Villainous: Treacherous Tides Review
Two new characters have been added to the Villainous world and I was wildly excited about one of them, and utterly disinterested in the other. Coming out of the experience, though, I thought both Davey Jones and Tamatoa were excellent editions, and I love having them as options for others to play. If you own a ton of Villainous already, I’m guessing you probably are going to pick this up. But if you are a bit more choosy about what you purchase, let’s dive deeper into this release and determine its value amongst a sea of Villainous expansions!
First and foremost, I would argue that anyone NOT purchasing all of the Disney Villainous games is likely basing their purchases on personal likes and dislikes. So in this instance, if I wasn’t collecting all the releases (which I am), I would pick this up simply because it has Davy Jones – and I LOVE the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. Moana, while a great movie, is less interesting to me as I don’t find Tomatoa all that much of a villain, at least not one worthy of being added to Disney Villainous. If I had it my way, this would have been a Pirates of the Caribbean expansion, perhaps adding Becket alongside Davy Jones.
In Villainous, players will play a popular Disney villain with a mission / goal to achieve. The first person to achieve their goal wins the game! That is a simplistic overview, but for a more detailed How to Play for Villainous, there are tons of great tutorials on YouTube!
What I do like here is that Davy Jones is the first live action character to enter the fray – this opens up a world of possibilities for Disney Villainous going forward. While live action villains were technically never OFF the table, they are now all ON the table thanks to this release. I’m sure fans of the franchise will have a ton of great ideas for Ravensburger, but for now, we will need to be content with Davy Jones.
Davy Jones
Despite pulling the subject matter from a live action release, Ravensburger continues with the cartoony graphical look. So no, the cards you play as part of Davy Jones’ decks are not just snapshots from the movies. Each character has lovingly been recreated in a cartoony artstyle, and it looks absolutely fantastic. Pirates of the Caribbean animated release, anyone? The player piece for Davy Jones is great as well – overall, the production around this character is top notch.
Davy Jones will work with his massive number of allies (pirates) to search the seas for various treasures. There are many things to find, but if you are fans of the movie franchise, you’ll recognize them all instantly. You will be looking for Jack’s Compass, the Key (if you know, you know), his Music Box, his Heart, and also the Treasure Chest that stores his heart.
With Davy Jones, you want to reveal heroes from your fate deck and coincide that reveal with an event card that will place a treasure on those heroes. Then you can defeat the heroes and collect the treasures they hold. I’ve played various Disney Villainous characters that feel really disjointed when you play them, or that the gameplay feels “clunky.” Davy Jones was a real treat to play, not only because everything just seemed to work really well, but because the effects of various things were insanely thematic as well. I won’t spoil it here, but this might be the best thematic Villainous experience, in my opinion.
Tamatoa
Let me get my first gripe with Tamatoa out of the way – this player mover is too darn wide and covers up too much of the board. I enjoy the thinner, taller pieces, so it was disappointing to see this fatter, flatter piece that covers too much of the realm locations.
Tamatoa brings a unique twist to Disney Villainous, and that is the inclusion of a third deck. When Maui is in play occupying a hero slot in a realm, a card from a brand new Maui deck is first revealed before Tamatoa can move. When the Maui cards are drawn, it’s not always bad stuff, or completely bad stuff.
Some let you reveal specific cards from your hand and earn power equal to them, others force you to discard an ally from your realm (sadness) but earn power equal to its cost. Others remove cards from both the villain deck and the fate deck. Essentially, these new cards from this new deck will impact what Tamatoa might do turn-to-turn, which does slow the game down a bit if what Tamatoa planned to do on their turn is no longer an option.
What’s cool is that even when Maui is not in play, Tamatoa can play cards that will reveal cards from the Maui deck, and Tamatoa has the option to play the card or not. It’s a unique twist as the effects of the cards are not always bad, and some of them will help you do a bunch of valuable things – like cycling decks! Going into the Tamatoa character I wasn’t excited at all – see earlier in this article for context again – but coming out of it, this was one of the more interesting characters currently available in Villainous.
Still, getting Maui’s hook and the heart into the lair isn’t as easy as you would think it should be, which makes Tamatoa a really fun character to play.
When you look at these two characters on their own, they both have a ton of upside when it comes to the Villainous franchise. Both are doing some unique things, making this an easy recommendation if you are looking to pick and choose which boxes to purchase. Even if Pirates of the Caribbean or Moana are not your favourite Disney films, these characters do enough interesting things to make them great to play anyways!
Article By Adam Roffel
