F:AT Thursday - Mice and Mystics, Star Wars Epic Duels

In the hollowed out trunk of an old oak tree, the city of the mice is in disarray. The walnut shell elevators have ceased to function and the cheese markets are closed. The weasel army is on the march. Brave mice don armor made of thimbles and tree bark and prepare for the onslaught but for four miniature visitors, there is no dread for they take no sides in rodentine warfare. They are here to play games. It is F:AT Thursday.

First up was the much ballyhooed and much anticipated Mice and Mystics. Earlier in the week, Uba, Al and I had done our initial "flail through" of the game as we learned the rules. We made some significant mistakes but now on our second attempt we were pretty confident that the errors we had made would not be repeated. We played the first scenario, or chapters as they are called, where the mice attempt to escape from a prison cell to the safety of an nearby oak tree via the sewer tunnels under the castle. Things got a little dicey as we made the detour to warn the kitchen matron of the danger to the realm but other than that things went very smoothly. Not too many monster surges and no mouse was captured.

Afterwards we had a meeting of the minds to discuss our impressions. We pretty much agreed on several points. First, the flavor text in the story book is crap. I can see and appreciate the story book / fairy tale atmosphere he was trying to get but it is just poor writing. When you make a game you get an artist to do the art. When you make a game whose atmosphere is very dependent on prose get a writer to do the writing. We all agreed that there are certain things that are great. The tiles and the flipping mechanism to reveal new areas is neat. The initiative track is cool. The campaigning nature of the game where the story develops from scenario to scenario is also very good. We all enjoyed the basic mechanics of the game although Uba felt some parts were cumbersome like rolling a die for each minion individually when determining their movement and the search card that allowed a player to "search the deck" for any desired card, a device that brings the momentum of every game it has ever been used in to a screeching halt every time.

So in conclusion, we agreed that this would be a fine game for families with children of a preteen to early teen age where the kids can play and an adult would run and supervise the game. We did have fun and we'd all be down to play it more but when the big question came up: Mice and Mystics or Wrath of Ashadelon? We all agreed that we might play M and M for a while but Ashardelon is a better game.

Then we had our "fill the holes in Repo's geek cred" portion of our evening. Tonight it was Star Wars Epic Duels. Yet another classic AT game I had never played. I had Darth Vader, Josh had Han Solo, and Al had Boba Fett (Uba had bowed out to take care of some high priority sewing for costumes for an upcoming school play).  Han Solo and Boba Fett went at it like cats in heat while Darth just stood back and laughed. Then when they were both weakened he choked the fucking life out of them with the power of the force.  As the saying goes...All too easy! An outraged Josh and Al insisted that we play again immediately. This time things did not fair too well for our Dark Lord of the Sith as he got shot all to hell by Chewie's strato-caster or what ever the hell his laser crossbow is called. Then Al put the finishing touches on Han with his rocket whip or whatever. What a damn fine game. I'm glad I got to play it and would totally be up for a death match any time any place.