decision. As result, I'm unsure of the game's longevity.

I feel that the rules are a little fiddly as a result of the asymmetrical elements but ultimately, Marvel Villainous is for the most a pretty straightforward game and looks more complicated on paper than in play. This is no surprise as I'm sure it's a game meant to have crossover appeal.
So, having said all of that however, I'm probably not the target audience here.

​Core gamers probably won't find much to get their teeth into here but for more casual players, particularly those who are fans of the Marvel films, this light-ish game might be some fun.