Mice & Mystics | Rahdo's Final Thoughts

Help Rahdo Run: / rahdo ❤️ Code of conduct: conduct.rahdo.com 🙂 And now...
A video outlining gameplay for the boardgame Mice & Mystics. For more game info, www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgam...
Part I: Gameplay Runthrough
• Mice & Mystics Gamepla...
Part II: Extended Gameplay
• Mice & Mystics Extende...
Part III: Final Thoughts
• Mice & Mystics | Rahdo...

[@kevinerskine3299]

Can't argue with your gameplay assessment. But for kids, it's fantastic. It's easy enough for them to make decisions. They love having extra characters which is a plus. As long as you have an adult to actually run the game, then it's great as a family game.

[@jeremylowe7029]

I don't see how, personally. Having it last 2+ hours and with the mountain of rules it just seems like a bad idea for kids. If all of the extra things like terrain don't have a big impact on the game and kids can just do their thing then what's the point in having them at all? I doubt young kids are fully comprehending their moves and all of the implications in a game with this many rules.

[@chanm01]

"Dice should be like salt for the gaming experience." A Rahdoism if I ever heard one. Hahaha.

[@authormichellefranklin]

Just picked this game up today. Very excited to play it! The extended gameplay convinced me to get it. Can't wait to play this single player :D Thanks, Richard!

[@trummelbach6065]

Thanks for the review! What I love most about Mice & Mystics: It's a perfect rpg-gateway game for kids.

[@Lifehouserocks95]

I just want to balance out some of the points rhado makes in the video. When it comes to choices for actions.. I think rhado forgot to mention the search deck and the ability cards. Yes there is a lot of luck when it comes to dice rolling during combat but there are a lot of tactical decisions to be made when spending cheese to use an ability. Your ability cards help enhance your attack especially when battling numerous minions and larger enemies. Also people forget that you can purchase new abilities to use when your mouse has 6 cheese. Sharing your stash of cheese and items within your party is also strategic for winning. For example our group often uses tilda to heal and maginos to perform ranged attacks and lightning chain attacks. One point I think should be made in terms of tweaking the rules of the game is that a mouse's lore should have been integrated into the battle system somehow by the designer... such as being used to modify dice rolls to reduce the luck factor and increase the skill factor. Also the game could have added some sort of battle card element to it to vary the combat mechanism a bit.

[@jeffreyoliver7524]

I think the story of this game is probably the best in all the board games I have played.

[@victoriapalacios1341]

"Dice should be like salt" :)

[@Mifoi]

Dice = Salt. That is an awesome analogy that I will use. :) Love your videos!

[@Artem_Safarov]

Thanks for this, Richard. Great information as always. Cooled my giddiness for this a bit, although I'm still excited. How would it play with three people - does everyone get an individual character then?

[@rahdo]

in the majority of missions, there are 4 mice, regardless of how many players, so someone would have to take an extra. there's a few missions that have 6 mice, and one mission (IIRC) that has only 2?

[@zzees]

Coming from Pathfinder and DnD this looks like a quick dose of fun. Also, it seem like my kids both just turned 7 could play this with little to no help at all. This is going to be a must buy for me. That said, I'm going to take a look at Legends of Andor for my regular play group. Thank Rahdo.

[@kosterix123]

5:30 Old and forgotten video, but a fix to the issue of protagonists suddenly appearing and saying things or needed to open a portal or such is simple Add to each page the required protagonists. You can simply use scotch tape under each page title ("REQ: x and y") Then, even with minimal player count no story will break, but you do have less freedom in who to choose of course. (And yes, Jerrry the designer should have done that, but he has lost the rights so you need to do it yourself. It may cost you a spoiler or two, but hey it's for the greater good)

[@silverfang6668]

Need some advice/suggestions. The wifey, who leans towards lighter fare (Carcassonne, Catan, TicketToRide) has been requesting a D&D style board game. Is this a good choice, or is there something better you could recommend?

[@rahdo]

+Silver Fang well, you know her better than me, and hopefully you can watch the runthrough and figure out whether she'd like it :) what is she looking for in a D&D style boardgame?

[@silverfang6668]

+rahdo Something where we can assume different roles (fighter/thief/mage, etc), solve some type of mission, let our characters level up, something with a fantasy theme, something light & simple.

[@rahdo]

+Silver Fang well this game definitely does all of that. but again you'd have to confirm for yourself from the runthrough if it would be a good fit for you guys :)

[@silverfang6668]

I agree but I think I will teeak the rules a bit to streamline all the "salt", lol.

[@tablesaltgames]

I would think of it as playing any rpg on a counsel. You battle with the characters you want and when it goes to the story. it shows what ever characters are written in.

[@RuNacken]

Haha, I loved that you were mid-camera unmounting and your rant just kept going. I just played chap. 3 and I completely agree with all your points, except for the quality of the writing; I think it's really just cliche-fantasy drivel until now (reminds me of Ryan Laukat's Nir&Far which I also found terribly cliché), but I'll continue some chapters to see if it improves for me.

[@trollishmc2920]

If you like dungeon crawlers, you'll love this game. In my opinion it is (currently) the best Dungeon Crawler out there. Don't let the theme fool you... this game does not pull any punches.

[@BirdExplorer]

The moment I saw that this game had dice, I knew it was doomed in the rahdo universe! haha

[@rahdo]

we like dice just fine. Troyes is one of both Jen's and my top 10 fav games of all time. Castles of Burgundy too. I LOVE dice, but M&M takes dice way way too far... :)

[@TheRooster1972]

I agree. And the masterful way that Feld uses dice is genius. I like your line that dice is salt! They are also great when the results can be manipulated (another Feld trait) so that they don't determine is you win or lose - having options with those dice is vital in my opinion. Or some way to mitigate the result. Even such a dice driven game like Seasons does this well in my opinion.

[@TyphoidBryan]

Thanks for the runthrough, but you pretty much summed up my perception of the game: a kids' game at a premium price point. As you were playing, I kept wishing you would pan over to Istanbul and mess with that instead. MiWi seemed to like it and I think I do, too. (Need that Rahdo Seal of Approval!)

[@BCKA]

Was wondering if I could buy your copy of Mice and Mystic's?

[@rahdo]

sorry it's long gone...

[@tablesaltgames]

Just ordered it from Amazon. I think this will be a good intro into gaming for my wife and kid.

[@josephgarcia1161]

quensalters After playing this with your family what do you think? I have 4 kids 6 to 8 that i want to play this with.

[@tablesaltgames]

I plan on house ruling the movement. Giving every character a +3 movement( value on character car +3) . Make it a roll to change.

[@rahdo]

quensalters reasonable... i have to admit, the roll&move was really wearing on us

[@gratby9725]

My 6yr old Loves this game

[@trummelbach6065]

My son turns 6 soon! I already painted the miniatures for playing the game this autumn! :-)

[@Kentchangar]

As something somewhat unrelated to Mice and Mystics, but related to your final thoughts: Me and my brother prefer playing MAGE KNIGHT 2 characters each, I wonder what you think about that.... :-P

[@rahdo]

+Kentchangar Nimoghtony that would make my head explode! :)

[@archmagus1510]

can wait for myth!!!

[@XD-rd8zd]

I hope you'll review Castle Ravenloft :D

[@MattD007]

He does not seem to like dungeon crawls very much lol

[@MattD007]

Of all of the games, Mice and Mystics is the game he actually doesn't like. I don't watch every Rahdo review, but he seems to talk up just about every game I watch him review. Wow, the first real negative review I see, and to me came off almost angry, just amazes me. I really wish he would do negative reviews more often like this one, it would justify his opinion more with me. Otherwise, this is a great channel for runthroughs and rules play for myself and the wife, but his opinions on games, not so much.

[@rahdo]

i always encourage people to disregard my opinions and use the runthroughs themselves to draw your own conclusions :)

[@MattD007]

@@rahdo your game play run throughs are the best. If I'm on the fence on wether I want a game I'll watch you to get a feel on how it will play. I know why you don't do negative reviews a bunch, to respect the creators, but it's nice to see you passionately not like one. I'm not a euro gamer and despise heavy worker placement games, but do like two player games that I can play with the wife. M&M is something I think we'll like, thanks for the peek under the hood on it.

[@dangerkennyb3317]

I used to review games. Though I wrote reviews to the best of my ability, overall I put a whole lot less effort into a review than Rahdo does his run-throughs. Video content is a LOT of work. And let me tell you, when you're putting in any sort of effort, you're going to gravitate towards games that, at least on the surface, interest you. Also, as you get to the point where you've played a ton, your "instinct" for whether you will like a game or not improves. The end result? A lot of positive reviews. Negative ones like this one were the result of playing a game that Rahdo's viewers voted on. He could inflate his negative review numbers by buying games he knows he's not likely to enjoy, and spend hours of time playing them on camera and editing them. All to meet some arbitrary quota. Which, honestly, is pretty silly.

[@MattD007]

@@dangerkennyb3317 I understand what you're saying, but then again there are reviewers out there that WILL give an unbiased opinion on a game, regardless of if they liked it or not. I would argue that just because you gravitate towards games you like, it will still yield their share of negative reviews. Can you pick out games, that without a shadow of doubt, you know you'll enjoy? Have you never bought a well hyped game with mechanics you enjoy, only to be disappointed? I've not played games for long time, and have still bought games I thought I would enjoy, only to find them boring or a not fully fleshed out idea. I believe some reviewers just don't have it in them to be overly negative, for admittedly understandable reasons. As a person who comes to reviews in helps of understanding a game, I do like a personal opinion on the game, although after seeing enough reviews I do get that some games just cannot be satisfying to some. I can then focus on the game play and come up with my own opinion, ignoring the reviewers opinion. I love watching Rahdo and his play throughs. I mostly play with two players and his reviews have helped me out quite a bit. I do however, hate heavy worker placement games, and don't mind games with conflict, so we differ there. I commented simply because I've not seen him ever be this negative towards a game before. Struck me as odd seeing how it feels he goes out of his way at times to not be negative, leaving you to "read between the lines".

[@aesopsphere]

way to many of these adventure dungeon crawls games force you to play multiple characters I know exactly how you feel.

[@nguinguingui]

Salt salt salt haha I was thinking of getting this game but the dice and roll seemed very repetitive and you think the same too.... hmmmm

[@mbalazs3544]

5:17 if that is a problem change to roues pretty simple you have both 1 extra action in each turn and play 2 characters. 5:48 YES you can just switch the character names the story demands to player 1 or player 2, rules are guiding lines not mandatory burned to stone (and if they are good dark magicians know how to break the stone or bend the ink) GEEZ.

[@mbalazs3544]

1:52 Definitely not its good game but if one would have to pick to role play powerful heroes or mouses, its definitely lack the mood as for complexity Descent is way above this game. Its good one but could have been done better. To compare this to legends of Andor is bad joke, this is an explore kill game, Andor is a puzzle. (and way more entertaining one) 3:06 the rest ?:D the rest a top game dos not have "what do we dont like? the rest" line :D a top game has minor mistakes like 0-2. 8:05 I agree with this one strategy should be no more than 20% luck based. 9:04 nop not just for you I kinda got to the same conclusion regarding this. Luck based fixed(not many type or option what you can take as heroes) characters and not well made story. Sounds to me this is far from perfect or even weary good, it gets passing grade but its lack and could have been more. ~ thx for the review an game demonstration.

[@SenseiJae]

May I recommend Tales of the Arabian Nights? I suspect you will not feel a need for another story teller after that...

[@rahdo]

ToAN is very cool, but it didn't have quite enough "game" for us. In the end, we liked Agents of SMERSH a bit more :)

[@SenseiJae]

***** I find your response curious. What do you quantify as "game"? I actually found pretty much the opposite to be true with those two specific examples.. TotAN is an immersive, rich, story-telling game which allows you to build up and mold a character developing skills while telling an interesting story. SMERSH, is a rich, random story-telling game which is a "seek and find" loosely wrapped around a story. The main difference in the two games is that SMERSH is basically random events that you react to and there is a random response that isn't even based on the choice you make. The game is pretty much, "draw a card, read the story, pretend to make a choice, read reaction". Tales at least makes your choices meaningful. It presents a concept like, you meet a genie, and the choice on how you react to it is very meaningful and has a direct impact on the outcome. The one key here is that Arabian Nights actually has some ability to control your outcome where SMERSH does not. In Arabian Nights, if I want to visit the cave of wonders, I can pretty much make that happen by moving to the region where the cave is and making choices that would conceptually lead to that encounter. In SMERSH, if I want to meet up with a boss, I need to hope I get lucky enough for that event to happen.

[@GamingKnights]

Jae Cordes Clearly we are in the minority in this but my group and i hate Totan. There is no gameplay what so ever i feel you might as well go to your book library and pick random snipets from random books ,do that for three hours and there you have Totan. Maybe its just not our type of game but until now its the worst "game " iv'e ever played.

[@rahdo]

Jae Cordes What I mean by Smersh having more "game" is that there are mechansims outside the reading of story snippets that give us interesting choices to think about. If you took both games and eliminated story snippets altogether... the game was simply a matter of moving from one space on the board to another and following simple directions when you get there, I'd argue that Smersh gives you more to think about and "play"... there are goals that players must coordinate to achieve, coutndowns that can cause everyone to lose, dice draws with push your luck elements to mitigate random probability, etc. Totan OTOH doesn't have any of that. It does have better storytelling, certainly (though it's just as random and nonsensical as Smersh, imo, but better written), but it has no meaningful gameplay decisions to make. It's all arbitrary "where the wind takes you" moves, with nothing much to think about other than the story that you're reading. Again, IMO :)

[@SenseiJae]

***** curious. The one thing I noticed when I played SMERSH for the first time was just how meaningful the decisions in TOTAN were. When you are building up your character, you must carefully select your skills, they absolutely affect the outcome of your story. And when you meet an encounter, what you decide to do in the encounter absolutely matters. You meet a beast, do you hunt it, or hide from it (two of 8-12 choices available to you). Hunting could mean food or being food. Hiding could lead to a discovery or safety. And further, when the event resolves, if you took appropriate skills, it can help immensely, for example if you hunt and are hunted, but you took subterfuge, you can twist it to hide from the beast and succeed. I never go any of this from SMERSH. You pick your action without even knowing what the scenario is, and it doesn't have any affect on the scenario anyways. Perhaps there are more mechanics outside of the story telling, but isn't that the point of these games, the story telling? I will be honest, my favorite story telling game is Cat and Chocolate, so I prefer the pure nature of creating interactive fiction (I also really like Once Upon a Time). So SMERSH failed for me, because there was no way for me to actually direct the story, whereas in TotAN you absolutely can direct the story through careful skill selection and logical action selection. The one thing TotAN fails on, though is the endgame condition, I really don't like how you have to figure out how many story and destiny you need to win (careers style) as that part is hard to "game". But for the experience, TotAN is overall a "better" story telling game than SMERSH or Mice and Mystics, because you actually can control the story.

[@joeldalangin2427]

"Diceathon of the highest order" too funny. Thanks for saving me from a bad purchase

[@tasman001]

Watching these final thoughts just made me feel like I was getting yelled at by a stressed out, angry person for 10 minutes.

[@rahdo]

sorry you felt that way :( I'm not an angry person at all, though tbh it does stress me out to give "negative" final thoughts. I don't like doing it, and I normally avoid it. the only reason i did a runthrough for M&M is because my voters chose it! Ah well, sorry if you were upset by the vid...

[@ShadowJak]

Basically, there was nothing at all wrong with the game that a little imagination couldn't solve. Cool.

[@dafnibora]

jajaj you´re crazy man

[@defleshedbuttocks]

jajaj

[@samhall8547]

why so many dislikes?

[@rahdo]

probably the fact that i criticized the game a bit and fans of the game don't like it

[@Jumbocrableg]

After watching this, I bet you guys are the life of a party... THERES MORE THAN 2!

[@rahdo]

***** not where we live, there's not :)

[@Th0rvidTheViking]

+Gage Middleton When you live on your own Island off the shores of Greece, you really don't have many options to play with more than two people.

[@Liwet.]

This video made me turn my volume down and it's still really "poppy."

[@rahdo]

for my older videos, i was just using the built in mic of the camera. these days i use a lapel mic :)

[@Liwet.]

Ah, ok. Someone linked this video when the discussion of the game came up.

[@aesopsphere]

Don't mean to sound negative but why do you even review ameritrash games? you never like them or keep them.

[@rahdo]

hehe, 9 times out of 10 you see me doing an Ameritrash video, it's because my voters demanded it. That was true in this case too :)

[@andrejespersen1363]

In this cache i do agree with Rahdo. its like playing space marines or space hulk were you control a small platoon instead of connecting to a single avatar. and you turns is down to trowing the dice twice and then attack or do a search "1 pr tile" . but maybe its just because its played 2 player. but must admit never played it with more.

[@GKEK]

Just started... immediately seeing the truth of your gameplay assessment. If you have played Stuffed Fables or Familiar Tales, do not bother with M&M! The story is great but the gameplay seems to be dragging for my kids/family. 🫤