Evil Corp.

• Designer: Jeremy Ducret
• Publisher: La Boite de Jeu
• Players: 2-4
• Age: 12+
• Time: 45 minutes
• Played with review copy provided by Hachette USA

We at Evil Corp. have been working for 666 generations to frighten human villages. When it comes to scaring, we’re the best!

Every year, we hold a team seminar where each of our managers is tasked with recruiting a team of monsters and competing against their colleagues to prove they’re the best at terrorizing humans. Will you have the most terrifying team of the year?

In Evil Corp., the first player — or team when you play 2vs2 — to take control of its second village will be declared the new CEO of the Company, and therefore, winner of the game. To do this, send your troops of monsters to scare the villagers more than your opponent, to the point that their village becomes yours. During your turn, you can perform one action:

• Send a monster (a tile) to one of your two adjacent villages.
• Recruit a new tile at the monster’s job center.
• Activate one of your monster powers.

When you have no more available actions or when you choose to do so, you may pass, which ends the round for you.

Depending on where the monsters are placed, they grant you bonuses:

• Advance on the Terror track according your monster’s strength. Once you reach the bottom of it on your opponent’s side, you take control of the village.
• Gain Magic Force, which you can use to deal direct damage to an opponent’s monster or draw a tile.
• Earn gold coins
• Seize the Power Stone pawn that gives you the advantage in case of a tie situation in the village.

The order in which you choose to perform your actions will tremendously impact your strategy and the outcome of the game. Good Luck, CEO Pretender!

We have mainly played the game in the 3p format, so I will describe that here. There are slightly different rules for the 2p game and the 4p (2 teams of 2) game.  The Evil Corp office board is placed in the center of the table, the Demon tiles are placed on it and a market of 5 Monster tiles is setup (drawn from the red Evil Corp bag).  The three Village boards are placed between the players so that each player has one Village to their left and their right.  The terror marker is placed in the middle of the scale on each board. Players get a bag and places a set of basic monsters in that bag, drawing five and keeping them secret behind their screen.  Monster tiles have a Terror Value in the upper left, a Recruitment value lower right, and powers at the bottom – some which happen upon playing the tile and others that are activated later.

The game is played in rounds, each having two phases (Day Phase and Night Phase), and continues until one player has 2 Victory Tokens.

In the Day phase, players take a turn where they execute one of the four action choices:

• Deploy a Monster – Play a monster from behind your screen onto one of the Village boards adjacent to you; it must be played on “your side” of the village board. If the monster has a deployment power (grey background), you do this as you play the tile.  If you’re the first person to play a red tile to a battlefield space this round, you can loot the village for gold. If you’re the first person to play a Blue tile to a battlefield space, you can take the Power Stone which is a tiebreaker.  As you place the monsters, you will likely need to adjust the Terror Meter for that Village. Blue Monsters played to the Demonic portals allow you to use the power of one of the three Demons on the Evil Corp board.  Port spaces award possible Gold rewards.  However, the Demonic Portals nor the Port spaces affect the Terror level.

• Activate a Monster – Choose an already played monster and use its activatable power. Then flip the monster over for the round.  This will not affect the Terror value of the monster.

• Recruit a Monster – Choose a monster from the display on the central board, and pay for it with gold. There are extra costs for the final 2 monsters in line. Move all remaining monsters down and refill from the bag.
• Pass – you are out of the round

Once a player has taken their action, the next player clockwise takes theirs.  Continue until all players have passed

In the Night phase, you resolve the Village boards.  If the Terror marker is on the opponent’s side, the player will receive all the bonuses from the midpoint to the position of the Terror marker.  This could be steps on the conquest track, magic coins, or possibly outright victory.  If there is a tie, the player who holds the Power Stone wins and moves their conquest token one space.    If you either score victory from the Terror marker placement OR you have moved your conquest marker to the central space on that track, take the Victory Token for that board.  Flip the board to the other side and set it up as if the game was just starting. Check to see if anyone is over (if someone has 2 or more Victory tokens).  

If the game continues, reset all the boards.  All monsters are placed in your discard pile, though you have the option to pay to keep a monster in a Fortification space. Any unplayed monsters are discarded. Flip all the Demons over to their unused side, and refresh the market by discarding the end monster, sliding everything down one and drawing a new one.  Each player then draws 5 new Monsters from their bag to start the next round.

If the game end is triggered, and only one person has 2 Victory tokens, that person wins. If there are multiple players with 2 Victory tokens, sum up the Recuitment costs of all your Monsters and add it to your Magic coin total; the highest total wins.

My thoughts on the game

Evil Corp. is a challenging game that combines worker placement and bag building.  In our games, I’ve seen a number of strategies work well, and I like the fact that the game allows for that.  Some people work on quick strikes, focusing on a single board at times, trying to get a trophy in a single round.  I’ve also seen a long game with measured trashing of tiles, giving up ground in the early rounds but then leading to a nearly invincible force in the end game.

Players have the constant push/pull of fighting on two fronts.  Each turn, you’ll have to assess which board requires your attention.  And based on the state of each board, you might be tempted to place your tile down for gold or for terror points or for the Demon action.  Needless to say, you’ll have a lot to think about on each turn.  While the game does keep you involved at nearly every point, it does limit you to interacting only with your left and right hand opponents – similar to 7Wonders.  Is this a bad thing?  Not necessarily, but it does somewhat bind you to those opponents and makes seating arrangement possibly more important than other games.

Timing can be key in the game.  Early in the round, you are probably racing for gold rewards (via the red token or the port spaces), or the blue tiebreaker token.  Once these are gone, then it’s a cat and mouse game of showing what power you have versus rushing/waiting for the right tile to be available on the market.  Late in the round, the focus often shifts into stalling as players fight to make the final move of the round and therefore have a way to make their plays without any pesky interference or counter moves from their opponents.

There are plenty of surprises in the actions as one would expect from a French game.  You can plan all you want, but don’t be surprised when another tile comes into play and instantly nerfs your strategy by banishing a tile from play or through the surprise activation of a power found on one of the tiles in the queue!  

While you are playing, keep the rulebook handy.  We found that the iconography on the tiles was not great, and we pretty much had to refer to the rulebook for most of the tiles to make sure that we knew what the tiles actually did.  Many of the icons look very similar, and it was a constant thing to have to look up their meanings.   While we were fairly certain we were playing the game correctly, it was a lot of work to do this and really made the gameflow choppy.  As all of my games have involved at least one new player, the rulebook is always being passed around the table. Iconography on the tiles aside, the other components are great.  The tiles are nice and thick, and the individual pieces of art for each of the Monsters is great.  

Evil Corp has a lot of promise, and I do like the idea of constantly needing to look at multiple fronts while playing the game. However, the need for constant rules reference gives the game a disjointed flow for me, and the rapid twists of fortune are a bit more extreme than I prefer.  As a caveat, I’m generally not a fan of games with such a “delightfully French” turn to them; so this might be something that will work well in your own game group…

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

• I love it!
• I like it.
• Neutral. Dale, John P
• Not for me…