Heart of Glorm is a story about a glow-worm who loved a slug, both of whom had a terrible time because of the events of the first book. The glow-worm, Glorm, was a specimen captured by Maginos that gained magical powers brought forth by Vanestra’s hair when Collin and his friends were transformed into mice. In his rage over the loss of his love he turned his magic talents towards necromancy and wrought havoc on the castle grounds, only to be fought back by the wild mystic Neré.

This expansion only comes with two miniatures and no location boards, so most of the flashier components are reused from the base set. But, it adds loads of new enemy subtypes like Shulker Rats and Necro-Brodie as well as a new On Fire status effect that combine to make old creatures feel very new and very scary. There are also plenty of new Abilities and Search cards with characteristically cute ideas like Badger Gloves, Cricket Friends, and Bark Fur that add to the immersion and theming even over all the cool stuff in the base game.

But the real draw here is that the adventure continues! There are six new chapters and a full narrative that touches on mature themes of life, death, horror, and love. It pulls some punches for sure, but that’s quite understandable for a family game. All in all what you’re buying is more story, rather than more game, and given what Mice & Mystics is at its heart that’s exactly what it should be – and it doesn’t help that the two minis we do get are really lovely.

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For Neré, I relied heavily on conventional washes to draw out all of the nifty details, particularly on the ginger root wand, but as with the core set I also used a fair amount of Game Ink to get those rich red-brown details. The shawl was colored with Black Ink that had been diluted about 2:1 with thinner to keep it from being too overwhelming.

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Much like Maginos, Neré’s wand wrapping was done with Red Ink, and most of the white bandages and wrappings had Bonewhite as their basecoat with a bit of Dead White over top to shine up the color. She has a lot of little bangles and metal bits hidden around her model, so there were plenty of small spots to add interest to the paint job.

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I kept Glorm’s colors pretty simple, with Sombre Gray drybrushed heavily over Black Ink to give an insect carapace look and white over all of the smaller details. Once the white was on, I could then put the yellow and bright green onto the robe and around the bottom, respectively. I actually painted Glorm before I read the book and realized that he’s supposed to be a glow-worm, and assumed he was an ant with magic poison or some such under his robe. That’s why I didn’t make his thorax glow similarly, but I actually still think it turned out pretty well. And until such time as I decide whether to go back and repaint him I’m going to just pretend that the dark magic dulled his natural light and replaced it with the gross poison glow or something.

Despite there only being two minis in this expansion I quite enjoyed painting it up. The pieces are pleasingly detailed and Neré in particular has loads of little details for a fun-but-manageable challenge for relatively new painters like myself.