Cartographers Review: Does Anybody Have a Map?
Intent: Inspire you to try playing Cartographers!
Have you ever made a map? Well here is your chance, your task is to reclaim the northern lands. You must map the territories and please Queen Gimnax with the terrain she seeks. Cartographers is designed by Jordy Adan, illustrated by Luis Francisco and Lucas Ribeiro and published by Thunderworks Games. In this 1-100 player, you’ll be competing to meet various objectives and collect reputation stars in the span of the year. After the four seasons have passed the reputation stars are summed up and the one who has the most claims the Legendary Cartographer title. Do you have a good eye for cartography?
Overview
As a cartographer your task is to map out the northern lands, claiming them for the Kingdom of Nalos to please and meet the demands of the Queen, Gimnax. You’ll have a full year of the four seasons to earn as many reputation stars as you can as when the year is up, the Queen will determine who in fact did the best job mapping out her desired land.
Each player will get a blank map sheet, a pencil and an opportunity to name their cartographer and create a title and a family crest for the land they’re mapping. The queen’s edicts will be placed labelled A, B, C and D and scoring cards will be randomly selected for each one (lots of variability here.) Now each season, two of the four scoring conditions will be scored so that at the end of the year each scoring condition will be scored twice.
The game will be divided into four seasons. In each season there are multiple turns and three phases in each turn. The Explore Phase, Draw Phase and Check Phase. In the Explore Phase you’ll draw from the explore deck, which has variety of shapes and terrain associated with them. Each player will then proceed to select the terrain and shape they wish to draw (if there is an option), which they do in the Draw Phase. After the Draw Phase, you’ll see if the season has ended by tallying up the time values in the Check Phase. When the season ends, you’ll score for various score conditions, and gain reputation stars for coins you have and lose them for territories adjacent to a monster phase.
You’ll continue playing through the four seasons, each season being slightly shorter than the last and the individual with the most reputation stars at the end wins! Will you be the glorious cartographer of the land, or will your writing and maps simply fail to impress?
First Game Impression
One of the first thoughts that ran through our minds was that this game could be played with essentially any amount of people. I imagined a stadium filled with passionate folk sitting down and playing cartographers passing board to the left or right when ambushes occur. It was certainly a pleasant thought and I hope to see it happen one day, that would be an interesting world record.
This was also one of the first do (flip, roll, flick, toss, and all sorts of other fun actions) and write games. It genuinely blew us away, the story behind why we’re cartographers, the variability, and the dual scoring conditions, which change but you also have knowledge of what scoring conditions occur in the next seasons. It was all a beautiful mix to really inspire us to keep playing and immersing ourselves in this world.
I always can tell I enjoy a game when I finish it and immediately have so many thoughts on how I could have played differently, and those “what if” questions regarding mechanics, gameplay and just silly things I want to try. What if I solely focused on obtaining as many coins as possible or what if I tried to solely focus on the last scoring condition and maximize it. I was ready to keep playing and playing and really diving into this creative and mysterious world.
Thoughts After Five Games
Another way I can tell I enjoy a game is when I simply want to share it with as many friends as possible, now we played Cartographers back in 2019, when COVID-19 was a faint whisper hidden from plain sight. I wanted to show this game to absolutely everybody I knew. There’s playing a game for the first time and just being absolutely enthralled in it, but watching someone have that experience is just as great.
I tried many what if strategies I mentioned earlier and Tylor and I traded victories as we built different lands each time, it was such a joyful experience as it felt as we were creating a different world every half an hour that we did play. The game truly felt different each time and the competition was interesting, I imagined sitting around the table and discussing how we mapped out various lands and arguing why our interpretation or the lands that we visited might be better, but then again that’s the themer in me.
Overall, this is a game that we keep playing from time to time and really challenging ourselves to continue to attempt different strategies and just have bundles of joy creating various lands and trying to outscore each other.
MERIT Report Card
Overall Letter Grade: A-
Strengths: A flip and write that can be played at any player count, which is engaging and provides moments of pure joy. The variation allows for vast replayability and the game is generally easy to learn, to introduce and quite inviting overall to all players. The scoring conditions and gameplay is elegant and smooth.
Areas of Improvement: Integrating the story and theme and background of the Queen would have elevated the game slightly for me.
Memorability: A-
Did this experience stick with me after playing this game?
Absolutely it did, I always wonder what I could have done different, how I could have created a new strategy out of the scoring cards dealt, if I could have maybe something more symmetric and pretty too. That matters sometimes? Overall, it’s a game that enters my brain from time to time and I definitely nudge Tylor to play with me.
How does this game resonate with the folks we introduce it to?
To be honest, it was really interesting sharing this game with so many different individuals. Playing this game many times prior to the pandemic means that we got a lot of perspectives on this game. We do have a friend who is not a big fan primarily because of how surprisingly bad he is at this game, no matter how hard he tries he seems to just do worse and worse, it’s become a funny inside joke between all of us now.
How many memories can be built from this game? A fair amount, what I love about flip and writes is that there’s always an opportunity to have that perfect card flipped. The ambushes are always exciting, the scoring system is interesting as well because you can observe and see what each person is trying. This game just makes me feel all warm inside because of the memories we’ve created with it.
Education: A-
Three things come to mind when it comes to education for Cartographers. Planning ahead, spatial awareness and multitasking.
When it comes to planning ahead, this game does a phenomenal job at educating you on inspiring you to become a planner. I particularly love how scoring looks in this game, you immediately are drawn into all the scoring conditions. The tricky part is whether you will be too distracted by the first season’s goals or if you can plan ahead and attempt to score more points down the road and that entire balance. We’ve all been in that moment where we have various items on the to do list and we immediately go for the ones we are intrigued or want to do, rather than the ones that maybe make more sense in the moment. This game certainly lets you think about that a bit further.
Well spatial awareness is pretty inherent in a mapping game. You’ll have various shapes and sizes you can rotate and flip in order to make sense within your map, you definitely require some spatial awareness to be successful. You don’t have it? Well this game is a perfect and fun way to learn to improve upon that skill. Nothing feels better than drawing the perfect piece with the perfect terrain to make your map shine in reputation.
This game also has a fair bit of multitasking, with ambushes, coins, and the balance between scoring conditions, you will consistently make decisions and attempt to do it all. I love games that don’t overwhelm you with decisions but push you to consider various factors, Cartographers is definitely in this category. On each turn realistically you can only draw one or two shapes but deciding what the terrain should be (if you have a choice) and where to put it and how that decision affects various factors is such an important educational element.
Replayability: B+
Cartographers has quite a lot of replayability. Statistically having a game with the same scoring cards and order of tiles being revealed is nearly impossible.
The maps are double sided so you have two choices to work with, the scoring conditions, the order in which tiles come out, how you strategize and utilize said tiles. The game surely guarantees that each game you play will be a varying experience.
You begin to learn what works though and if you want to win you’ll be moving in a similar direction each game, more maps, and new mechanisms would definitely liven the game up and it appears that’s exactly what is happening with Cartographers Heroes, which we back and are thrilled to dive into!
Imagination: B+
I love the attention to detail and elevating the experience with simple elements such as creating a family crest or naming your land, it really goes a long way when you have these elements that round out the entire gaming experience.
I particularly love the background of the game, I want to know more though, why is the Queen ordering reclamation of the land? What is going to happen next? The story is lost after a few playthroughs and the reason for crafting maps slowly disappears.
I’m the one who typically lives and dives into the theme and really immerses himself in it, but I think this game could be even better if maybe the Queen was present on some of the cards reminding that it is her favored scoring conditions, or even some more nods to the kingdom and the background of this exciting world.
Target: A
This is the game to introduce people to, the game to draw people in and the game to play on various occasions, casually or as a feature in your game night.
The cover is incredibly inviting, the mechanisms are fun and joyful, the story is intriguing and the ease of play is great. Cartographers will win hearts left right and centre and will continue being one of the games that we will introduce people to and bask in their joy of that first experience.
Even if spatial awareness and flip and writes aren’t your type of game, I encourage you to give this one as a shot as it may change your mind.
Tylor’s Stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Cartographers is fantastic and you can play it with so many people. I will continue to say this but I thoroughly enjoy spatial awareness games so this one is a no brainer for me. I like this integration of the flip and write with the seasons and different scoring opportunities. You can try and capitalize on the goals you think are strongest or will get you more points by planning accordingly or you can spread the wealth across all the goals. I am also a fan of the monsters, it’s a nice way to create an interaction between players so there is an added element of difficulty. Overall, this game is a keeper! It's a simple, yet difficult game that is easy to put on the table and typically a blast to play!
Final Thoughts: If you haven’t enjoyed a round of Cartographers, definitely give it a shot, this game is impactful in many ways and the design is elegant and inviting. The replayability is wonderful as is the various educational elements pushing you to be a stronger spatial thinker as well as multitask and plan ahead in various capacities. Let’s map the world of Nalos together.
MERIT Report Card Letter Grade: A-