An overview of mice and mystics
An overview of mice and mystics
Playing with mice and mysticism is like opening a storybook and jumping straight. Our review Mice and mystics should be treated in the same way. No further ...
Life in the walls
Hide things that are not beautiful,
Nobody knows that
except mice.
The king was usurped by the vile witch Vanestra in a coup. The prince and those still loyal to the king were imprisoned and imprisoned in the dungeons of his castle.
How will they escape and regain their kingdom?
By changing in the mouse ...?
The evil witch Vanestra stupidly locked up all the remaining faithful in prison, including the court wizard Maginos. To escape from prison and their only chance to stop Vanestro, Maginos turns the prince and the remaining loyal ones into mice to escape from prison. From there, like mice, you will embark on an epic / wonderful quest to restore the kingdom to the place that belongs to it.
Now that we’re comfortable and we’ve started the story, let’s dive into our review of Mice and Mystics.
A brief overview of mice and mystics
Mice and mystics are based on the stories of cooperatives , role-playing , prison-spider adventure board game where, as you might guess, you play like mice in a mystical world.
The designers made the whole game feel like a bedtime story for the kids. The thematic elements of the game revolve around this concept. The timeline between games is the pages of the story, and before and after each mission you will actually read from a story book that contains all the fun stories of the world and the goals of each mission.
It’s like playing Brian Jacques Redwall’s novel as a board game and it’s incredibly fun.
- ADVENTURE GAME WITH STORIES: In Mice & Mystics players progress ...
- COOPERATION STRATEGY: Players work together to solve ...
- FUN FOR FAMILY GAMES NIGHT: Mice & Mystics is the perfect game for ...
Variations and extensions
Lost chapters
The story continues! The lost chapters include three additional missions that you can play in the world of mice and mystics. Plaid Hat games offer some extra goodies. You can wait and try to find the official hard copies, but Plaid Hat Games gave them free access to the web. You don’t necessarily need them to complete the story, but they’re a quick fun addition, especially if you’ve completed the main campaign and need a cheese fix for the afternoon.
Cat's cradle:
Listen closely: you hear a terrifying melody softly emanating from a mysterious source somewhere in the castle. Join our heroes with your mouse as they explore spooky music, and at the same time, Crumbles will have no problem.
- Download the Cat's Cradle extension here .
The spirit of the city of Andon:
Did you catch this display out of the corner of your eye? Blink and no more! Either I get mad or the castle has a real spirit! Between the presence of attacking pirates in the castle and these potential poltergeists, another adventure awaits Collin and his companions!
- Download Ghost of Castle Andon Expansion here .
Important portals:
"King, you say?" Zure asked, his ears ringing. "I must see this King Collin at once." Mr. Redfern's mustache hung down and he said, “It's already clean in Oakhaven! A dangerous journey at best. "Zure replied, 'The danger is approaching, carried by the dark wind.'
- This extension requires playing the Downwood Tales extension.
- Download the Importance Portals extension here .
Heart of Glorma
Heart of Glorm is the first major extension of mice and mysticism. It catches up immediately after the events in the base game and adds a ton of new content that will go adventurous. Along with a brand new campaign, you’ll get more monsters to fight and a brand new Nero hero, an alchemical mystic.
If you were dying for more muscular adventures after completing the original campaign, this will be your next stop.
- THIS IS AN EXTENSION TO THE MICE & MYSTICS: This is ...
- ADVENTURE STORY GAME: A new adventure takes your group ...
- COOPERATION STRATEGY: Players work together to ward off evil ...
Downwood Tales
- Nominated for Best Board Game for Best Board Games Golden Geek 2014
Downwood Tales is labeled as a big box and it gives . The box is the same size as the basic game and is equipped with goodies to expand the world of mice and mystics. The only downside to all of this is that the Plaid Hat has stuck so many goodies in the box that it suffers from storage space and a lack of proper packaging. Some of the minis come in advance (they can be easily repaired).
Downwood Tales presents a brand new campaign with a multitude of new enemies and 3 new game characters. These are a lot of stories you can get lost in. If you want to work with all these new enemies and characters, you will get minis and maps to understand the whole thing.
My personal favorite thing in this box is Ditty Shy. That's a shy bard ... she's beautiful.
- THIS IS AN EXTENSION TO THE MICE & MYSTICS: This is ...
- A DESERT GAME FROM A STORY: An old oak tree in which Barksburg ...
- COOPERATION STRATEGY: Players participate in progress ...
Unpacking mice and mystics
Plaid Hat games put together an amazing game with Mice and Mystics. All pieces of the board are very clean and thick cardboard, which is necessary when moving the tiles during the game. The rule books and story books are quality, the artwork is intermediate and the miniatures look very cool. All the monsters are immediately recognizable on the board and come unpainted.
The unpainted part can be pro or con, depending on whether you like to paint Miniature or not, but if you choose not to, you’ll still be able to quickly figure out who’s who on the board. All enemy miniatures are thematically related, giving a unique experience. You won’t find a hydra or chimera in the box, but you’ll find cockroaches, spiders, and the scary centipede Skitter Clack.
If you decide to paint a mini, there is a very nice tutorial on the Plaid Hat website on how to do it.
How to play mice and mystics
Our review of mice and mystics is supposed to help you get started, not give away spoilers. The game is played with the help of episodes in which the story slowly unfolds around the characters. If you’re a monster, you can potentially play any mission, but that would completely ruin the story. Don't do this.
Timer Track & Monster Surges
There is no time to sit in Mice and Mystics. The entire game has a built-in timer that counts down the number of revolutions until the next group of monsters is eliminated. You will see the dial of the clock at the top of the recording book. If there are no minions on board and the last mouse on the initiative route ends, set the cheese counter to the clock.
When the dial is completely full, a monster is triggered and new monsters arrive on the board. This mechanism prevents players from sitting and searching until they are loaded with equipment and completely healed.
Pages in stories
You will see a page tracker on the left side of the storyboard. According to the theme of the storybook, the timer is tracked while playing using the “page” of the story. When the game starts, you start on page 1 and after each monster increase, the page counter increases by one.
If you get to the end page without meeting the goals of the mission, that’s it. Another fun bonus is that every time you go by, the monsters you encounter become stronger or there will simply be many more.
Dice
There are many different symbols at stake and not all are used in every plant. Use numbers to mark the movement of your characters, and in combat, each symbol is used for a different action.
Bow: Hit for longer attacks.
Shield: Attack blocks.
Sword: A goal for close combat.
Sword and Shield : Block or hit for close combat.
Cheese: Did you get some cheese?
You will also notice an asterisk / star on some sides of the cube. They are used for special abilities such as equipment. If you have a particularly wonderful weapon, they may give you bonus hits if you spin the sword with the star symbol.
SIR!
Let's talk about cheese here for a minute. Why would I need cheese? Well, you play like mice, so ...
Cheese is the equivalent of mana in this game. They will promote special abilities and magic attacks. Each mouse starts with a special ability based on its class. It can help with healing, seizures, searching, or any other number of things, but they will all be helpful.
The process
Players can perform a movement action in each move and 1 of these:
Scurry: extra movement.
Search: roll the dice and if the star / star symbol is twisted, draw a map.
Combat: Perform a remote attack or attack nearby.
Restore: Try to remove the stunned or entangled state.
Explore: move from one section of the board to the next.
Movement
Each mouse has a different speed on its character card. A small footprint will show the number, their base speed. At each turn, they will spin 1 cube and add a number (ignoring all other symbols on the cube) to their base speed. I actually like this mechanic more than if it was just moving the dice. It adds tension and keeps the game going.
The spaces are not set in the usual grid shapes. All the spaces on the map tiles are randomly shaped stones. This is just another example of the themed spirit that Plaid Hat Games stuck in the game. Each map tile is two-sided. After all, you are a mouse and mice can reach places that human eyes cannot see. Each tile has a ground floor above and below . While traveling and exploring the castle, you will sometimes need to move above and below ground to progress. This is a pretty ingenious way to follow the board on two levels.
During the journey like a mouse, new dangers will arise that the average human person will not notice. This is again all about the wonderful theme of the mouse. In the first mission you will have to cross some pipes and drain. Simply letting people become a torrential river that threatens to take your poor mice off the board. If that happens, the villains will catch them.
initiative
Each time new monsters arrive in the mail, you will need to determine the order of initiatives. All players and enemies have an initiative card, which you place to the right of the record book. Each time a story adds new monsters to the board, take all the initiative cards, shuffle them, and line them up. This determines the order of turning for combat and movement.
Some bosses have multiple initiative cards that allow them to go multiple times in a circle. The bosses are supposed to be stronger and faster after all.
Boss fights
Most of the monsters you will fight are pretty standard. You will fight them and if you hit, they will die. Bosses are stronger than your average beast. The centipede usually has a version that you can encounter in any mission, and then there is another version of the boss called Skitter Clack. Each variant will have different statistics and sometimes more turns in a circle. Another difference is that bosses usually have multiple health points. Killing them will be much harder and you can’t shoot them like normal listeners.
Goals and campaign
Each mission has a different goal. Some ask you to hunt down a certain enemy, reach a certain location, or even save someone. Some missions also have additional objectives. In the first mission, when you escape, you can try to turn to warn the chef of Vanestra's betrayal. If you succeed, you will get a token that changes how the chef will react to the characters in future missions.
Leveling
There is a leveling mechanism they can play. When players gain enough cheese, they can be promoted by handing over their cheese and gaining another skill or ability. Players can only use one skill at a time, but it offers you some options while fighting.
Death (or lack thereof)
According to the theme of children’s story books, all the heroes are protected by a Disney-esque armor. There are no deaths in the game and when one of the players runs out of health instead of dying, he is considered trapped. They are removed from the board and immediately after the current match is over and the players move to the next part of the board, the characters return to the fight.
Your first game of mice and mystics
The first mission begins right where the prologue ends (and after reading our review of Mice and Mystics). Prince Collin and his cohort, the wizard Maginos, the cleric Tilda, the blacksmith Nez and the fluffy desert Filch are imprisoned together in prisons (Filch may have already been there).
To escape, Maginos turns everything into mice, which escape from the dungeons after the sewer under the castle. They have no idea how to change back or how they will stop Vanestro, but they have no chance.
Get out of the sewers
Your first goal is to escape from the dungeon through the sewers. It seems like Vanestra caught your escape plan because she transformed some of her guards into rats and sent them to the sewers after you.
The goal of this mission is to escape from the castle and find somewhere safe to gather (and maybe some new ally).
During the first game, I played this completely wrong. I didn’t spawn monsters every time I explored a new area. Instead, I only created monsters when the clock was full of cheese. So it was a lot easier than it was supposed to be in my first game. The second chapter we played was much, much harder because of him.
So, keep in mind, every time you open a new part of the board, you will create a set of monsters based on the meeting card.
Strategies
Always watch your cheese bike. It fills up quickly and before you know it, you’ll spot a centipede in cockroaches up to your neck in just a few minutes. It will continue to grow and, according to Murphy’s Law, will overwhelm the record at its worst.
While playing, you’ll be tempted to use left and right abilities, but if you want to survive, it might be better to make cheeses. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve used the ability to squeeze some random enemy to get stuck at a disadvantage on the next tile. Getting cheese over hits is definitely worth it.
Advantages and disadvantages of mice and mystics
Advantages
- A very themed spider in jail
- Fantastic works of art
- Excellent production value
- Surprisingly few outages between turns
Against
- Intended for everyone
- Extremely complex rules for a simple game
- Low repetition without extensions
- Not a single shot.
- Dice heavy
Frequently asked questions about mouse review and mysticism
If you still have questions or get lost anywhere, Plaid Hat Games offers in-depth FAQs to play here .
Overview of mice and mystics (TL; DR)
Mice and Mystics is a wonderful game. It’s very cute, very themed and fun to play.
There are a lot of moving parts, which makes it hard to understand at first, but after a few plays, it’s not that bad.
The mechanics are light compared to other terrestrial spiders. Throw some dice to attack, don't die. When you finish the Sadness and Memory campaign, there is not much to do and little to try again. Later, you will need to get an extension that gives it a fairly limited lifespan.
This is a really wonderful game. As mentioned above in our review of Mice and Mystics, Plaid Hat has really done an amazing job with production value. The miniatures are very detailed and whimsical, added to this exceptional themed spirit.
They are all gray-green in color, and the plaid hat has a painting guide on their website that makes DIY easier. This can even be done by an amateur painter and it really contributes to the game.in addition, all pieces of cardboard are high quality and attractive. During each wrap, you will make small cheese rolls and play with all the fun components.
The game is very dice heavy . Skills use dice, movement uses dice, and combat uses dice. That’s a lot of coincidences and dice thrown into one game.
Thematic and story elements are more than makeup for non-stellar mechanics. It’s a lot of fun and you’ll come up with a great story.
Conclusion: a verdict?
I really enjoy this game. Themed sound games and games that can tell a story well are some of my favorites. Our review of mice and mystics shows that it checks all of these fields.
If you’ve read any of the other articles I’ve written, you may have noticed that I stumbled upon it a bit during the rules section here. I jumped around and tried to explain the random pieces as I went. This is how the rules for mice and mystics work. There is little everywhere. To play with simple mechanics, combat and movement, there are still a lot of moving parts and things to follow, which can be very confusing for everyone involved.
The game is supposed to be for kids, but if you gave this box to a bunch of kids and said, “Have fun!”, It would be hard to figure out all the rules. If this field were given to a crowd of hard players, they might be interested in the story, but most would be turned off by simple mechanics and rich rules. This is a riddle I haven’t quite figured out yet. It’s too easy for super players, and it’s too heavy for younger kids.
Which begs the question…
"Who did they design this game for?"
The best answer I can find is families. For a family game where parents follow the rules and children imagine, this game runs nicely.
Let’s talk about repeatability.
Because the fight is so standard, there really is no incentive to go back and play another full play. Some games you can play and use different strategies and tactics, but most of the tactics in Mice and Mystics are very simple. You will attack, perhaps heal, and use abilities to add dice to bonuses. Not much. Don't die is probably the best tactic you can really use here. I try not to be too critical, but when you finish a wonderful story, the game itself is dry.
One of the things I say a lot about board games is that it’s about managing expectations and entering the game with the right mindset. Players looking for a deep leveling system and a complex dungeon-spider will be disappointed. In this case, you may want to check out one of the Zombicide games.
If your goal is to find an introductory game for younger kids and you don’t mind holding them in your hand according to the rules, you’ll have fun and could be an interesting way to get kids into other fantasy games .
Collection
I am completely torn when I talk about Mice and Mystics. I played a lot of fun. The story was amazing. The game looks wonderful. I like minis. I like the characters. But ...
I sold my copy.
For a game where I can show off so many things that I like, there are also a lot of things that just couldn’t impress me. I don’t have kids, I don’t have younger nieces or friends with kids, so it’s a limited use for me.
The shared story of board games is one of my favorite aspects of gambling, but once you’ve played the whole campaign, you’ve experienced it all. I could forgive an individual story if the gameplay was interesting enough to be played again, but it’s the story that drives the whole game. I never pulled the game down to go around jail, I pulled the game and suffered through boring playing to get the next part of the amazing story.
- ADVENTURE GAME WITH STORIES: In Mice & Mystics players progress ...
- COOPERATION STRATEGY: Players work together to solve ...
- FUN FOR FAMILY GAMES NIGHT: Mice & Mystics is the perfect game for ...
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