Our Review

Visitors for Mice

Mmm!

CHeese and carrots for tea

All mice on the cover of the box seem a bit excited, which is no surprise as guests have announced their visit and you need to feed them; unfortunately, the inevitable cat is on her way to the pantry and threatens to sabotage the feast. Therefore players must cooperate in collecting food and take everything away before the cat reaches the pantry.

On the double-sided board both sides show a path for the cat to the pantry, eleven steps in both cases, and pictures of bread, fish, cheese, carrots and zucchinis of different sizes, that is, partitioned into two to four squares on the easier side of the board and two to five squares on the more difficult side of the board.

You choose a board - depending on the composition of your group - and the active player takes all three dice; each dice shows each of the five food types and one red X. The active player rolls all three dice and then all players decide together how to implement the result of the roll. You must place at least one die to achieve a valid roll and you may place all three dice, if possible, because of course you cannot place a red C. If you place one or more dice, you place each one on one square of any food of the corresponding type. Then you can re-roll dice not placed and must again be able to place at least one die, and so on. After each roll, you can decide to stop and to remove food. To do this you take back the dice and replace them with a mouse chip. However - and this is the drawback - if you were not able to remove the last bit of a piece of food in a turn, the cat advances one step towards the pantry. Mouse chips that you could place during this turn stay in place in the food squares.

If you cannot place a die after a roll, regardless if is the first roll ore a re-roll of dice, the cat also advances one step towards the pantry and you cannot remove food beneath a die or dice that you might have already placed in this turn, that is, you cannot place mouse chips in this turn.

If you manage to cover all food squares with mouse chips before the cat enters the pantry, all players have won together.

As is only to be expected from a game by Reiner Knizia, he did not make it easy for us to be perfect hosts - you need dice to roll you way. You can try different strategies - fill the small pieces of food first to ensure that the cat does not move at all and then hope for lucky rolls for filling the big pieces. Or - and this could be necessary for the more difficult side of the board - you deliberately accept the cat advancing one step to partially fill big pieces of food in preparation for completing them. In addition, if you would like to try it, there is even a more difficult version in which you must place all dice of a turn on squares in the same row or column of the board.

Mmm! is a very nice cooperative game and that you do not win each game is what you expect from cooperative games; debating the optimum use of the dice is fun - for me it is interesting to see how vastly opinions can differ! Yum-yum for Mmm!, a very well working and attractive family game with rules that are quickly explained and providing a high replay value!

Dagmar de Cassan

Players: 2-4

Age: 5+

Time: 20+

Designer: Reiner Knizia

Artist: Andreas Resch

Price: ca. 20 Euro

Publisher: Pegasus Spiele 2015

Web: www.pegasus.de

Genre: Cooperation, dice placement

Users: For families

Version: multi

Rules: de en

In-game text: no

Comments:

Good cooperative mechanism

Enchanting design

Simple rules

High replay value

Compares to:

All dice placement games with continue-or-stop mechanism

Other editions:

Currently none

My rating: 7

Statements:

A cooperative game just as it should be - you must make a real effort to win, but you can win it, provided the dice decide to cooperate, too!

Chance (pink): 3

Tactic (turquoise): 2

Strategy (blue): 0

Creativity (dark blue): 0

Knowledge (yellow): 0

Memory (orange): 0

Communication (red): 3

Interaction (brown): 0

Dexterity (green): 0

Action (dark green): 0