Thursday, May 17, 2018

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.

14 comments:

  1. Really intresting sculpts with some awesome paint jobs. ;)

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  2. I like it too man good job Jan from WarGamingMamas.Check out our work - https://www.flickr.com/photos/142435544@N06/albums
    Enjoy :)

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  3. Yes, those Rats are really nice sculpts. I like how you painted them.

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  4. Reminds me a bit of the Redwall novel... Great work!

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  5. You made some neat works here, they look gorgeous. The rat fur looks great, the spider looks incredibly natural, but the cockroaches... eeeeek, those cockroaches!!! :O :O
    Hats off, sir.

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  6. Let's talk colors here. They're amazing... I mean, that green on the centipede is suitably biological looking, but the color of the cockroaches? You absolutely nailed it. That reddish brown is unmistakable. I think the Snopes on the rats are the Highlight there. The way the pink merges into the fur color is really well done.

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  7. Those cockroaches give me flashbacks to my old apartment on Van Horne. Love the gradients you put on the tails of the mice. Really nice set!

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  8. Love the whole bunch, they look fabulous! Your painting added some really nice accentuations on key areas and made them look that much better as a whole.

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  9. Thanks everyone for the lovely feedback!

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  10. Awesome work Matt! I particularly like the centipedes.

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