You got the moves, you know the streets, break the rules, take the heat

Happy Doctorversary, dear bunny_hugger.

Last Saturday we visited bunny_hugger's parents again. Partly for company, sure. But also to take one more try at that Mice and Mystics adventure. This would be our third try. We rarely got a chapter in this whole series done on the first try (and would be suspicious of thins when we did). Three tries is probably close to our usual.

To spoil the story: we won. We were stunned to do it, really, ending up in a small argument about whether we could have won at that point. Part of this is we never quite felt comfortable we understood the whole chapter. The goal was everyone's favorite, an escort mission. Part of the struggle is the game gave us very specific instructions about how the five cute mouse citizens we were escorting could get injured by wandering off cliffs and stuff, but the path we had to follow didn't put them in any particular danger of cliffs and such. Between that fact, and the manual's description of the relative placement of boards not matching what's on them (like, ``south'' is not to the right of the given tile) we suspected the path was reordered late in the game and the manual not rewritten. Also one tile, we realized, left it theoretically possible to get in a state where the hero party and the bad guys are separated so neither can attack or be attacked. It didn't obtain in our case, but we could see how it might happen.

There was also a side quest, that we looked eagerly for since those are usually good things. And they've often rewarded us with goodies like more game time to play. Not this time. The side quest was logical enough. The disgraced (thanks to us) former kings of the frogs is put on trial. We go, intending to spectate, but the mouse citizens we're escorting butt in to argue this isn't justice. It's one thing to kill (or, I guess the game has it, capture) any number of small minions, but the people in charge can't face physical risk. So this set off a fresh fight and got bunny_hugger's character Maginos captured. Maginos has a reputation, in our campaign, of being often-captured and useless in a fight. He was ... struggling, with the fight, to that point, although one of his powers (sending out his ladybug dragon) paid off handsomely every time he used it. But it felt wrong not to use as many of the characters we started the game with, years ago, as we could. (The only ``starting'' character we didn't use was Filch, the rogue; I felt for the last chapter we needed Colin, the king, and played him.)

So, we finished off the fight with Maginos captured. And, normally, when you get to the end of the initiative track, a captured mouse is restored. But the game mechanics turned out so that if we got to the initiative track we'd get a surge, some new bad guys coming on the board and needing to be fought, possibly ending our game with a loss. Or, if we used this chance to move to the next tile, we would win, if it's possible to go to a new tile when one of the mice is captured. You can move to a new tile once all the bad guys are killed captured, but before a mouse comes back?

We debated the issue a good bit. bunny_hugger checked BoardGameGeek.com and found the game designer said yes, you can go to the next tile while a mouse is captured but it's not usually a good idea. Well, a new tile usually brings new enemies in, and you have to beat them all before your captured mouse comes back. But in this special case, there wouldn't be new enemies, since getting to the last tile was the victory condition. So, with the slight anticlimax of going out with one of our guys captured, and with bunny_hugger's father having gone off to brush his teeth or something, we moved and we won.

It's a bit sad to reach the end of this. There turn out to be three more downloadable chapters but bunny_hugger found they're clearly meant to be bridges between the original game and the two expansions; only the third one would fit without anachronism into the characters as we've got them. And it doesn't seem likely that another expansion will come, although the world is vast and complicated so who can say for sure?

We don't know what we'll do for board games next. Might try playing Parks. Her mother's already played a game and seemed to understand it, even if she didn't win. Her father professed disinterest in it --- the game has no dice, and he's really into dice-rolling games --- but it's possible we might pique his interest yet. Have to see if he'll give it a try for Mothers Day.

Still on Easter preparations here, in my photo reel, so I hope you enjoy the colors.

More of the eggs, drying in the cardboard tray that doesn't work as well as the Paas corporate empire thinks it should.

And here's some of our tie-dyed eggs drying on the wire racks.

These would be the eggs left for bunny_hugger's parents.

Trivia: Official scorer John Sheridan, late to the 5 May 1917 White Sox/Saint Louis Browns game at Sportsman's Park, missed the first-inning hit by Buck Weaver which got past second baseman Ernie Johnson. When the Browns' Ernie Koob had what was otherwise a no-hitter, Sheridan polled the sports writers at the game and changed the hit to an error on Johnson's part, creating a no-hitter. Source: The Rules of Baseball: An Anecdotal Look at the Rules of Baseball and How They Came To Be, David Nemec. (Another Browns pitcher threw a no-hitter --- no retroactive judgement required --- the next day, the first time a team had successive no-hitters.)

Currently Reading: Ten Ever-Lovin' Blue-Eyed Years With Pogo, Walt Kelly.

PS: How April 2022 Treated My Mathematics Blog, recording the usual sorts of little progress.