Haunted Mouse (first impressions)
The grandkids are out of school and visiting Chez Gumbo this week for some swimming and sports camps. And maybe some board gaming? Sure, why not? They are pre-teens who like card games and shorter games.
Last night, we broke out the new copy of Haunted Mouse that Bézier Games sent. It’s designed by Jon from Jon Gets Games, a YouTube channel that has taught me a lot of games over the years. I was not familiar with the earlier iteration that had been published, but I am impressed with the little box that holds this version for a few reasons.
First, a little bit about the game. Imagine Scout but with a few tweaks plus a theme that resonates more. Players each grab a player board with a cute little sleepy mouse on it, complete with whimsical names like Jac or Brie. We’ve all fallen asleep, and our dreams are being haunted by the cards in our hand. The first person to wake up — get rid of all their cards — gets the most cheese, and whoever gets to seven cheese pieces first, wins.
Just like in Scout or Dealt or Bohnanza, players aren’t allowed to organize their cards. Whichever they are dealt to you, that’s how you got to splay them in your hand. (As you can imagine, that was a frustrating thing for a ten year old). That being said, there are clever ways in Haunted Mouse to manipulate your hand. You can lay out a ‘bait’ card in front of you, which becomes available to you and any other player to use in your plays. If you don’t or can’t play, you can draw a card, put it anywhere in your hand, and again, add a bait card. That tiny little twist, allowing players to have a little bit more agency in their hands, is a great iteration on the original concept.
The girls loved the little player boards and the cute little plastic cheese pieces that fit into the recessed wheel on the board. They struggled a little bit, as most new players do, with figuring out what beats the hand that the previous person played. “Does three 9s beat four-five-six? It should, Pop, because nines are bigger than six. And three nines are 27 points, but the 4-5-6 is only 15 points.” When you think about it from a pre-teen perspective, the simple act of learning a ladder climbing game does take some retraining of the brain. In fact, at one point, one of the bugs looked at me and asked, “Are you trying to sneak in some math on our summer vaca. No fair, Pop.” Guilty as charged.
It was a great first play with four players. It took four hands, and we were all in sight of the win during the last hand. I imagine that this game will have lots of endings like that, where each player is within two or three cheese pieces of the win.
Plus, there’s some lagniappe in the box. The copy we were sent had a tiny little packet of ‘expansion’ cards, that added nearly 20 wild cards to the mix. This is important because one of the other twists in Haunted Mouse is that you can only play a meld that is one step above the previous one. In other words, if the previous player played a pair of nines, you can’t then play two-three-four-five. But the rules include the “trap” maneuver, where you set a trap for the ghosts that are haunting the house by playing four of a kind or a run of four in one solid color. If you do, that automatically wipes the previous play and gives you the lead play.
It’s tougher than you think with these small decks to pull off that move, and it only happened once in our play. The addition of the “It’s A Trap” expansion cards will probably make it a lot easier to get traps out, since there are so many wilds to add and they are so versatile. Franchement, it feels like those cards should have or were part of the original design anyway, although I have no way of knowing. Everybody loves playing wild cards, right?
Sounds like I will have to sneak in another “math” lesson with the girls tonight and add the expansion cards.
Until next time, laissez les bon temps rouler!
— BJ from Board Game Gumbo