Game Overview

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.

How to Play

A game of MESOS unfolds over 10 rounds until the Tribe cards deck is depleted. In each round, you need to carry out the following two phases, in order:

Place Totem pawns on the Offer track

Following the order of the Totem pawns on the Turn Order tile, from top to bottom, place your Totem on an available Offer tile (i.e., a tile where there is no other Totem already). Each Offer tile shows a space where you can place your Totem, and the action you must perform (usually the number of cards you can take and the row from where you can take them).

Resolve Actions

In turn, starting from the player with the leftmost Totem pawn on the Offer track and proceeding to the right, resolve the action indicated on the Offer tile where you placed your Totem. With the exception of tile A (available only in 5-player games), which provides 3 Food tokens, all other Offer tiles allow you to choose and take Character and/or Building cards from the upper and/or lower row, as indicated on the tile itself. You can never take Event cards from any row. If an Offer tile allows you to take multiple cards (even from different rows), you can freely choose the order in which to take them. If, on your turn, there are no more available cards in the rows from which you should take them, you receive nothing. If there are still Character cards available, you must take them.

After resolving the action on the Offer tile, return your Totem pawn to the Turn Order tile, placing it in the first available space starting from the top. If the space where you placed your Totem provides a Food bonus, immediately take the specified number of Food tokens. The player placing in the last space must pay 1 Food token if they have one. Only if they don’t have Food to pay, they lose 2 Prestige Points. The arrangement of Totem pawns on the Turn Order tile determines the turn order for the next round.

Taking Character Cards

When you take a Character card, simply add it to your tribe.

There are 6 types of Character cards:

Gatherers During the Sustenance Event, they provide a discount of 3 Food tokens on the total you would have to pay.

Hunters Whenever you add a Hunter without a icon to your tribe, you get nothing. Whenever you add a Hunter with a icon to your tribe, immediately take 1 Food token for each Hunter in your tribe (with or without a icon). Also, during the Hunt Event, you take Food and gain Prestige Points based on the number of Hunters in your tribe.

Builders During the game, each Builder reduces the Food cost of every Building card you take by the amount indicated in top right corner. At the end of the game, each Builder provides the Prestige Points indicated in the lower left corner of the card.

Shamans Shamans can show from 1 to 3 star icons. During the Shamanic Ritual Event, having the majority of these icons provides Prestige Points; having the minority, on the other hand, results in losing Prestige Points.

Artists During the Cave Paintings Event, you can gain or lose Prestige Points based on the number of Artists in your tribe. At the end of the game, you gain 10 Prestige Points for every 2 Artists in your tribe.

Inventors At the end of the game, Inventors provide a number of Prestige Points equal to the number of Inventors in your tribe multiplied by the number of different Invention icons you have. There are 10 different Invention icons.

Taking Building Cards

When you take a Building card, you must pay the Food cost indicated in the top left corner of the card. Then, add it to your tribe. If you don’t have the required Food, you cannot take it!

End of the Round

After all players have finished their turns, perform the following steps in order:

1. Resolve Events

If there are Event cards in the bottom row, they automatically resolve. If Sustenance is among the Events, resolve it last. There are 4 Event cards (Hunt, Shamanic Ritual, Cave Paintings, and Sustenance) in each Era. The same Event shows increasing values from one Era to the next. Remember: You cannot take Event cards to add to your tribe!

2. Discard all Character and Event cards in the bottom row

If there are any Building cards, however, they remain in place.

3. Move all remaining Character and Event cards from the top row to the bottom row

If there are any Building cards, however, they remain in place.

4. Restore the top row

Draw from the Tribe deck a number of cards equal to the number of players +4 and place them above the Offer track to create a new top row.

Events

There are 4 types of Event cards:

SUSTENANCE: Pay 1 Food token for each Character card in your tribe (Building cards do not count). If, after paying all the Food you have, you couldn’t feed all your Characters, you lose the amount of Prestige Points indicated on the Event card for each Character card you couldn’t feed. You cannot choose to lose Prestige Points to avoid paying Food (for example, if you have 2 Characters and only 1 Food token, you must still pay 1 Food token and lose 2 PP; you cannot choose to lose 4 PP and keep the Food). In any case, you keep all your Characters, even if you don’t have enough Food to feed them all.

HUNT: Take 1 Food token and gain the amount of Prestige Points indicated on the Event card for each Hunter in your tribe.

SHAMANIC RITUAL: The player with the most star icons in their tribe gains the Prestige Points indicated on the Event card. The player with the fewest icons in their tribe loses the indicated Prestige Points. In case of a tie, all tied players gain or lose the indicated Prestige Points.

CAVE PAINTINGS: To gain Prestige Points with this event, you must have a minimum number of Artists, as indicated by the Event card. If you have the number of Artists indicated by the Event card in the top line, you lose the amount of Prestige Points indicated. If, on the other hand, you have the number of Artists indicated in the lower line, you gain the indicated amount of Prestige Points for each of your Artists.

End of Game

The game ends at the end of the 10th round when the Tribe deck is depleted, and it is no longer possible to restore the top row. At the end of this round, resolve all visible Events , including those in the top row. As usual, the Sustenance Event must be resolved last. Afterward, add the following Prestige Points (PP) to the total Prestige Points gained during the game:

• PP from Builders in your tribe
• 10 PP for every 2 Artists in your tribe
• PP equal to the number of Inventors in your tribe multiplied by the number of different Invention icons on the respective cards
• PP from Buildings in your tribe (PP illustrated on the card, plus PP derived from endgame effects)

The player who, after this count, has the most Prestige Points wins the game. In case of a tie, the tied player with the most Food wins. In case of further tie, the victory is shared.

Expert Variant

In this variant, all Buildings are drawn at the beginning of the game, then laid out in a dedicated view of the interface. This way, you’ll have knowledge of the Building cards in play from the beginning of the game and can plan your strategy more precisely.

Rebalanced Shamans

In this variant, during Shamanic Ritual events, the player who has the least amount of Shaman Stars does not lose Prestige Points. This variant is only available for 2-Player games.