Then we lay out tribe cards above and below this middle section. These consist of character cards and event cards, divided into three ages, which we go through in one game. There are also a few building cards, which are initially placed in the upper row. A few more food markers for the start and the game can begin. And it's actually quite simple...

In player order, each player first takes their tribe leader and places it on one of the offer tiles. In the next phase, this determines from which row you can select character cards for your own tribe. The first offer tiles only allow you to choose a single card - either from the top or bottom row. The cards further back then allow you to choose two or three cards.

Why would someone voluntarily choose just one card when they could choose more cards? Well, leader on the cards further to the left play earlier, and so there is still a large selection, because new cards are only added at the end of the round.

So, the right choice is important! There are a total of 6 different characters, all of which have different effects. The hunter provides food, which should be understandable. Builders make it cheaper to buy new buildings. And gatherers provide food when it comes to an event that demands feeding your own people. The other characters are important for the various scorings, which are either triggered by events or take effect at the end of the game. The more cards you collect of one type, the better, but naturally you can't take care of all the cards simultaneously. This naturally results in different strategies, some of which are changed by upcoming events - which can have drastic negative effects if you don't have enough characters of one type, but which can also provide you with plenty of victory points - but some of which are simply changed by card luck.

In any case, at the end of the round, the remaining - unselected – characters and events from the top row are placed in the bottom row and the remaining characters from the bottom row are completely removed from the game. Events in the bottom row, however, are carried out. And so you have to be quick, because not only can the other players snatch cards away, but also because the cards come off the table after two rounds at the latest.

However, this only applies to the character and event cards. Buildings remain in the selection for longer and are only moved to the next row (or out of the game) at the start of each new era.

All of this is works quite quickly. Once you have understood the game’s main mechanics (which should be familiar within one single round), you need to have a good eye for which cards will bring you the most benefit during the next scoring and the final awarding of victory points.

At the start of the game, you normally still struggle quite a lot with supplying your characters, as there is an event in each age in which every character in your tribe must be supplied with food. If you don't manage to do this, you lose victory points, which can sometimes be quite a loss. Later in the game, however, the positive events outweigh the negative ones, although you should still make sure that your own tribe is supplied with food, as the penalties for a shortage are highest in the final round.

All in all, Mesos is a fast-paced game, not much more difficult in terms of complexity than for example Kingdomino. It picks up speed with 4 or 5 players, but I also really enjoyed the two-player games with my son. Personally, I also like the graphics quite a lot, but tastes differ here.