((Note I wrote this in the general forum and thought I should place it here instead))

We played this last night and had a pretty good time with it. Here are some brief impressions:

(1) Components: 9/10
The game is heavy and full of stuff. Each player gets a mad scientist that has a board with a hole to put your doomsday device. The boards are heavy cardstock and have some really nice pictures on them. The look is very cartoonish and whimsical. Quotes from the mad scientists are especially funny.

There area a ton of cards which comprise your front companies (empires), minions, resources, and dirty tricks. In general the cards are well done; the possible exception being the dirty tricks which could have used some cleaning up and indications on what they are without reading the solid block of text.

Other components include a number of dooms day devices which are the same heavy cardstock and fit into each mad scientists sheet. There is also a quick reference guide which covers most situations that arise.

Finally there are hundreds of small tokens that represent your resources that you collect throughout the game.

My only real complaints on the components of the game, are that the Eureka resource can be hard to tell and that there is no plastic insert in the box to put things back into when you are done.

(2) Rules: 5/10
For a light game, there is a 40 page rulebook... This is both a positive and a negative. On the one side, the rules are very comprehensive and well written. They seem to have covered most of the issues that would come up and there is even a FAQ included. There are numerous examples and illustrations that assist you.

The down side is that there are 40 pages of rules. It took 30-40 minutes to get up to speed on a game that takes only a few minutes to explain. While the rules are an amusing read, I prefer them much more concise.

Still, they do explain how to play, and give you enough material to guide you along. Just don't expect to find stuff you need quickly.

(3) Gameplay: 7/10
Overall, this is a fun game that has you in a bitter rivalry with your mad brethren. There are three phases to the game, creation, rivalry, and domination.

In the creation phase you collect resources, trade, purchase companies or minions, and allocate resources to your doomsday device. While you should do this phase in turn order, after a bit of playing we just all did it at the same time until the resource cards ran out. Which underscores one of the interesting traits of the game, you need to purchase resources and once the deck is gone, the only way you can get them is to issue threats against various places in the domination phase.
Minions are your defense and offense and companies enhance your base, allowing you to collect more resources per turn.

In the Rivalry phase you can raid your opponents base, or companies. Your minions, of course, do your bidding for you by attacking or defending. The turn order in this phase is even more important as the game does not take kindly to minions and their mortality rate is quite high. However, they are cheap enough to be expendable. This was the most fun portion of the game as we prodded each other for most of the game.

Finally you have the domination phase. Here, if you have the resources, you can issue threats against cities, states, countries, and to win the game, the world. Each level requires more resources and gets progressively harder. While I expected this to be a really fun portion of the game, I was a bit let down as it's mostly another resource phase. There's no real benefit of threatening to send an asteroid against Chicago, other than to get a few more widgets for your device. I wanted to fell like I was smashing cities and in that regard it failed.

If you perform suitably evil actions you can get bonus dice, and if you act less than evil, you can loose dice. This mechanic is important throughout the game and can really affect the end results.

(4) Overall: 7/10
In the end, it's a fun game. The setting is pretty good, the components all work to enhance the central theme. There's enough funny bits, without going overboard, and everyone that played had a laugh or two throughout the game.

There is some decent strategy, even if a lot of luck revolves around your resource draws, and die rolls. Pure Eurogamers will not like this all that much. However, for those of us that can handle a bit of wacky randomness, it's ok. There are enough dice rolled that averages play heavily enough to count on.

So I like it. It's not the best game I have played, but it is fun and enjoyable which is what I expected from it. When I want serious, I'll play T&E or something like that. For fun, this game will likely get a dust off now and again.

you mention dice, but what portion of the game do they partake in, I have friends who dislike heavy dice use, and some that love dice in game. Could you shed some light on it, I have seen it in my FLGS the other day but am hesitant as to how it plays.

Dice are rolled whenever you wish to attack (and defend); Players may
1) use evil Minions to attack (steal or destroy) their opponent's collected recources - once each turn.
2) to use Doomsday Devices against Cities, States, Countries and, finally, The World (if enough resources have been collected) - once each turn.

A number of dice are rolled by attacker and defender and then each player ranks their dice from highest to lowest (So a dice roll of 4, 2, 5, 1, 3, 5 would give a ranked result of 5, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1), as in Yspahan.
Attacker and defender now compare their respective top scoring dice, to determine whether their attack (or defence) was successful. Then the second-highest dice, then third, and so on.

If the following dice were rolled:
Attacker: 3, 4, 6, 2, 4
Defender: 6, 2, 4

Each player would rank their dice rolls and they would be compared against each other;

6 = 6
4 = 4
4 > 2
3
2

The first two results cancel out the opponents dice roll (6 = 6 and 4 = 4.
4 is greater than 2; which gives a success to the attacker.
There is no dice on the defender's side to compare with the 3 roll, so the 3 roll is compared against the default roll 2; so another success for the attacker.
Comparing the final attacker dice roll of 2 against the default dice roll cancels out again.
On this dice roll the attacker would win by two successes.

Quite often attacker and defender will have to roll different numbers of dice to each other (For example; The attacker may have to roll seven dice and the defender only five dice). In this case the two dice belonging to the attacker, which have no equivalent on the the defender's side, are compared against a default result of 2.

Their are various modifiers in the game allowing more/less to be rolled; such as successfully attacking with your Doomsday Device = +1 dice, and some cards which allow players to carry out Dirty Tricks on their opponents.

Yes, to add... if your friends are die hard Eurogamers, they will not like this all that much.

The dice play heavily into what happens, even if there are enough rolled that the law of averages tends to work out in most games. Add to that, the randomness of the resource draws, dirty tricks, minions, and empires adds a lot of luck to the game.

Still, as I mentioned, if you can put up with that, and approach it from the perspective of a wacky fun take over the world thing it's very good.