Mice & Mystics: Chapter Two: Lily’s Tail

What follows is the second chapter in the story of the fantastic dungeon crawler Mice & Mystics by Plaid Hat Games.  Em and I took the past two nights and went through this scenario in the game and to be honest we rolled for crap the first night.  We actually didn't even make it out of the second tile before we were overrun by a bunch of roaches.  In a stroke of brilliance we decided to change our strategy as we replayed the chapter the second night.  We chose to change up the mice we played and that ended up being the difference between winning and losing.  

For this scenario Em chose to play with Maginos the mage and Tilda the healer.  I went with Collin the warrior prince and also controlled the rolling of Lily the archer even though we technically didn't have her in our party at first.  While the first chapter took quite a while for us to play through (about 2 ½ to 3 hours), this one only took us about 45 minutes to an hour to play.  Of course, at this point, we know how to play the game and were able to cruise through the dice rolling.  Thankfully Em and I rolled really well the second time through and with Em controlling a healer we were able to defeat the scenario.  Below is a summary of the story in chapter two of Mice & Mystics.

SPOILER ALERT!  If you are ever planning on playing this game you may not want to read ahead!  Otherwise enjoy the story.

Chapter Two: Lily’s Tail

After hearing the tale from the mayor of Barksbury, Linera, Collin is driven to help the mouse with her request to find her daughter.  He begs the help of his fellow travelers, Maginos, Tilda, Nez, and Filch and with quite a bit of hesitance (mostly from Nez and Filch) they all agree.  The group travels out of Barksbury and down to the entrance of the tree as a throng of mice await them, cheering them on as they get ready to exit the tree and move on to the dangers of the castle.  A young mouse brings a four-leaf clover and hands it to Maginos who thanks the child.

The group fights their way through some rat warriors and the old crow in the courtyard and enter the castle through a hole in the wall.  There they are met by a large group of hungry cockroaches but they make relatively quick work of the vermin.  At this point Collin and his group find a way up into the dining hall where they find a dinner fork that they think may be needed further on in their adventure.  Upon dropping back down into the caverns, the party moves on and finds themselves in a tunnel full of crystals.  Upon entering they realize that the glow from the crystals is not natural.  Maginos agrees with their observation but the group moves on.

Upon entering the cavern they see a small, lithe mouse struggling to free herself from a mousetrap that has been placed in the tunnel.  Collin shouts out to the group, “It’s Lily!”  As they run into the crystal tunnel their heads are suddenly filled with a vision.  They see a sickly, but beautiful young woman who is surrounded by Tilda’s healers who seem to be tending to her.  Filch poses a question of what the vision was to the group but Maginos, Tilda, and Nez push the question off for the time being as they rush in to help Lily.

End of Chapter Two.

That is the end of Lily’s Tail.  It was at this point that Em and I ran into the tunnels and came across a group of rat warriors and a centipede by the name of Skitter-Clak.  Em (controlling the mage Maginos) cast a spell which basically killed off Skitter-Clak as I (as Collin) rushed forward and released Lily with the dinner fork we found in the dining hall.  At this point, the four mice we controlled made short work of the remaining four rats and won the scenario.  Another fun play with my wife down, and next time we move on to chapter three, The Grapes of Rats.  Until next time, game on!

Mice & Mystics: Chapter One: Flight To Barksbury

Just a festival of geekery at our kitchen island last night (note the Tardis cookie jar we use to house our tea supplies)

All of my large game shipments have arrived and I now have a bunch of new games just waiting for me to play them!  My last post showed a quick preview of the different games that I now have in my possession so if you would like to see what they were just click back to my 7/7/14 post and ogle at the tabletop goodness!

This post is going to be the first in a series of posts that I will be creating that cover the story of one of my recent purchases titled Mice & Mystics.  This game is a “dungeon crawler” that is encapsulated in a ten chapter story.  The past two nights Em and I played through the first chapter.  I would say this chapter took us a total of about 2 ½ to 3 hours to complete and told the beginning of the story of our characters.

SPOILER ALERT!  If you are ever planning on playing this game you may not want to read ahead!  Otherwise enjoy the story.

Prologue:

This game tells the fascinating tale of a group of characters who live in an un-named fantasy kingdom.  They include Prince Collin, a warrior and son of King Andon, Nez Bellows, the tinkerer and forge worker, Tilda, the healer, and last but not least, Maginos, the king’s trusted advisor and mage.  These four friends come together when the king falls under an illness just as he is about to marry a mysterious and dark queen named Vanestra.  As the king’s illness progresses, Vanestra begins to take a greater hold over the kingdom, naming her own minions (including a man by the name of Captain Vurst) in charge of the house guard.  This is the point where Prince Collin and his three friends come together in order to create a plan to stop Vanestra from what her obviously wicked machinations.

Collin, Maginos, Nez, and Tilda meet in Maginos’s laboratory in order to formulate their plan.  Shortly into their gathering the door is kicked in and Captain Vurst and the house guard capture the four of them and throw them in the dungeon along with the worst criminals the kingdom had to offer.  While in the dungeons Maginos’s tiny ruby dragon, Meeps, brings a lock of Vanestra’s hair to the group.  Maginos proceeds to tell the group that with the power of her hair he can turn them into different creatures in order to escape.  However, as with most magic, it comes with a great price.  Whatever they turn into will be what they are stuck as for the rest of their lives as the spell has no counter.  A rogue, who is stuck in the same cell as them, a criminal by the name of Filch, suggests they turn into mice in order to sneak into the tunnels and escape.  It is decided that they will do just that and the spell is cast.

Chapter One: Flight to Barksbury:

The group now find themselves in the forms of mice.  They are able to collect their equipment (through an enchantment by Maginos) just as the guards notice them in their new bodies.  Vanestra turns her guards into rats and thus a chase through the undergrounds mouse-created tunnels ensues.

Story Break

At this point Em and I took control of two characters apiece (she chose the rogue filch and the mage Maginos while I chose the tinkerer Nez and the leader/warrior Collin) and played the game.  Perhaps in another post I will run through some gameplay, but now just now that we fought our way through the tunnels fighting rats (house guard), roaches, and centipedes as we went.  Halfway through we made the choice to do a side quest where we went back up into the castle to help an old friend.

Back to the Tale:

While fighting through the tunnels the group hears a shriek from the room above them and realizes that it is their loyal friend and the house cook, Miz Maggie.  The four friends and Filch choose to go up above and find Maggie screaming at a group of roaches that are trying to eat a wheel of cheese on the table.  As they poke their heads out Miz Maggie screams louder, “miiiiiiiice!”  Thankfully as Filch kills one of the roaches she realizes that they are dressed as her friends and she helps them by shooing the tomcat, Brodie, out of the kitchen.

The mice drop back into the tunnels and continue into the courtyards where they barely escape an old crow and make it to the safety of an old gnarled tree.  Inside the tree they find an entire bustling town of mice trading, working and living their lives out of the view of the human world.  They are brought to an elderly she-mouse named Linera who is lovingly called “Mother” by the other mice.  The group is fed and housed by the kindly Linera and it is during a meal that they realize something is vexing the mouse.  She then tells the group that many of her rangers have gone missing and included in them is her daughter, Lily.

End of Chapter One.

Thus ends the first chapter of the Sorrow & Remembrance book in Mice & Mystics.  As Em and I continue to play through this wonderful game I will post more of the story.  Until next time, game on!