My gaming group has been playing Power Rangers: Heroes of the Grid for about eighteen months. There are five of us — we meet every other Saturday, we’ve been playing together for years, and Heroes of the Grid became our go-to cooperative game after we finished our previous campaign. We’ve played through the base game multiple times, we know the villain decks well, and we’d reached the point where the base game wasn’t challenging us the way it had when we first started.
Villain Pack #1 fixed that. We’ve been playing with it for four months and we’re still finding new challenges in the four villains it introduces. Master Vile nearly ended our campaign twice. That’s the level of challenge we’d been looking for.
The Base Game Familiarity Problem
The specific issue with cooperative board games after extended play is that familiarity reduces challenge. When you know the villain decks well enough to anticipate what’s coming, the game becomes a matter of executing a known strategy rather than adapting to genuine uncertainty. That’s still enjoyable, but it’s a different kind of enjoyment — competent execution rather than genuine problem-solving under pressure.
We’d been at that point with the Heroes of the Grid base game for about three months. We were winning more consistently than we had at the start, which sounds like progress but actually meant the game was less engaging. We needed new villains with new mechanics that we didn’t know how to counter yet.
Why Villain Pack #1 Specifically
The Power Rangers: Heroes of the Grid Villain Pack #1 introduces four villains: Commander Crayfish, Polluticorn, Rito Revolto, and Master Vile. Each comes with a large-scale miniature, a unique deployment card, and a specialised enemy deck. The specialised enemy decks are the key feature — each villain has mechanics that are specific to them, which means you can’t apply the strategies you’ve developed for the base game villains and expect them to work.
The villain selection was the reason I chose Pack #1 over the other expansion options. Commander Crayfish, Polluticorn, Rito Revolto, and Master Vile are all iconic villains from the original Mighty Morphin Power Rangers series — the ones that fans of the show will recognise immediately. For a group that grew up with the show, fighting these specific villains has a nostalgic dimension that adds to the experience beyond the gameplay mechanics.
Master Vile in particular was the villain I was most interested in. He’s the most powerful villain in the original series — the one who actually succeeded in de-aging the Rangers and nearly destroyed them — and his enemy deck reflects that. He’s the hardest fight in the expansion and the one that’s required the most strategic adaptation from our group.
I found it in the Board Games and Games collections, and also in the broader Toys & Games range. It arrived three days after ordering.
First Session with the New Villains
We introduced Commander Crayfish in our first session with the expansion. We lost. Not narrowly — we lost decisively, in a way that made it clear our base game strategies weren’t going to work. Commander Crayfish has mechanics that punish the coordination strategies we’d been using, which meant we had to rethink our approach from scratch.
We spent the next twenty minutes after the session discussing what had gone wrong and what we’d do differently. That’s the conversation that cooperative board games are supposed to generate — genuine strategic analysis rather than a post-mortem of a predictable outcome. We hadn’t had that conversation after a Heroes of the Grid session in months.
We beat Commander Crayfish in the second session. Polluticorn took three sessions. Rito Revolto took two. Master Vile has beaten us twice and we haven’t beaten him yet. We’re still working on it.
Four Months On — The Honest Verdict
Four months of playing with the expansion. Here’s the honest report:
- Game night is engaging again. The familiarity problem that had been making the base game feel predictable is gone. The new villains have mechanics we’re still learning to counter, which means every session involves genuine uncertainty and genuine problem-solving.
- The miniatures are excellent quality. Large-scale, detailed sculpts that look impressive on the table. The miniatures are unpainted, which is standard for this type of game, but the detail is good enough that they look great even unpainted.
- Each villain feels genuinely different. The specialised enemy decks mean that each villain requires a different strategic approach. We can’t use the same team composition and strategy for all four — we have to adapt, which is exactly what we wanted.
- Master Vile is genuinely hard. Two losses, no wins. We’re not frustrated — we’re motivated. The difficulty is calibrated correctly for a group that has mastered the base game.
- The expansion has extended the game’s lifespan significantly. We were close to moving on from Heroes of the Grid before we added the expansion. Four months later, we’re still playing it and still engaged. That’s the value of a well-designed expansion.
The Difference It’s Made
Game night is good again. That’s the honest summary. We were close to retiring Heroes of the Grid and moving on to something new. Villain Pack #1 gave the game a second life — four new villains with new mechanics that we’re still learning to counter, and a Master Vile fight that we haven’t won yet and that we’re genuinely motivated to beat. That’s what a good expansion does.
If your Heroes of the Grid group has mastered the base game and is finding it too predictable, the Power Rangers: Heroes of the Grid Villain Pack #1 is the expansion that will challenge you again. Browse the full Board Games and Games collections for more options.
Start with Commander Crayfish. Expect to lose the first session. Have the strategic conversation afterwards.
Then work your way up to Master Vile. Good luck. You’ll need it.
Joel Hartley is a software developer and tabletop gaming enthusiast based in Leeds. He has been playing board games with the same group for six years, has a particular fondness for cooperative games, and has not yet beaten Master Vile but remains optimistic.
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