Board Game Review: Ravensburger adds Hocus Pocus, Frozen, and Pixar's Coco to Disney Villainous
It’s a big year for Disney Villainous with two expansions giving Disney fans new ways to play with their favorite villains. Ravensburger recently released Success at Any Cost, an expandalone that works for 2-players right out of the box, featuring Ernesto de la Cruz from Pixar’s Coco and Prince Hans from Disney’s Frozen. This fall also finds the release of Come We Fly, a Hocus Pocus expansion.
Like all Disney Villainous releases, these new characters can be mixed with all previous sets. This means a 4-player game could hypothetically feature the Sanderson Sisters, Ernesto de la Cruz, Ursula, and Oogie Boogie. The combinations are endless, and the perimeter of the boxes helps players see how they can expand their game with more characters. The back of the instruction manuals also showcases the full lineup.
Disney Villainous: Success at Any Cost Review
Although Success at Any Cost comes with two new characters, Ernesto de la Cruz gets the star treatment on both the box and interior decor, which is themed to the Land of the Dead.
This set comes with everything needed for a 2-player game, and longtime Disney Villainous fans will note that both of these characters have some play mechanics unique to this set.
Like in the movie Coco, Ernesto de la Cruz needs the world to forget Héctor, the real talent behind his starmaking songs like “Remember Me.” The game starts with the ofrenda family photo of Héctor, Mamá Imelda, and little Coco face up, save for the upper corner. The backside of these cards contains one of Ernesto’s album covers, and he successfully erases Héctor’s memory if he flips all six pieces over, plus vanquishes Héctor from his realm.
As other players deal out cards from your Fate deck, obstacles are put in Ernesto’s way, sometimes including flipping cards back over. But in general, Ernesto de la Cruz is a good starting character for someone just learning the game.
Prince Hans is slightly more challenging to play, starting with a double-sided board. Hans must get his realm completely frozen in order to vanquish Anna and Elsa. This is achieved through Frozen Rings, an element unique to playing as Hans. Through actions on his villain cards, Hans gets to add rings to his locations and, once all frozen, it’s time to flip his board while maintaining card placement.
All four actions need to be frozen again for an area to be considered “fully frozen,” so Hans’ work isn’t done just yet. And with other heroes in his fate deck, as other players thwart you, Hans’ goal can become quite difficult to achieve. But all in all, if you can flip your board and completely freeze one location, glory is in your grasp.
The fact that Success at Any Cost pairs a good first-play character with a more complicated one makes this release a nice way for a current player to introduce someone new to the game. Ernesto de la Cruz becomes Pixar’s third villain in the lineup (alongside Lotso and Syndrome), while Prince Hans finally adds Frozen to the line.
Disney Villainous: Come We Fly Review
The second entry in the series to feature live-action characters (behind Davy Jones from Pirates of the Caribbean), Come We Fly brings Hocus Pocus to a game that many players crave around Halloween. As in the film, the Sanderson Sisters must successfully brew and administer the life potion to a child before sunrise, which gives their objective a unique twist, too.
Spell cards, a cauldron, and ingredient tokens are part of this expansion, and the “sistahs” must complete specific actions to add each ingredient to the cauldron to brew the potion. There are plenty of obstacles in their way, including “Hallowed Ground,” which makes a location unvanquishable, and “Daylight Savings,” which blocks an ingredient from being added to the cauldron.
If you’re successful at brewing the life potion, it must be administered to Max, Dani, or Allison, and that character must be vanquished to win the game. While the art on Disney Villainous cards is always incredible, it’s extra fun with a live-action property like Hocus Pocus, since the artists have to get a bit creative. The die itself is fun, Winfired’s spellbook open with the silhouette of all three witches emerging.
Going strong since 2018, it’s exciting to see Ravensburger continue to expand the Disney Villainous collection of playable characters. Success at Any Cost (Ernesto de la Cruze/Prince Hans) is out now, in both the standard version seen here and a Target-exclusive with collectible packaging and an alternate finish on the pawns.
Come We Fly is coming soon, but fans who can’t wait to add the Sanderson Sisters to their game can do so early through the Target-exclusive Darkness Brewing set, which repackages Maleficent, the Evil Queen, and Ursula with the new set, all of which have a matching green-to-black gradient finish.
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