Of Mice and Mystics

I'm fairly fortunate to have a wife that digs board games.  With several of our couple friends, we'll pull out Settlers of Catan, Dominion or even Diplomacy* and throw down some gaming time many weekends.  I'd love for her to be into D&D, but the few times I've sat her down with a group, even our closest friends, she's had the same basic complaint...it's slow and it doesn't hold her interest.  She's not terribly interested in role-playing...she'll come up with a background for a character (I thought a princess, with the ability to speak to animals, escaping from her overly protective royal family to pursue a life of adventure was a great background for a ranger) but once we get into the meat of the game, she's not really into spending time bartering with the local fence over a stolen ruby for that extra 100gp.

I'm tempted to pickup Mice and Mystics for several reasons, and she's one of them.  It's enough like a board game that I think it would maintain her interest and I think the scant bits of RP it does contain she, and our other non-RPing friends, would be able to get behind.  It also would give me a reason to pick up minis like these.  I mean, come on...rat minis? Who can resist these (hattip Carmen, of Carmen's Fun Painty Time, for the paint job).

The play reminds me of the D&D board games (Wrath of Ashardalon, et al), which I picked up because they were a good deal on minis.  If, once I get sick of painting the horde of Reaper minis that are showing up in about a month, I'm still interested in painting anything, I'll probably see about this one.

For kicks, here's Rodney from Watch it Played demonstrating the play for Mice and Mystics.

*this happened one time, was a fluke, and I've been promised it will not happen again