Being one of the most popular franchises on the entire planet for the last 40 years, Star Wars has managed to expand into just about every medium imaginable. Movies, TV shows, video games, soundtrack CDs, audiobooks, novels, and comics based on Star Wars can be found just about anywhere, and board games are no exception. Though they haven't all been great, Star Wars has had a plethora of board game adaptations over the years, ranging from original games like Escape From The Death Star, to licensed versions of Monopoly and Trivial Pursuit. But one recent release towers over the rest: Star Wars Villainous.
Released just a few months ago, Star Wars Villainous is the latest version of the Villainous board game series. Debuting as Disney Villainous in 2018, this series sees players assume the roles of iconic villains from across different franchises, and try to out-evil one another in an attempt to achieve their specific objective. Star Wars Villainous, obviously, brings the series to a Galaxy Far Far Away, giving players the opportunity to play as five iconic Star Wars villains, from Darth Vader, to Kylo Ren, to Asajj Ventress. While the initial roster is impressive, each coming with their own incredibly fleshed-out, unique character objectives and abilities, there's always room for more.
Characters That Should Be Added To Star Wars Villainous
Much like the Marvel and Disney versions of the game, Star Wars Villainous could receive new characters in the form of expansion packs. These new additions would come with their own Villain Board, filled with character-specific locations and objectives, their own set of Villain and Fate Cards, which include a range of character-specific allies, vehicles, and heroes, and their own character marker, stylized like the rest of the set to look like the character's respective weapon.
One of the most glaring exceptions in the base Star Wars Villainous set is Count Dooku. Though he appears in both General Grievous and Asajj Ventress' cards, Dooku himself isn't in the game. For an objective, Dooku's could be to capture Chancellor Palpatine and bring him to the Invisible Hand ship, which follows suit with other characters' objectives such as Darth Vader, who needs to bring Luke Skywalker and the Emperor to the Throne Room to win the game.
Another obvious omission from the base game is Darth Maul, one of the most popular villains in the entire franchise. Maul has plenty of in-universe objectives to draw inspiration from, with just a few examples including taking the throne of Mandalore, setting up the Crimson Dawn criminal organization, or even building his new mechanical body on Dathomir.
While the mainline Star Wars series, Clone Wars, and The Mandalorian have all received recognition in Star Wars Villainous, the animated show Star Wars Rebels hasn't. The most obvious pull from Rebels would be the Grand Inquisitor, appearing in both the show and Obi-Wan Kenobi. A neat objective for the Grand Inquisitor would be to find a certain number of Jedi and defeat them, which could be done by sifting through his Fate deck, similarly to Grievous' objective of killing Jedi to earn lightsabers.
A more out-there villain that could be included in future Star Wars Villainous expansions would be Jabba The Hutt. Having Jabba in the game would be a fun way of bringing in other iconic characters like Boba Fett and IG-88, as Jabba's objective could be to gather a team of bounty hunters, and send them after Han Solo.
One final great addition the Star Wars Villainous roster would be Grand Admiral Thrawn. The game would have two depictions to choose from, either the canonical Thrawn seen in Rebels, or the semi-canonical version of Thrawn from the novels and Legends continuity. For the Rebels version, Thrawn's objective could be to find all the members of Phoenix Squadron and defeat them, and for the post-Return of the Jedi version, his objective could be forming the Imperial Remnant.