Mesos

• Designer: Yaniv Kahana, Simone Luciani 
• Publisher: Cranio
• Players: 2-5
• Age: 10+
• Time: 30-50 minutes
• Amazon affiliate link: https://amzn.to/3C0yJZO 
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

Thousands of years ago, a new era was beginning for humankind. The nomadic hunter-gatherers who had laboriously earned their place on Earth organized into small groups, differentiating social roles, building the first settlements, and initiating a great revolution. Scientists call this period “Mesolithic”, and this game talks about those people.

In MESOS, you are the leader of an ancient tribe, and as such, your role is to nurture the growth of your tribe by adding new members, ensuring its sustenance, constructing buildings, and addressing unfolding events. Each round, you must place your totem pawn on the offer track, then following the pawns’ order on the track, you will acquire character or building cards and add them to your tribe. Each card has specific effects and may earn prestige points (PP) as you construct specialized buildings and prepare wisely for the events you will face.  Whoever manages to bring the most prestige to their tribe wins.

To set up the game, form the Offer Track using the Offer Tiles for the player count, placed in ascending alphabetical order. Also place the appropriate turn order tile at the left of this line.  Randomize player markers to decide the initial turn order on this tile. Construct the Tribe card deck, again using cards for your player count, and separate them into the three eras as seen on the card back.  Deal out N+1 cards below the offer track (the Bottom Row) and N+4 above the offer track (the Top Row).  Finally, draw the appointed number of building tiles for player count, revealing the Era 1 tiles and keeping the Era 2 and 3 buildings aside for now. Players each start with some food, more as you are later in turn order.

The game is played over 10 rounds, at which point the Tribe deck will be depleted.  There are two phases in each round: Placing Totem Pawns and Resolving Actions.  

The Totem Pawns are placed on an Offer Tile, which basically tells you how many cards you get to draw and from which row (top or bottom) you draw it from.  The pawns are placed in top to bottom order from the Turn Order tile.

Once all the Totem Pawns are placed, they are then resolved from left to right.  Generally, you take cards – though you are limited to the Building and Character cards.  You cannot take Event cards from either row.  If there are eligible cards available you must take them, and if there are not eligible cards available, you get no compensation.

If you take a building card, pay its cost in Food and then add the card to your area.  If you take a Character card, place it in your area, organizing them by type (color).  You really only need to see the icons in the top right corner.  The six types of Characters are:

• Artists – score points in Cave Painting events; also score 10 VP per 2 artists at game end
• Builders – give discounts on buildings, as well as score VP at game end
• Gatherers – provide discount during Sustenance Event
• Hunters – Possibly provide food when added to your tribe, but will give food and VP in a Hunt Event
• Inventors – endgame scoring bonus – # inventors multiplied by # different types
• Shamans – will help gain bonus in Shamanic Ritual events

After you take the cards, place your Totem Pawn back on the Turn Order tile, in the topmost available position.  If there is a food bonus printed next to your space, take that Food as well. Note that the player who places in the last space must actually pay Food, and if he does not have Food, then loses 2VP. 

Once all the players have finished their turns, then resolve any events in the Bottom row, making sure to resolve the Sustenance event last if it is present.  There are 4 event cards in each Era, with increasing values as the game progresses.

• Cave Paintings – score VP if you have a minimum number of Artists
• Hunt – Take 1 food and VP shown per Hunter 
• Shamanic Ritual – Player with the most stars on their Shamans scores VP, player with the fewest stars loses VP
• Sustenance – Pay 1 Food for each Character card in your tribe, losing VP for each you cannot feed.  Each Gatherer gives you a 3 food discount.  Whether you are able to successfully feed or not, you keep all your Characters

Then, discard any Character and Event cards in the bottom row – leaving any Building cards in place.  Now move the remaining cards from the Top Row to the Bottom, and then deal out a new N+4 cards to make a new Top row.

If you enter a new Era – by drawing a card from the next era as you deal out cards to the Top Row, you must update the buildings. If there are any old era Buildings in the Bottom row, discard them. Move any old buildings in the Top Row to the bottom, and then reveal the new era’s Buildings and place them in the Top Row.

The game continues through the end of the 10th turn.  There is some endgame scoring:

• VP as shown on each Builder card
• 10VP per pair of Artists
• VP from Buildings – both VP value printed on card as well as any endgame scoring criteria as shown on the building
• VP from inventors – multiply the number of inventors by the number of different inventor icons

The player with the most points wins, ties broken in favor of the player with the most Food remaining.

My thoughts on the game

Mesos is a really tight game (especially at higher player counts) which requires you to do more things than you have time to actually do!  You’re trying to build sets of cards in your area, staying ahead of your opponents – all the while trying to also prepare yourself for the incessant string of events that threaten to topple your tribe.

The draft is a really tense affair, in part because you initially only jockey for turn order in the draft.  Unless you’re going first (at which point you usually only get a single card), you’re never quite sure what’s going to be left for you when your turn to choose comes up.  Going later in drafting order generally means you get more cards, but with much less choice over what you can take.  There is no direct interaction between players, but yet, this indirect interaction over drafting order and card choice feels as punishing and as real as direct conflict.

Each round, when the new cards are dealt to the top row, you’ll have to calculate what you want to get (and then two or three backup plans).  Maybe players who choose their slot before you will take the early slots (and you think they’ll take your desired cards).  Maybe you’ll have to decide between drawing a single card in the first position, or going somewhere in the middle where you’ll get two cards, but maybe you won’t get the one you really want.

The building cards can be quite powerful and their scoring effects should not be ignored.  Of course, everyone else will know this fact as well, so you’ll have to take that into further consideration when trying to decide what you think other people are going to do – which then determines what you want to do.  As with many games in this category, success is sometimes granted to the player who chooses the path with the least competition.  If no one else is going for what you want, you’ll have less problems getting the things you need.

Overall, there isn’t really any new or novel mechanisms in the game; it’s drafting and set collecting.  Yet, there is so much tension and angst in this game which has kept it coming back to the table.  I’ll admit that I was expecting a game with much more rules overhead (given that Luciani is one of the designers, and his designs tend to the more complex rulesets) – but Mesos is really quite streamlined and simple in that sense.  Almost elegant, really.   Mesos ends up being quite a complex drafting/set builder with a really simple set of rules.

At this moment, this game is probably at the top of my card drafting game set, and it will likely cause something else to be retired/removed from the gaming basement.  The decisions are simple but oh-so-tough, and I love the fact that it plays well at the higher player counts (4 and 5).  

Amazon affiliate link: https://amzn.to/3C0yJZO 

Thoughts from other Opinionated Gamers

Mark Jackson: Safety tip – don’t let one player get all of the dudes who get you discounts on buildings. :-) 

Doug G. (Garrett’s Games Podcast/Media): Shelley and I enjoyed this one quite a bit as a 2-player, though I can see Dale’s point that things would get even more tense with more players around the table competing for both turn order and which cards to draft. I agree that this one’s elegant, and works great. We plan to get it to the table with more people and discuss it on Episode 976 of the podcast.

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

• I love it! Dale Y, Doug G.
• I like it. – Craig M., John P,
• Neutral.
• Not for me…