Mezen

Hello. So, today I want to talk to you about the game Mezan. And this is a really cool shifting pattern game where each round you are going to be scoring something different within your 5x5 grid. And you're going to be manipulating it and moving things around and you can only see what's coming one round ahead.

So, you can plan ahead a little bit, but you also have to be fairly tactical in how you are playing. And this is a one to five player game. and I have been really enjoying it. It definitely has like a wintry vibe. So, here you have the board and it's just, you know, your board that you're going to go around.

Everybody will have one of these point trackers that is going to be in the same shape as their puzzle pieces. And then if you manage to lap the board, you get a 50 and a 100 token. So, you can keep track of that as well. And then around the board is where the pattern cards are going to go. So you have a pretty big deck of pattern cards and you're only going to play with 10 each game.

So there's these little symbols at the bottom and you'll pick one of the symbols. I picked the kind of teardrop looking one. And you will take all 12 cards of that and give those a good shuffle. And then you are going to arrange them 10 of them around the board. and two will go back into the game unknown.

So those are going to be your goals for each round of the game. So you will flip over the first two. So round one, we are scoring if the hedgehog is in that position. Each one of them will get three points. And this one, if you have any of the spruce trees in that position, you will get three points.

So we'll play round one. We'll score it and then we will flip over the next card. So, like I said, you can always see one round ahead. So, you will have a set of tiles. Everybody gets their own and they're shaped differently. They match your score token so you know what yours is. You're going to mixoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo so that you can't see it.

And then you are going to form a 5x5 grid. Um, obviously you would not be looking as you do this. You just would be putting it out. I need more room. And then you will give the first player marker to the first player. And that will rotate every turn. And this is kind of like an analog version, a little bit of some of the match three games that you maybe play on your devices.

So I have my 5x5 grid. And if I am the first player, I'm looking at what our goal is for the round, which is to try and get hedgehogs in the corner. And I'm doing pretty well here because I already have two. And if we can get one in the middle space. So what I'm going to do on my turn if I'm the first player is I'm going to announce an animal.

So feel like I'm doing okay on the hedgehog. So I'm going to focus on the spruce trees. And spruce trees are only on the black side of your cards. One side is white, one side is black. So, I'm going to call out fox. And every fox that is connected in my group, I get to take out. And you have some little amulet tokens.

You have a limited number of them in the game that you can use to exclude an item if you don't want to do it. Or if let's say I had another fox right there, I could use one of my amulets to now make this a connected group. So I would take all of my foxes as would everyone else because I'm the first player.

I get to choose the animal. Everything then shifts down. Amulet goes away. And I flip my cards and I look at them and I get to place them back in any way that I want. They didn't super help me like I was hoping to, but I'm going to place them so that I get some familiar things together so that I have more options for flipping.

Okay, so mine now looks like this. So, everyone will score round one. I would get six points. And when we go to flip up round three, so that we see what's coming. We're going to play round two and see what's coming. This goes to the next player and they get to call out an animal. So maybe they call out fish.

So, I pick a group of connected fish. Everything moves down. I flip those. Oh, there's one of those spruce trees. And I place them where I want. We continue to do this over the course of 10 rounds, scoring each round. At the end of round five, every card that you have flipped to the dark side, you're going to get one point for.

And at the end of round 10, every card that is on its lighter side, you're going to get one point for. Other than that, it is simply the points that you scored during the rounds. Whoever has the most points wins. You can also play this solo, which I really, really love. So, you get fewer amulets to start with, but you get it's a beat your own score thing.

There is a grid in the game that kind of tells you how you did. You get more choice and you can do a little bit more um puzzling and preparing because you're picking the animals each round. But, I just think this game is so clever. It looks great. It's really puzzly. It's fun to play with other people.

So, I am loving this one. I would love to know if you have played it. What do you think of it? Give me a like and a follow and I'll keep bringing you more board game content. Thanks. Bye.