Star Wars Villainous: Cold Tactics is a two player duel game, which I received as a review copy. There are several games in this series – several universes of *-Villainous and then within the Star Wars Villainous group of games there are currently four titles, of which Cold Tactics is the latest. The others are Power of the Dark Side, Scum and Villainy, and Revenge at Last. Cold Tactics and Revenge at Last are two player duels, whereas the others go to higher player counts. It is also possible to treat Cold Tactics as an expansion to one of the other games and add Dooku and Thrawn to a previous title in the Star Wars Villainous series.
In Cold Tactics, players choose between playing Grand Admiral Thrawn or Count Dooku. Although it’s a duel and Count Dooku is perhaps one of the greatest swordsmen of his era, the duelling in this game is all by proxy. Players have two decks each, a villain deck and a fate deck. The fate deck is full of Star Wars heroes for your opponent to play on you, whereas the villain deck is your action cards. Each villain has a different objective and races to achieve it while slowing the other down with fate cards, which put obstacles in the way of the opponent. Usually in the shape of Jedi or other heroes.
Count Dooku has to convince (intimidate!) four organisations into supporting the Separatists and bringing about the downfall of the Galactic Republic. Grand Admiral Thrawn has to collect an artifact from each of his four locations and then deploy the 7th Fleet to occupy that planet and control it for the glory of the Empire.
Each player has their own board, representing their Sector of the galaxy, a large resin marker representing their villain, and their card decks. The boards have five locations – the four (mostly) planetary locations and a deep space location. Thrawn’s locations are Lothal, Ryloth, Batonn and Perida, while Dooku has Serenno, Naboo, Geonosis and the Bridge of the Imperial Hand. The fifth location – Deep Space – is where any vehicle cards are played, either a villain card from a player’s hand or a fate card, played by the opponent.
Gameplay
To play the game, each player starts with a hand of four villain cards, then after choosing a start player, the second player gets one credit and if playing with more than two (by combining this with other titles in the series), players three and four get two credits each. On their turn, a player gains one ambition token from the supply, moves their villain piece to a new location within their sector, performs actions, and finally draws back up to a hand of four villain cards. Ambition tokens and credits are two separate resources for the player to manage, and some cards are paid for with credits, while others require ambition to pay for them.
The actions that can be taken are all denoted by icons on the villain’s location and possibly also on cards that have previously been played to that location. Each icon can be activated once. The list of possible actions that can be taken is Collect Credits, Ambition, Play a Card, Maneuver, Discard Cards, Activate, Vanquish, and Fate. Collect Credits allows the player to take two credits from the supply. Play a Card is also fairly simple, the player plays a card from their hand, paying its cost with credits. Certain cards can only be paid for with Ambition tokens and this is one of the possible ways of resolving an Ambition action. The other way is to activate an Ambition action on a card that has previously been played. The Maneuver action allows a player to move an ally card that they have previously played from one location in their sector to another location. This becomes important in defeating Fate cards that have been played by the opponent. The Activate ability allows the player to activate an ability on a previously played card. The Fate action allows a player to draw two cards from an opponent’s Fate deck, choosing one to play and discarding the other. The chosen card is played onto a location and will cover up some of the actions icons there, making it less powerful. Vanquish is the action that allows a player to remove Fate cards that have been played by the opponent. Allies with sufficient combined strength at the same location are sacrificed to remove the Hero. Once the Hero/Fate card is removed, the actions it was covering up become available again.
The game is a race by each player to achieve their own objective while simultaneously slowing their opponents down with Fate cards.
Artwork
The artwork on the cards incorporates many familiar characters from the Star Wars universe, mostly from the movies and TV series. Like the source material, some of the artwork is from live-action shots and some from animated features. All of this adds to the theming and the atmosphere of the game. I’m a big Star Wars fan, so this is a 4/5 for artwork from me.
Complexity
This was my first foray into the Villainous games, so I found the unfamiliar iconography a lot to take in at first, but once you understand it, it’s a great help to learning this game in particular and to transferring that knowledge to any other Star Wars Villainous or indeed any other Villainous title. I note that both Marvel Villainous and Disney Villainous have very similar sets of icons, with some minor changes. The core mechanics of the game are pretty simple – gain ambition, move, take actions, draw. The complexity comes from judging when to focus on your own objectives and when to throw a spanner into your opponent’s engine. There’s quite a bit of to-and-fro and between advancing and then having to deal with Jedi before going back to advancing your objective. I think this has enough complexity to make it interesting and on the other hand is easy enough to pick up and play. I would score it 3/5 for complexity.
Replayability
There’s quite a lot of variation in the Villain and Fate decks, so this should be good for many outings, especially given that it can be combined with other titles in the series. I think that means it’s a 4/5 for replayability.
Player interaction
I said at the beginning that this is a proxy battle, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t player interaction. In fact, about half of this is game is all player interaction, all “take that”, to slow down the opponent. This is a great game for player interaction, and I’ll give it a 5/5 on that metric.
Component quality
The components are cards, cardboard tiles and tokens, villain character pieces, and the player boards. In the case of Grand Admiral Thrawn, the player board has four removable location tiles which can be flipped to their “occupied” side. I worry slightly that Thrawn’s player board will wear quite quickly, but apart from that the components are good quality. The best components are the two resin character player pieces. Overall, I would score this a 3/5 for component quality.
Conclusion
A fun game that really evokes the Star Wars theme. Definitely pick this one up if you’ve tried any of the other games in the “Villainous” series. Also, if you’re a fan of Star Wars, you will likely enjoy this with the battles between Empire villains and Republic heroes. My overall score for this game is 80%. Enjoy!
