Mesopotamia, the Board Game
We are so going to play this in New York:
Description:
At the center is the Ziggurat where you must bring 4 sacrifice tokens to win. But to deliver them you must have sufficient Mana reserved by praying in temples, which players build. You bring your sacrifices from 4 huts which you build, and you can breed at an empty hut to increase your people. To build huts, temples and Mana, you use rocks and timber that you collect from quarries and forests.
Each turn, you can move 5 places, placing new tiles if you go off the map, seeding stones or timber if they are quarries or forests, carrying resource to empty plains if you want to build. Building a hut or temple, breeding, or drawing an action card ends your turn, and you bank Mana if you have people on temples. So gradually, you build up your clan and have them do different things. Some stand at temples to pray, some explore and carry resource, others help build or breed. And when you deliver a sacrifice, you kill the messenger too, thus needing to breed more.
It’s so hard to know where to start here. You lose a turn if you stop to breed? Sam never won this game. And then there’s the messenger shortage after the sacrifice. No wonder Kami’s holding on to her priestesses.
I mean, messenger breeding. Who knew?
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Oh.
My.
God.
I must have this game. Must, must, must, MUST. Where ever did you find it?
I was searching eBay, keyword Mesopotamia, and this popped up. The seller had it up for some nose-bleed price, saying the game was $90 so I did a search for it and found it all over the place, including Amazon for $38. And one of the places has EXTRA CARDS you can get for $3. We must have the extra cards:
Mesopotamia: Expansion Cards $3.00
Add To Cart Try these cards in your next game of Mesopotamia! The Mesopotamia Expansion cards contain seven cards and four new designs: Piety, Thunderstorms, Epidemic, Reflection.
I need Piety cards.
I wonder if the game has Breeding cards?
Yes, I’m getting it, too. And one of us must bring it to NYC. To go with the mojitos and kareoke.
Too fun! I gave my mom and dad a “Global Warming” game, so there are, of course, thunderstorms and epidemics (plus volcanoes and, I believe, plagues of insects), but there is no piety and no breeding.
I think it is important to breed at the end of a turn. If you know you have other things to do, you can’t give it your full attention. Also desirable to wait ’til you find an empty hut. This sounds like one of those complicated games (like “Global Warming”), where it takes a while to get the hang of what constitutes a “turn”, but it’s a lot of fun just to read the directons and say “WHAT???!”.
Goddesses are in the news, too. This article was posted last week:
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/06/14/news/goddess.php
Not Mesopotamian, but still very interesting.
Thank you very much, Laura, I copied that to the Goddesses folder.
I think we should use that. Kammani sees an old newspaper article and comments.
BoardGameGeek.com usually has reviews of this sort of game. If it’s anything like “Puerto Rico”, it should be fun. I love it, and might have to get a copy.
I think the instructions are more along the lines of you can move until you take action, so think about whether you want to move or act more on each turn. Often in games like this there are several steps - move, place resources, pull resources, trade, repopulate - so those directions just state the end condition. Although needing to breed more messengers does sound ominous, I agree.
That sounds like a wonderful game! And one Shar probably show own. I mean, who doesn’t want a game where you can breed? And there is piety.
I hope you guys transcribe a bit of the playing for us when you come back from NY.
But are there dogs?
Oh, DUG. (sighs)
Why seek thou for such dyslexic enlightenment?