Cartographers: A Roll Player Tale

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Also, some edicts, such as Stoneside Forest, give you reputation stars for connecting certain terrain together. Or is it better to draw the larger shape, covering more of your map and potentially unlocking more scoring potential for the objective card? They are all fairly straightforward, but there’s nothing worse than curating a beautifully drawn map only to realise it won’t be scored highly because it doesn’t satisfy the Edicts correctly. The digital version was also listed as one of the best 2020 board game applications by Ars Technica.

But here's the thing: they add enough complexity to the game and don't repay that complexity enough that I will almost never use them outside of solo play. It’ partly because I don’t want to ‘solve’ those games (looking at you, Clever) and unbalance the games I play with the missus; partly it’s because I like a tad more ‘game’ for my solo experiences.Well, in the same way as the original, you flip over explore cards with terrain types and a shape (or two) to draw onto your map.

This is fine, and I'm guessing it's better with other players who are familiar with the game, but I don't see myself using this one much. If one of the shapes has a gold coin next to it and you decide to draw in that shape then you’re going to get to color in one of the coins on your map sheet (we’ll get to this momentarily). The majority of the games that we play are going to take a reasonable number of sessions and playthroughs to fully understand every possibility that they offer. During the final 'Check' phase, if it is the end of the season, players earn points based on the goals stated on the relevant letter cards and lose one point per empty space adjacent to a monster. Monsters are the big wrench in your plans, as monsters score negative points for each empty space they touch, and your neighbor gets to decide where they go.

You might have done badly at A in Spring but that doesn’t stop you doing well at it by the time you get to Winter! If the sum of the numbers on the top left of the Explore cards are equal to, or greater than the number on the top left of the Season card, the season ends and players will total their points based on the Edict cards of that season. Rift Lands mean that each player draws a 1×1 square anywhere on their map of the terrain type on the card. In later seasons, when that extra coin might only be scored once or twice, it may be wise to go for the larger shape. The game received positive reviews, and was nominated for the Kennerspiel des Jahres, but lost to The Crew.