Painted Miniatures for Mice and Mystics II

Winston Churchill once said, "Anyone can rat, but it takes a certain amount of ingenuity to re-rat."* I felt that I was doing a lot of re-ratting as I repeatedly painted all the vermin for Mice and Mystics. Last week we looked at the six mouse heroes from the game. This week, I bring you their enemies...

One of the things that I like about Mice and Mystics is that it's got a strong sense of theme. The theme is that mice are so tiny that even household pests are deadly opponents. Cockroaches are scary, but a centipede or a spider is downright terrifying. Likewise, special ingenuity is required merely to climb up on a table or avoid drowning in a gutter. The small scale makes the stakes seem all the bigger.

Above we see the basic monster of the game: the roach. They're like kobolds or goblins in D&D but all the more disgusting because they're real.

Then comes the servants of the evil Queen Vanestra: the rats. They're not quite Jes Goodwin's Skaven, but they are pretty satisfying sculpts in a cartoony sort of way. Chad Hoverter, the sculptor, was wise to place great emphasis on the creepiest part of the rat: their long, fleshy tails.

Here we see the Spider. It's not one of my better paintjobs... a little dim in my opinion, notwithstanding my attempt to spice it up with some orange accents.

And then my favourite miniature of the lot: the centipede. It's mindless, aggressive and hard to kill, reminding me of some of my ex-girlfriends.

Above is the whole lot of vermin together. 

I hope I've piqued your interest in Mice and Mystics. It's an excellent game that offers a lot for both children and adults, as well as for solo players and larger groups. It also returns you to a sense of wonder, where a spider is a major adversary and a button found discarded under a bed may be the only thing standing between life and death.

* The occasion was when Churchill re-joined the Conservative Party after he had abandoned it to join the Liberals almost 20 years before. It's not 100% certain that Churchill actually uttered these exact words, but if it's good enough for the International Churchill Society, it's good enough for me.