Cartographers: A Roll Player Tale

Product Information

There's no hidden information in the game and so if players are struggling to remember what they need to do for a particular edict they can simply pick up the cards and check. The version I have includes the skills pack, which lets you spend the coins you earn, which is great. Whilst the monsters are classic fantasy opponents, like a dragon and a troll, the heroes are a little generic. Added to that the fact that many app integrations boil down to glorified timers and a lot of gamers only play games to get devices off the table, games with integrated apps will have some people giving a game the side eye.

It also will work quite over webcam/Zoom/whatever with a number of folks… when an ambush card shows up, each player can just use the solitaire rules for monster placement. I’ve noticed for years a trend that before I finish reading an article my head anticipates he will be less than enthused. If a Ruins card was drawn in the Explore phase, players must place their shape such that it overlaps one of the Ruins spaces on the map. In Spring and Summer the time threshold is 8, so you can flip cards until the number reaches 8; but in Fall and Winter the threshold is 7 and 6, respectively, so you have less time to add to your maps in later seasons. I also was curious as to how the game would expect someone who’s as bad at drawing as me, to “draw” a map.Scoring is carried out across the entire map, regardless if spaces have been scored before in previous rounds, which means that sometimes it's worth placing your shapes not to score in that round, but for the future ones.

What makes it so much fun is the deck effects which terrains are available each game, which scoring cards are used in each game, the interaction with the ambush cards each game, and just drawing tons of silly representations of the terrain on your map because if I am being honest, drawing is not my forte.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.