Once again, its been a while since I rambled about games and such. Since returning to in-person gaming with my vaccinated friends, we have tackled a lot of great games. The summer saw us living large as Covid slipped to nearly no new cases in our area, but then just like a roller coaster, Delta showed up and the numbers soared. We continue to meet for in person gaming, but are being super cautious about cold like symptoms…primarily because I have a little one that hasn’t hit the age to get vaccinated yet. But I digress…we have been gaming and tackled a bunch that were on our so called ‘shelf of shame’.

First up was Mezo (BUY) … got this one just as we all locked down back in March of ’20. So it sat for quite a while on the shelf. We never thought about playing it on Tabletop Sim just because we wanted to get all the tactile pleasure of playing with those HUGE, CHUNKY Incan Gods. We are very happy we waited.

Mezo incorporates Asymmetrical Incan Gods and area control. What really separates this one from the other area control games out there are how the Gods interact with the board. There are vertices that they move to and from, and those vertices only influence certain regions. The regions they have influence over dictates where their powers most often come into play. Additionally, conflicts in regions are randomly determined with a tile flip…so you are constantly planning for the unknown and jockeying for position with those Gods so you can influence the next area. God powers are also controlled by the use of cards…draw three and pick the one you want to use that round…discarding afterwards…so you have to really consider when each card will be most useful. I won’t go into too much more detail as there are other “how to” videos and articles out there that detail it well. Suffice it to say, there is a lot going on and a lot to plan for.

We thoroughly enjoyed our 3 player game of Mezo…it was fast and furious, clocking in at just an hour and a half with the teach. However, when we amped it up to 5 players this game slammed on the breaks. It was still fun, but the game lasted 4 hours…thats a long time for a game not titled Twilight Imperium lol. There are just so many actions for each round that even as we got faster in our decisions, there were just still so many things to do. I think the sweet spot for this game is the 3-4 player range. The 5th player expansion should really only be sought out for the extra components…not that 5th player.

All in all…I’d say this is in my top three of area control games though. With the others being Heroes of Land Air and Sea, and the next game in this article…SPOLIER ALERT ….. Ankh. On a scale of 1-10…I’d rate Mezo a very solid 9 at the lower player count.

Another game that has stood out recently is the just arrived Ankh. I got my copy a couple weeks ago while we were in the depths of Mezo…so Ankh sat on the shelf for a bit before I got it out to read the rules and set it up. There are a lot of thoughts out there about this one so I won’t go into a ton of detail, but will just share my 2cents.

I got the kickstarter base game and the exclusives that came in the Tomb of Wonders box. I now regret not getting the Pharaoh and the Pantheon expansions…I’ll be picking those up at retail asap. As usual, CMON has knocked it out of the park with these miniatures…they are possibly the most detailed and epic looking minis I’ve seen in a board game. These rival anything Games Workshop has ever produced. And Eric Lang has put together another fantastic game. Now I will warn you, there is a controversial rule in this game where the last two players merge their gods near the end of the game. Our group chose to just ignore that rule and play the entire game as you start the game…everyone out for themselves. We will need to try the merge at some point to see if we like it, but it just didn’t sound appealing to eliminate the last place player and have them play coop the rest of the game with the next to last player in victory points. It may work wonderfully, but we just decided to ignore that rule for now….no biggie really, unless you are a purist about rules.

We found the pace and the mechanics to be as smooth as butter…it was just amazing how easy the rules are to pick up, yet how deep the strategy felt. The two parts that really stood out to us are the action selection and the combat system. The action track really drives the game. As players choose actions they will be moving a pawn up the track and once that pawn reaches the end of the track it will trigger an event and reset. The events are extremely important and only the player that triggers them get the benefit (except conflict…that one just triggers all battles on the board). We found the race to get those events to be extremely intriguing. Gauging when to take an action and risk setting up another player to trigger the event was a game in itself. Simply put, this mechanism really made the game a top three for us…end of story.

Combat was the other thing that really stood out. We LOVE games that don’t include dice mechanics and DO include combat card mechanics like Kemet. This one does just that…you will secretly select a card to add to your unit strength on the board. Some of the cards give you no strength but give you other fantastic benefits like scoring for each of your dead figures after the results are calculated, or gain a benefit from each figure on desert spaces etc… It has a rock, papers, scissors feel as you try to predict what your opponent may play. Another thing to keep in mind is that once a card is played, it’s out of play until you reset your hand with a special reset card. This makes your selections even more important…you may need that +3 strength card down the road…so which battle is more important. We LOVED this system of blind push and pull!

So while many are throwing stones at this one, we thoroughly enjoyed our games of Ankh. We couldn’t stop talking about it after our two games in one night. Oh…and thats the other nice thing…we got two games done in just over 3 hours…thats a great night of gaming if you ask me! As I mentioned above…this one falls into my top three area control games….so you know its going to be a high rating. I’d give this a 9.5…just above Mezo, and just below Heroes of Land Air and Sea.

Just a quick note about another game that has hit the table a lot in the past couple of months … Fireball Island (BUY). Got this one for the family, and it is a huge hit. I had to take the plunge and pick up all the expansions…they are all so much fun. If you like a game that requires a little dexterity (you flick marbles at your opponents), but not a lot…this is a must buy. Nothing quite compares to that Indiana Jones vibe and balls of lava, snakes, bees and boulders (different colored marbles) being flicked down the side of a volcano at your little adventurer. If you are a family gamer…get this one…NOW 🙂