Disney Villainous: Wicked to the Core Overview & Strategy

Villainous is a great game, but after a while it starts to become repetitive once you’ve tried every villain.
No worries, there are already 4 expansions out, adding 3 new villains each, and a lot more are coming.
Here I’ll talk about the first expansion: Wicked to the Core. In particular, I’ll make an overview of each new villain, explaining their objective and suggesting some strategies to win with them.

My best friend, who knows I LOVE Villainous, had, as always, the best idea to gift me Wicked to the Core for Christmas two years ago, and that’s how I got my hands on one of my favourite villains: Hades. I remember just being so excited when I realized what the present contained.

Besides Hades (from Hercules), Wicked to the Core also added Dr. Facilier (from The Princess and the Frog), and the Evil Queen (from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs).

Here’s your guide to each one of these villains. And remember, in this game the worst takes it all!

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Inside the box

• 3 Villain Movers
• 3 Villain Guides
• 90 Villain Cards (30 per Villain)
• 45 Fate Cards (15 per Villain)
• 3 Boards
• 3 Reference Cards
• 40 Power Tokens
• 1 Lock Token
• 1 Fate Token

Villainous Wicked to the Core Characters

Dr. Facilier

The Princess and the Frog

The evil witch doctor who wants to rule New Orleans with the help of his friends from the other side.

Evil Queen

Snow White and the 7 Dwarfs

She is Snow White’s stepmother, and she just wants to be the fairest of them all.

Hades

Hercules

The hot-headed (literally) God of the Underworld. He wants to take over Mount Olympus using the Titans.

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Dr. Facilier

Objective: Control the Talisman and successfully rule New Orleans

Dr. Facilier strategy

Dr. Facilier is a unique villain because he has the mechanic of the Fortune Pile. In order to win he needs to play the Talisman, have it under his control, and reveal the “Rule New Orleans” card from the Fortune Pile. This means that the first thing you should do is find the “Rule New Orleans” and the “Talisman” cards.
“Rule New Orleans” is a card that must be played in the Fortune Pile, and it could be revealed when a “The Cards Will Tell” card is played. If “Rule New Orleans” is revealed from the Fortune Pile AND the Talisman is under your control, Dr. Facilier wins the game.

Since the Talisman can get stolen every time a hero with 3 or less power is played, I suggest keeping it in your hand right until you also have the “Rule New Orleans” card, so that your odds of winning increase and you don’t make others play lots of Fate cards against you.
If it gets stolen, you’ll need to defeat that hero in order to get the Talisman back, thus making it harder for you to win.

Another suggestion is to try keeping your Fortune Pile as low as possible so that your chances of revealing the “Rule New Orleans” card increase.
Your enemies will try to add cards to your Fortune Pile but don’t worry, there are cards like “Desperation” and “Illusion Powder” that lets you remove some cards from the Fortune Pile.

Finally, when you are close to winning, you should try to always have at least 1 Power, so that you’ll be ready to play “The Cards Will Tell” at the right moment.

Dr. Facilier is a little bit tricky; it took me a while to completely understand how the Fortune Pile works, but once you get the hang of it, you’ll find out that it’s very fun to play with him. It’s one of my favourite Disney Villainous’ villains out there.

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Evil Queen

Objective: Defeat Snow White

Evil Queen Strategy

Let’s get it immediately out: The Evil Queen is the most difficult villain of Wicked to the Core, and one of the hardest villains of Villainous in general. Her objective sounds really simple, but to reach it there are a lot of steps:

1. Unlock the Dwarfs’ Cottage by playing all the four ingredients;
2. Brew poison to defeat Heroes, including Snow White;
3. Have Snow White in your realm;
4. Play “Take a Bite” when the Evil Queen is at the same location of Snow White in order to defeat her and win the game.

I know, those are a lot of steps so let’s take a look at each of them.

Snow White HAS to be played in the Dwarfs’ Cottage, that’s why the first thing you have to do is unlock that location by playing four different ingredients. So, your priority at the beginning should be finding and playing all the ingredients: Mummy Dust, Black of Night, Scream of Fright, and Old Hag’s Cackle.
Try discarding cards each turn until you’ve found and played all four ingredients.

While you search for the ingredients, you should also try finding Snow White.
A great card that helps you with that is “Magic Mirror”: when you activate its ability, by paying 3 Power Tokens, you can search for Snow White in the Fate Deck and immediately play it in the Dwarfs’ Cottage, even if it is still locked.

Don’t forget to also brew poison: in order to defeat Snow White, you’ll need at least four Poison Tokens. To brew poison you’ll need to go to the Laboratory and use the Brew Poison action to turn as many Power Token (that you own) into poison as you want. There are also cards like “Jealousy” and “Mummy Dust” that helps you to brew Poison.

The Evil Queen has a lot of steps on her path to winning, but once she gets going it’s actually very difficult to stop her. It’s very challenging to win with her, yet it’s so satisfying when you are able to do it!

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Hades

Objective: Start your turn with three Titans at Mount Olympus

Hades Strategy

Hades has one of the easiest objectives of the game, or at least, it feels like it.
That’s right, because even if the objective sounds easy, it’s really simple for your opponents to block your way up to Mount Olympus through Fate cards, and there are a lot of cards that causes you big slowdowns.

The first thing you should focus on is, of course, finding the Titans: there are 5 of them in Hades’ Villain Deck. A card that can help you with that is Eye of the Fates.
Each Titan must be played only in The Underworld. You’ll have to move them from there up to Mount Olympus using the Move an Item or Ally action, located in The Underworld or in Mount Olympus. This way you can move them one location per turn.
There is also the card Get ready to Rumble! (three of them in the deck) that can let you move one Titan by one or even two locations.

Beware though, a lot of annoying Heroes are ready to cause you some trouble. Hera and Zeus are the ones that can trap your Titans, and you cannot move them when they are trapped. If that happens, you’ll need to use Planets Align in order to untrap them, or you can use Pyros’ ability.
Hercules, on the other end, doesn’t let you move Titans who are in his same location, so you’ll want to keep some allies ready to defeat him, or use some cards to move him away from your Titans, like Rage.

Overall, you can see now how Hades’ objective is pretty simple. But, again, you have to sneak your way through without getting noticed too much, because if your opponents start to use the Fate Cards on you, then Hades becomes quite difficult to win with.
So my final suggestion is to keep two cards really close: Get ready to Rumble! (and 5 Power Tokens ready), to surprise your opponents and move one Titan by two locations, and Mortality Potion, to use Titans to defeat Heroes and not discard them.

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