Family game Mesos published by Pegasus Spiele
Friedberg, March 07, 2025: The family game Mesos, co-designed by Simone Luciani and Yaniv Kahana and published by Pegasus Spiele, is a briskly paced yet fiercely competitive game of card drafting and set collection. Players will try to acquire the right cards to prepare their tribe for any upcoming events, which can have drastic consequences if ignored.
In Mesos, up to five players aged ten and over travel back to the Mesolithic period to lead their tribe to glory. Over the course of ten rounds accross three eras they build settlements and recruit members for their tribal communities. Every round, a number of tribe cards based on player count will be dealt from the deck in a row above and below the offer tiles. The cards include both characters that players may choose to add to their personal deck, and events that will be experienced in the near future. In addition, every era begins with a small number of buildings that can be built and that will either grant the player a powerful ongoing ability or an endgame scoring goal on which to focus.
Placing their totem on an available space on the offer track, determines both the turn order and how many cards they may take. If they place further to the left, they’ll get to choose cards early but they may only get to take one card. If they place further to the right, they can take multiple cards, but since they’ll be choosing their cards after the other players. The cards must be chosen carefully from the open display, as each tribe member takes on a specific role that could be required for one of the events that occur four times per age. Only the tribe that is particularly well positioned when the events occur will be victorious.
Mesos is a set collection game with a multitude of strategies to explore and with colourful prehistoric illustrations by Kerri Aitken also a true eye-catcher. A variant for experienced players allows even more strategic decisions.
