I thought I'd review the new boxed card game from White Wolf, Mwahahaha!

Quick overview

In Mwahahaha!, 2-5 players take the role of one of 10 evil scientists bent on world domination. Players attempt to take over the world by building a doomsday device and threatening the world with a new ice age, man-eating plants, or a good ole fashioned bomb. The first player to successfully scare the world into submission is the winner.

Along the way, players can extort lesser targets (cities, states, and countries) for more raw materials to add to their stockpiles. Players can also hamper their rivals either directly by employing oh-so-disposable minions to raid lairs or empire cards or indirectly by playing Dirty Trick cards.

Presentation

The game parts are all well-made, with thick card stock for the characters, doomsday devices, and tokens. Illustrations and flavor text are humorous and greatly enhance the silly mood of the game. The sloganeering on the Empire cards alone is worth the price of admission.

My only real complaint with the presentation is that the Dirty Trick cards require more reading than is necessary. This could have been mitigated by seperating the game effects from the flavor text. The light-bulb symbol on the Eureka counters (one of the four raw materials in the game) is hard to make out on the yellow background, but this does not affect gameplay.

There isn't anything included in the box to help store the cards, counters, and dice, so players will likely want to pick up something to address this.

Gameplay

Games tend to live or die by their gameplay, and Mwahahaha! is no exception. Fortunately, the game lives with a fun context and fastpaced gameplay that is still deep enough to enjoy with repeated play sessions.

The amount of Raw Material cards is limited by the number of players (25 per player). These cards are the primary means of generating materials to build a villain's destructive empire. This encourages players to get on about taking over the world as well as use his/her special power. Special powers allow a villain to gain either 3 points of the resource he is weakest in or a choice of 2 points in one of the two resources he is weakest in.

I've found that five player games tend to run through the Minion cards rather quickly, but reshuffling the discarded minions fixes this problem. It would have been nice to include a few more minions, considering their expendibility, but it's not a huge issue.

Rules

The rulebook is a bit long-winded and seems to include some extraeneous information. It is best to learn by starting a game and looking up items as they arise in the game. The dice rolling mechanic of comparing the number of successes in a Risk-esque rolloff works well as is easy to pickup.

Value

Considering the high quality of the items included in the game, $35 is a perfectly reasonable price. As mentioned previously, Mwahahaha! has a lot of replay value, particularly if your gaming group can get into the villianous setting.

Final remarks

I rate Mwahahaha! as a fine beer and pretzels game. That is not intended to slight the game at all. In fact, I find it easier to enjoy games that can be played within an hour and a half or so. I enjoy Descent as much as anyone, but it can be awfully tricky to find the 4-5 hours it takes to play a game.

Not only is the game simple enough to learn in a half hour, it is deep enough to hold the interest of a veteran gamer through multiple sessions. I recommend Mwahahaha! for everything from fun with the family to a great warmup to role playing sessions.