Overview
At a glance
Is this game right for my group?
ABG editorial scores on a 1–5 scale.
Harder to teach
High replayability
Highly interactive
Scales well
Deep strategy
How it plays
How does it play?
You're a master villain of a sinister secret society with a plan to take over the world! Send your minions around the globe to execute nefarious plots such as marketing evil soda, hijacking a nuclear submarine, building a time portal, or ruining a beloved movie property.
Core mechanisms
Key systems that shape the decisions players make.
Read the full game description
You're a master villain of a sinister secret society with a plan to take over the world! Send your minions around the globe to execute nefarious plots such as marketing evil soda, hijacking a nuclear submarine, building a time portal, or ruining a beloved movie property. Each turn you’ll send your minions to exotic locales such as London, Cairo, Machu Picchu, or Antarctica to gather the resources you need to carry out your plans: Finance, Occult, Science, and of course Unobtainium. Watch out for your opponents—they’re trying to pull off their own schemes. Each sinister plot you execute is but one small part of your secret Ultimate Scheme! A game turn consists of five steps: draw new schemes, move minions (perform twice), collect resources (perform twice), execute schemes, and the end step. Players perform each step in play order, so if Player 1 collects the resources in Cairo, Player 2 can't get Cairo's resources that turn. During the course of the turn, players move their minions to sites and collect the resources each site provides. Then they pay resources to execute schemes held in their hand, and earn progress points toward victory by doing so. To execute a scheme, a player must meet the scheme resource cost, and have a minion located in the scheme's site (for example, to subvert the U.N., a player must have a minion in New York). Action cards give players special advantages in moving minions, collecting resources, gaining new minions, or destroying enemy minions. The "first player" rotates each turn. Each player begins the game with a secret "Ultimate Scheme" card such as Ruin Christmas or Destroy Rock 'n' Roll. The Ultimate Scheme card dictates how many progress points the player needs to win, and what *kind* of schemes he or she needs to pull off. The game ends at the end of the turn in which the first player to complete his or her Ultimate Scheme does so. If multiple players finish their Ultimate Scheme on the same turn, various tiebreakers determine victory -- but the easiest way to win is to be the first villain to pull off your grand plan.