Shortly after the release of this game, our friendly local reseller made an appearance at a CABS session with several copies for sale. After watching a game in progress, I realized I had no choice but to purchase this game on the spot. It was too perfect for my gaming tastes and those of the people I tend to game with.

Boiled down to its simplest elements, Mwahahaha! is a resource-gathering game with a lot of player conflict. A LOT. Each player assumes the role of a mad scientist and his/her corresponding lair, selects a doomsday device, and builds an empire that will produce the resources he needs to power his device and hold the world hostage. Conflict resolution takes the form of rolling a crapload of dice against other mad scientists or against the people you are threatening with your doomsday device.

Before I go into detail about the gameplay, I have to begin with a comment on the components. There are a BUNCH of them. The size of the box is roughly the same as Race for the Galaxy, but whereas the Race box comes with 100ish cards, a small pile of chits, some instruction cards and a lot of wasted space, this box is packed from top to bottom, even after punching out all the cardboard bits. The very heft of this box took me by surprise when I picked it up the first time, as I imagine will happen with nearly everybody. With the thick and colorful boards, the loads and loads of cards, the piles of cardboard bits, and the 20 transluscent green dice, it is an Ameritrasher's dream come true. The only thing missing is a collection of sculpted miniatures for the characters.

The game begins when each person selects, at will or at random, from ten different mad scientists. There is a wide variety of colorful characters, including a witch doctor, a stuffy Brit robot, a fuedal Japanese warlord, and Hitler's brain in a giant gorilla. The characters are represented by large thick cards, which contain a picture of the character, resource stats, a special power, and flavor text including a catch phrase and a description of their evil lair (flying aircraft carrier, undersea base, orbital station, etc). To the left is a circular hole large enough to hold one's doomsday device. Players draw three of these twenty circular devices and then select the one they want to keep. They vary from giant lasers to zombies to triggering a supernova, and everything in between.

Each character has stats that represent the amount of resources they are allowed to collect by cashing in Raw Material cards. The doomsday devices have their own set of stats, representing the amount of resources you need to collect in order to threaten on four levels, and the number of dice you roll versus the world to see if they give in to your demands. There's a general correlation between cost and yield; a device requiring only a few resources will not have much of an advantage in the number of dice rolled, while others requiring a lot of resources can have nearly double the amount of dice to roll, and yield more resources for victory. So deciding whether you want to aim high or low, and knowing what kind of resources you can produce easily, factor into your decision of which device to keep.

A turn is divided into three distinct phases. The Creation Phase begins with each player drawing a new Dirty trick card (more on this later) and new Raw Material cards in four different resource types: Energy, Structure, Money and Eureka. There are also Wild cards that can be used to produce any resource, and Betrayed! cards which I will detail later. The players can cash in these cards for Raw Materials in varying amounts, up to the limits imposed by their lair. Each mad scientist has a resource which he cannot produce at all, so there is always a need to find other ways to get the materials you need. For starters, their special power allows them to take a resource (often the one with a limit of 0 or 1) rather than take 2 of the cards they would draw. Players may cash in as many or as few cards as they wish, but with a hand limit of only five cards, any cards you keep will impact your draw on the next turn. Resources are represented by cardboard counters added to the stockpile on your character card.

There are a number of uses for the resources generated by these cards. You can purchase Minion cards that serve as your attack and defense forces during the Rivalry Phase. You can purchase Empire cards that increase the limits on production from Raw Material cards. This is another method of offsetting low or no production from your lair's base stats. You can also dedicate resources to your doomsday device, removing them from the stockpile and making them unavailable to purchase other items. Having resources out of your stockpile protects them a little better from other players' attacks, but the player with the largest stockpile has initiative on the next turn.

Players can also trade during the Creation Phase. In this game, you are free, even encouraged, to trade everything but the kitchen sink. Players can trade any cards of any type, resources, negotiate truces in exchange for goods, just about anything the two parties agree on, except your mad scientist and doomsday device. Trading is another good way to get resources you are lacking, especially when commodities grow scarce (more on this later). But beware! Someone can offer to trade Raw Material cards with you, but instead of the Structure card he promised you, you get... BETRAYED! He gets the card you offered him, and you get the shaft. This is only one example of how play can get downright brutal over the course of a game.

Once players are satisfied with the state of their evil empire, they move on to the Rivalry Phase. Players take it in turn to send their Minions out to attack another player's Empire cards or lair. Minions have ratings in each of the four resource types, which indicate what kind of Empire cards they can raid, or what kind of resources they can raid from a lair, and how many dice they can contribute to the battle. Opponents can use their own Minions to block if they are rated in the same resource type, and add one to two dice for "base security". Victorious raiders can take or destroy the Empire card, or take resources from the lair they attacked. Both sides have an opportunity to kill off Minions based on the success of the dice roll.

Lastly, there is the Domination Phase. Each player has an opportunity, if they have enough dedicated resources, to threaten with their doomsday device. As mentioned before, a player can threaten on any of four levels: city, state, country, world, but do not have to do so in succession. They roll dice against "the world" (represented by another player) and if they succeed, they get free resources in their stockpile. There are also various ways that players can earn counters that add to or subtract from the dice rolled in these threats. First player to successfully threaten the world (Level 4), dominates and wins the game.

Dirty Trick cards are the X factor in the game, any player can play them at basically any time (some can only be used in certain phases), and they have any number of effects that help the player or stab an opponent in the back.

Resolving dice rolls is more difficult to explain than it is to understand. Essentially, players compare their results from highest to lowest, not unlike Risk. A higher result is a success for the corresponding player, same result is a wash. When one side has more dice than the other, a result of 3 or higher is a success. The number of successes in dice rolls determines a lot of different things: resources taken from a lair raid, hit points applied to Minions, the success or failure of a threat in Domination Phase, etc.

One of the key aspects of this game is the limited assets available during the course of the game. Minion cards are recycled once you exhaust their pile, but once the other cards run out, that's it. In most games, you are unlikely to exhaust the pile of Empire cards or Dirty Trick cards. But Raw Material cards are scarce, and scale based on the number of players. Once those run out, players can no longer produce any resources. If they don't have enough to issue a world threat, they have to beg, borrow and steal. This is where things get really nasty. Players will blow up their Empire cards just to get a couple extra resources, raid each other crazy for that last bit of Structure they need, give away the farm for a couple extra Energy, make lower-level threats over and over again, anything to get the last few chips they need to complete their weapon. Even a game that has had a low level of conclict in early turns can turn very quickly at this point.

Some people might think this game is very luck-heavy, with all the card piles and dice rolls involved in managing the game. It can get streaky at times, and sometimes the dice just hate you, but in a general sense, I think the player is given a lot of options and a lot of ways to mitigate the chance factor. It also has the potential for some kingmaking/breaking, but in my opinion no more so than most games with a negotiation mechanic.

I really like the design and thematic material in the game. All of the components are bright and colorful, and different enough in color and layout that it is not at all difficult to distinguish the different types of cards. There could have been more flavor text in some spots, but most of what was included is a laugh riot. The slogans on the Empire cards are almost worth the purchase price of the game by themselves.

One issue I have is with the text on some of the cards. Some Minion cards have flavor text. Some have special powers. Some have flavor text AND special powers. They are all jumbled together in the same space. This can create a low level of confusion, and it slows down the game as players (especially the inexperienced) pause to read each card, not just to find out what they do, but even if they do anything. That, in my opinion, is an unnecessary hindrance. The Dirty Trick cards are even worse. By contrast, the Raw Material cards are very utilitarian, giving only the type and amount of resource with a brief textual description. Empire cards have a stylized name at the top and a (hilarious) slogan, and announce the type and amount of resource produced in large, clear letters. Looking at the cards, one would almost think they were laid out by two different designers.

Another minor point of annoyance, most resource types that are not rated on a Minion card are gracefully grayed out. But Structure is presented in light gray, and the corresponding icon on an unrated card also appears light gray. It makes it difficult to see at a glance whether or not the character is rated in that resource. The other types are bright and contrasted, and present no such difficulty.

A note about the rulebook: don't be intimidated. The rulebook is about twice as long as it needed to be (kind of like this review ) It has a lot of examples, and a lot of unnecessary text. There are entire paragraphs devoted to ways in which one might imagine how something that seems thematically wrong might fit if you just think outside the box, or suggesting ways to immerse yourself into certain aspects of the game. I don't need to be told how to role-play a theme. I just need to be told how to play the game. One or two rounds of play with one or more experienced players will teach you everything you need to know.

Most importantly, this game is just plain fun. If you aren't really turned on by theme, or if you are averse to dicefests, this game may not be for you. But if you game with a group that likes to immerse themselves in a game wholesale, making grand speeches about how they will unleash a horde of zombies on Utah as part of their master plan, and rubbing their hands with glee as they steal your much-needed Energy Empire card, only to blow it up in spite, then shame on you if you don't already own this game.

(8/10)