Mice and Mystics - Tips & Strategies

Since each mouse can only have one successful search per tile, I put a little glass bead on the mouse’s card when a search is successful. This way, I don’t have to remember if a search was successful or not. It’s especially helpful when playing by yourself. I use the flat type of glass bead that you put into hanging glass planters (like, for candles), but any type of marker would work the same.

Note that having multiple daggers does not stack the abilities on each attack. Multiple daggers gives Filtch multiple attacks, but each dagger only gets the ability per attack that it is used for.

Example:
Filtch has 2 daggers that remove 1 defense die from a minion and uses knife strike.
Wrong Method – stacking both, taking 2 attacks that remove 2 defense die per attack on minion.
Correct Rule – take 1 defense die per attack. Right hand attacks, uses ability to remove 1 defense die. Then Left hand attacks, using it’s ability to remove 1 defense die. In both attacks, only one die is removed.

We’ve been getting a little frustrated with the losing-most-of-your-stuff at the end of each chapter, so have added the following house rule:

An additional free action available on your turn – spend 9 cheese to permanently add one of your currently held items (not consumables) to your starting equipment.

Now Filch doesn’t have to spend the first half of each chapter looking for a knife or two to make Knife Strike worth using. And getting captured is a little less punishing. This seems stronger than leveling up and adding skills, so we increased the price accordingly.

I haven’t been playing for long, but every time the Abduction Search card comes up, it completely derails what’s going on. The effects seem a little bit too strong for something that’s totally random and is nearly impossible to prepare for. Ordinarily the effects are as follows:
-Remove the mouse from the board
-Advance the hourglass token
-Remove all wounds/effects
-Lose equipped non-starting items and all cheese
-The mouse is out for the rest of the battle (if in a battle)
-The next mouse’s search is wasted to bring this mouse back (rescued instead of finding a Search card)

I’ve been modifying it as follows:
-The mouse is removed from the board as normal until another mouse successfully searches for them
-The hourglass marker is not moved
-For each equipped piece of non-starting equipment (doesn’t include pack) and for each piece of cheese, roll a die. If the die shows a *, then they keep the item/cheese. If not, then they lose it. Normally they would lose all of it.
-I haven’t decided about whether or not to keep the wounds yet (I’ve only had wound-less mice abducted so far).

This keeps Abduction disruptive, but makes it a little bit less terrible; the games have been more fun as a result.

Does anyone else do anything else like this?

I created this painting guide for anyone out there who wants to paint their Mice & Mystics minis, and need some tips.

http://www.plaidhatgames.com/images/games/mice-and-mystics/mmpaintingguide.pdf

Many of the gamers in this thread play M&M with their wee ones and have posted some excellent house rules.

My 5-year-old son hasn’t jumped into board games like my 8-year-old daughter. But I played M&M with the lad all weekend and he just loved it.

I tried to focus on the story and the thrill of beating bad guys, rather than bludgeon him with rules.

Like GM fudge dice, I didn’t always let him see when rolling minion defence.

And because so much excitement and disappointment can hinge on a dice roll, I allowed my son to spend cheese to re-roll any or all of his dice. But he must keep the final result.

Pure joy for me to see his little face light up when his Lily character (ranged) throws three bow and arrows 🙂

Yes, I have seen the other tips here just to make sure, but when we last played M&M, I was the volunteer 5th wheel. Instead of adding an extra mouse, I just assumed control of a type of DM player. So, I read all the bits out of the book, I made sure everyone was playing properly, and I controlled all the baddies. Yes, my minions got trounced, but I had a great time, and the new people to the table also had a great time playing their mice. Win-Win.

The first time I played the campaign, I neglected to limit the amount of items kept between missions limited to one non-character item. However, I would recommend making one exception to the rule: Filch may carry one additional dagger between missions. His special ability becomes much more of an incentive to the Filch player if they can hold onto those daggers (and not become captured), allowing it to fully stack to 3 daggers instead of carrying two and hoping he finds a third every mission. It just feels more like what the character would actually do, anyways.

If you have Nez in your group, make sure to get the Tinkerer’s Treasure on the first tile in Chapter One. Consider getting a powerful weapon that more than one of the group can share or something to boost anyone’s armor. Remember, he could also get a weapon designed for someone other than him (maybe to increase attack of Tilda or Filch) and give it away as a free action.

Cheese Surges are used to keep the game going along, and it certainly does the job. However, here are a few tips that have helped me so far.

– If a surge is nearing when you are done with an encounter, check to see how many pages you have left in the chapter. If you still have a few pages, you may want to take that surge in the current tile, so you don’t get double the encounter in the following tile.
– If there is one enemy left and it is the last characters turn, you might want to consider leaving the minion alive until the next turn so that the surge wheel doesn’t get another cheese for having no minions at the end of the turn.
– Make roaches priority. Roaches initially tricked me when we first started. They are only roaches after all, right? But the truth is that roaches can set off the surge wheel faster cause they get twice the cheese. Every time they hit you and every time they roll a cheese. This makes encounters come out more frequently and makes them more difficult. Do yourself a favor and get rid of them asap.

Hope this helps!

Edit: Roaches tip only applies to hungry or greedy roaches, as they are the ones that set off the wheel when hitting you. But you probably want to get rid of several easy minions who get more attack rolls + cheese on attack and defense anyway.