Mice and Mystics Chapter 2

Keen and I just wrapped up chapter two of the Mice and Mystics campaign wherein we were tasked with rescuing a new playable character named Lily.  You’ll recall from chapter 1 that we just made it past an open courtyard guarded by a crow and into the safety of a large tree.  Lily is the daughter of Linera, Mayor of Barksburg, and like other Rangers of the city she has gone missing in the castle.   The citizens of Barksburg are counting on us!

Making our way through the bowels of the castle, we knew the general direction we had to go in order to save Lily.  We could see she was two tiles away, being swarmed by Roaches.  The more we progressed, the more Lily would be attached by Roaches.  You see, her tail was stuck in a mouse trap and we were racing against the clock to save her.  As it turns out, we were the one needing to be saved.

We failed on our first run through due to some extremely poor rolls we made while fighting a spider surge. Large minions like that can be deadly, especially spiders that leave poisoned wounds.  Lily was literally fine the entire time, farming cheese and destroying Roaches with her bow.

In Chapter 2 we acquired a dinner fork by detouring to the dining hall which could be used to launch grapes like a catapult or other mice. Unfortunately we didn’t get to put this to a whole lot of use but the idea is really cool. I would have loved to see it taken a step further, like letting you catapult mice onto the backs of large minions or even letting four mice pick up the fork and use it as a battering ram. I suppose we could make up our own house rules in regards to these things but I always get a nagging feeling if I’m not playing exactly by the rules.

It’s both fun and difficult trying to come up with different strategies when using the mice characters. You get a choice of 6 but usually you only get to bring 4. We have to weigh our options and decide if a healer is important or if these two characters synergize really well for the scenario, etc. The different party makeup, along with the varying encounter cards, really change things up. Our first time through we brought a healer and ended up not using her to heal much at all. The second time we brought a tinker instead and we found that we needed tons more healing this time even though we eventually won that playthrough anyway.

I can’t wait to see what’s thrown at us in chapter three. I’d be all for playing nonstop if Keen didn’t feel like taking a break from it, but what can you do? I also got Mage Knight for Christmas so maybe I’ll check that out.