Méa | Jacob Worgan

Méa: The Tiled Kingdom is a card game like no other developed by Jacob Worgan, Rhys Barrett, Georgij Liasenko, and Tom Malins, from 2014 to 2018, that puts a lot more emphasis on the board you're playing on. Through careful tactics (and a bit of luck) you can sway the tide of battle in your favour. Make a deck from over 500 cards to suit your play style, to lead to victory and control the tiles. However, if this is getting too serious for you, don't worry, because thanks to our light-hearted illustrations (provided mostly by Jacob Worgan) and comical descriptions, you can have a bit of a laugh.

How to Play

And how not to play, I guess?

First thing you need to do is find a friend who can play Méa, has a deck of cards and 9 tiles. You will also need about 20 minutes spare and a deck and 9 tiles for yourself (make sure they're different coloured tiles!).

Decks will consist of anywhere between 18-40 cards. A small deck allows for more refined gameplay and you'll be more likely to draw your very best cards, or the specific cards needed for an amazing combination to win on the spot. A large deck allows for the addition of cards to specifically counter others and enables a gameplan that stretches out the game and starves your opponent's smaller deck of monsters to play.

Before you start both players draw at least 1 card each (can draw as many as they want, but they’ll instantaneously lose if they have 11 or more in their hand).

The initial game board of Méa, featuring a 3 by 3 grid of tiles 4 coloured yellow and five blue.

The board set-up.

The person who goes second is blue.

You can have a maximum of 2 monsters on 1 tile.

At the end of your turn you must draw at least 1 card, but you can draw more! If you EVER have 11 cards in your hand, you lose the game immediately and no other abilities activate.

When you have no cards in your deck, instead of drawing a card at the end of your turn you must OBLITERATE a friendly tile.

Unless stated otherwise, your monsters can EITHER move once OR attack once on your turn.

You may attack monsters that are in adjacent tiles, if you can kill them (if your monster's attack is equal to or higher than the other monster's defence) and you must attack every monster on the tile.

If you have two monsters adjacent to the same tile, you can attack with both of them simultaneously (if both can attack or if one can attack and one was summoned this turn) which attacks every monster on the tile with their combined attack.

If your monster’s defence is equal to or lower than the attack of the monster you’re attacking then your monster is also killed. REMEMBER on your opponent’s turn your monsters have attack equal to the total attack of both monsters on the tile!

When you kill an enemy monster if the tile it was on is now empty and your monster survived: Move your monster onto the tile and if it was an enemy tile, flip it. If there is still a monster on the tile, your monster must stay on the tile it attacked from.

Flipping: Change a tile’s owner to you.
At the start of your turn you may flip ONE enemy tile that has a monster belonging to you on it.
If you happen to flip a tile with an enemy monster on it, the opponent must move it to an adjacent enemy tile with less than 2 monsters on (if this is not possible, the monster is returned to the owner's hand).

Adding: Add a tile belonging to a player, but must be placed adjacent to a tile belonging to the same player.
The player that is told to add the tile, chooses where it is placed, regardless of the owner of the eventual tile.

Destroying: Remove a tile from the board, but the tile must not have a monster on it.

Obliterating: Remove a tile from the board, and any monster(s) on top of it.

Before you start your first turn (or do anything on that turn) count the amount of mana you have to spend this turn. The amount of mana you have is equal to the number of tiles your opponent controls + the number of monsters you control.

For the first three turns the player that went second has 1 EXTRA mana. (This is added after everything else).

You can summon monsters on any tile that you control without an enemy monster on, but they move or attack alone on this turn. However, they can attack simultaneously with a monster that can was not summoned this turn and can attack.

You may attack and play cards at any time on your turn, but drawing a spontaneous number of cards signifies that your turn is done and you cannot do any other actions after that.

A sample card from Méa, featuring the character Selounticia.

A sample card from Méa, featuring an assist called Chemical Vial.

Sample cards

Kill/Destroy – The monster is removed from the game.

When summoned – AFTER you play this card. Does not activate if the monster is destroyed as it comes onto the board.

When killed – AFTER this card has been killed. Also after the tile has been flipped if this monster’s death caused one to flip.

At the end of your turn - AFTER you have drawn the card(s).

At the start of your turn - AFTER you have flipped any tiles you could've flipped due to having a monster on an enemy tile, but BEFORE any other actions.

Take control - The monster in question becomes your monster and whether it can move/attack this turn will be stated on the card.

Of course with any game there are some strange circumstances, if you find anymore that aren't mentioned here and cannot be resolved with the rules above, please let us know via the Q&A forum on the forum page.

If an ability does not activate when it should, ignore it (it is the fault of the player it would have been beneficial to, but don't abuse this, try to play fair).

If an ability cannot activate when it should (if there aren’t enough valid targets) then ignore it, or just that part of the ability. If multiple targets are required, activate it on as many as possible.

If you should have less than 3 mana, you instead have 3 mana. (Added before the second player’s extra mana, so they'd have 4).