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Starting as a spin-off of the popularDisney game, Marvel Villainous has grown an identity of its own not only thanks to the Marvel universe, but also due to the complexity it adds. Since all villains share a universe, there is a lot more interactivity between players, invading each others' spaces and even sharing Fate cards.
Whether you are playing with friends or competing with strangers, you’ll want to bring the best villain for the job, and the roster of available characters will not disappoint you. Now, if you only want the best, be wary, since the power level of these characters is not comparable to their MCU counterparts.
9Kang The Conqueror
Invading Every Timeline
While Kang did not have much of an impact in the MCU, you can certainly make him shine within Marvel Villainous, and live the dream of invading every timeline as a universal conqueror. Kang starts messing with his opponents even before the game starts, since he shuffles Variants into every player’s decks, which gives negative effects to the locations they are played in.
Loki’s deck also uses variants to invade other people’s realms, but he does so in a far less interesting way, which is why he isn’t on the list.
Winning with Kang isn’t easy to do, and it certainly isn’t quick, since you need to wait for at least four variants to be drawn by your opponents. Still, while not the easiest villain to play, Kang certainly adds a lot of flavor, and there is no feeling like denying an opponent’s location to use it as your own.
8Doctor Octopus
Reaching Far Into His Domain
Doctor Octopus is a highly strategic character, with a win condition that isn’t simple but is also hard to counter. He needs to complete five Schemes to win, but since playing the Schemes is a free action, you may play several in a row and have surprising wins out of nowhere, since somejust require you to have the Sinister Six in play.
Playing the Doctor changes significantly depending on your opponent’s knowledge of your deck, since it becomes a cakewalk if they don’t know what your Schemes involve. Against more advanced players, you should get the most obvious Schemes out first (like Sinister Six) and leave the surprising ones for last (Like Master Planner or Taking What I Want).
7Thanos
Sharing Stones Around
There are two ways to play Marvel Villainous: with or without Thanos. This is because of his Infinity Stones, a set of six cards that are neither Fate nor Villain cards, and can be used by any player for devastating results, from drawing any card you want to playing allies on your discard pile for free.
While the Stones make the game far more engaging, it doesn’t mean that the one playing as Thanos has a guaranteed win. In fact, Thanos is one of the slowest villains to win with, and giving the Stones to faster characters can make games last nothing at all.
6Hela
Queen Of The Dead
Both Marvel Villainous andMarvel Snapsee Hela as theQueen of discard, since it fits her motif of death and resurrection. Her objective is to conquer Odin’s Vault, and to do so she needs a combination of Soul Marks and Allies that tally up to eight.
There needs to be at least one Soul Mark in Odin’s Vault for Hela to win the game.
While her objective might seem simple at first glance, it is easily counterable; if there’s a Hero (or any opposing character, like Kang’s Variants) at Odin’s Vault, Hela can’t win the game. This is why it is best to use Fate cards on her late rather than early, since attacking Hela at the start of the game is simply a way for her to accumulate Soul Marks.
5Titania
Gaining Power To Win
Titania’s goal in Marvel Villainous is to slay Heroes to gain strength, making her the only villain that can vanquish heroes herself without any additional cards used. Each time Titania defeats a Hero with a strength value equal or higher than hers, she gains one additional strength point.
This means that all you need to do is fight Heroes to win the game, but be careful, since if you defeat the strongest Heroes first, you’ll be left with nothing to raise your strength at the end of the game. This is why it is best to save cards like Volcana for your final turns, since that’s a way for you to gain strength no matter what you vanquish.
4Taskmaster
Spreading Allies Everywhere
Taskmaster’s deck works much like the villain functions in the comics, that is, being highly adaptable to defensive and offensive strategies. He needs to have four allies in different locations, each with five or more strength, and there are quite a few strategies to do so.
If your opponents are sending Heroes often to block your locations, you can use those Heroes to empower your allies and win faster. If, instead, your opponents leave you alone, you can gather your allies in a single location to maximize the effects of your empowering items, and then simply relocate the allies to win.
3Venom
Chasing The Spider-Men
To win as Venom, you need to find any Hero classified as Spider-Man and use Symbiote Tokens to lower that Hero’s strength to zero. This, on its own, is as challenging as any other deck, but it can become a swift win if you’re facing either Doctor Octopus or Titania.
The neutral Heroes Spider-Man Friendly Neighborhood and Spider-Man Miles Morales can’t be used by Venom to win, since the former prevents all villains from winning, and the latter can’t have its strength reduced.
This is because both those villains add another Spider-Man to the neutral Fate deck, adding to the odds of Venom finding one. While Titania’s Spider-Man works basically like Venom’s base one (both start at six strength), the Doctor Octopus version starts at only four strength, giving Venom a chance for a swift win, as long asyou use the Symbiote allies correctly.
2Killmonger
Taking Control Of Wakanda
Killmonger can be one of the fastest villains you’re able to win with, since he doesn’t need to find any particular card to further his plans; they are already in play as specialties. Much like Titania or Doctor Octopus, Killmonger needs to defeat specific characters, but said characters are summoned immediately into Killmonger’s domain.
Since he can complete his objective so fast, Killmonger tends to be the prime target for Fate actions, and he lacks the allies needed to defeat a board filled with Heroes. Even then, cards like Killmonger’s Fury can make short work of most Heroes, meaning that he’s a villain with big offensive abilities and nearly no counters.
1Ultron
The Fastest And Easiest Villain
Ultron needs to complete a series of missions in order to claim victory, not unlike Killmonger, yet Ultron is already the easiest of the two since no step requires him to vanquish any Hero. Instead, he just needs to play and remove Sentries into his domain to claim victory.
Removing a Sentry from your domain simply means putting a Sentry in play into the discard pile. Doing so is a free action.
What’s more, completing each step gives you additional abilities, meaning that the closer you are to winning, the easier it gets. While your opponents can try and target you with Fate cards to slow you down, there’s little time for them to do so, since Ultron players tend to have won by turn four.
