3-8 Players
Release Date 2005
Retail Price $24.95

Paranoia is known throughout the geeky RPG-playing world as one of the most fun abstract pen and paper role playing games available. Now Mongoose Publishing has released a card game version of this great RPG called Paranoia: Mandatory Bonus Fun Card Game. Does the card game live up to our expectations? Not quite.

A very fun RPG turned into an “amusing for the first 15 minutes” card game. Most of the fun of the RPG was the randomness and wit that needed to be involved by the players. Trying to cram all that into a cardgame is not easy, and it is impossible when there are so many doubles of all the cards. There are 82 Action cards, but I would be surprised if there were more than 40 unique cards.

The whole idea behind the game is that all the players are on a team that has to perform certain missions. Succeeding at the missions will (most likely, but not always) result in a leap in security clearance and failing will (most likely) result in a drop. Sometimes the results will only affect a few team members so it becomes advantagous for the other team members to try to cause the mission to fail. And along the way there are plenty of plasma cannons, treason, and mutant commie traitors.

Dissecting Paranoia: MBFCG

Setup / First Run — (6 out of 10)
Although the game is fairly simple, the instructions are not set forth in an organized manner so learning to play through the first time can be a little rough. “Dying” isn’t explained well, nor is it differentiated from “losing your last clone” very well and this might cause people not familiar with the original Paranoia a little confusion. The instructions and game setup are littered with little funny quotes that help you get into the mindset of the game but don’t do a lot to help you understand how to play it. Overall though, the first run isn’t too bad. We’ve seen worse.

Innovation — (9 out of 10)
Innovation is where this game really shines. The card game does some things that we’ve not seen anywhere else and which could really save the game from some of it’s other less desirable aspects. The idea of having missions that all the players are on is very unique, but on top of that you might have some players that want the mission to succeed and others that want the mission to fail. And still others that just want to accuse you of treasonous behaviour so you get executed at the end of the mission. Also, most of the action cards have several different ways that they can be played, depending on who you are playing them on.

Fun Factor — (6 out of 10)
This game is fun the first couple of times you play it. The quotes on the cards are moderatly funny and if you can get into the spirit of the game you’ll most likely have fun yelling “Treason!” at one another while trying to shoot each other with a Plasma Cannon. The thing you’ll notice first when playing it is that 82 Action cards isn’t enough (especially when playing with 8 players) and that those action cards are not all unique so it is very possible to end up with two of the same card in your hand. The other bad portion is that if you end up with a hand that only inflicts wounds and doesn’t increase treason and the mission deals with treason then you are pretty much screwed for the duration of the mission. You can still attack the other players, but doing so increases your treason which will most likely get you executed at the end of the mission.

Game Art / Aesthetics (4 out of 10)
This is where it gets pretty bad. The faces of all the Action and Mission cards are all black and white and it looks like most of the art in the entire package was just stolen from other Paranoia materials. The manual is entirely b&w with the exception of the cover. Not that being in black and white is a bad thing, but if they are going to cut costs we would at least expect to get the game at a decent price. They did include little cardboard chips to keep track of your wounds, treason and clones. Keeping track of that on paper would have been tedious. The titles of the Mission and Action cards are also mildly humorous.

Long-term playability — (3 out of 10)
With only 22 mission cards and 82 action cards (and only about half of those are unique) this game will be on your shelf in no time. There just isn’t a lot of replay value here unless you are just a hardcore Paranoia fanatic. Most of the success of the RPG was the wit and randomness that were required to live until mission debriefing. This version of the game has a definite cap on that requirement. It does come with a few blank cards for you to make your own missions and actions, but that isn’t going to extend the game very far. I would say that there needs to be about twice as many Action and Mission cards, but it makes sense why they didn’t include that many: there is only so much you can do with inflicting treason and wounds (or preventing them from being inflicted)…so extra cards would really just be re-worded dups.

Summary — (5 out of 10)
Mongoose has taken a hugely abstract game and shoehorned it into a well-defined card game. Unfortunately, it doesn’t fit well at all and fixing a few of the aspects listed above wouldn’t help it either. If you are a hardcore fan of Paranoia then you should probably get this game, just for the sake of your collection. Everyone else should probably stay away. The game isn’t mandatory, which is good because it also isn’t particularly fun. If the “stab your buddy” theme sounds fun we would recommend trying Munchkin or Dork Tower instead. They are both cheaper and you’ll get a lot more playtime out of them than Paranoia: MBFCG.

Tags: Card games · Reviews