Mesopotamia is played with a board made up of interlocking hexes – the design of which is inspired and ensures the hexes stay put. The game is also pretty good in itself. The game is about making offerings to the gods and the first player to deliver their four offerings to the temple wins. However, delivery of these also involves paying manna and this can only be obtained by having tribes at your or an opponent’s holy places. Players seek to progress by moving their tribes around, building huts to store your offerings before they are ready to be delivered, building holy places, growing your tribe, or taking special cards to be used later in the game.

Our game turned out to be very close. Everyone is trying to accomplish the same thing and as there are lots of things necessary to be done to achieve the eventual goal, players can concentrate on different aspects, making sure it’s not obvious how close people are to winning. I think at the point Mark K delivered his fourth offering to win the game, everyone else would have been able to deliver on their next turn as well.