Cartographers is one of those great games that you can teach to someone very new to the hobby and introduce them to the concept of a flip & write but still have more experienced gamers smile when they see it come to the table.
As a flip & write, you can play with an infinite number of players, so long as everyone can see the cards. As someone who has struggled to find games that work at the right player count for my group, Cartographers is always a safe bet.
I played this at a game cafe with a group of friends where we just patiently passed around the card after it was flipped so everyone got a moment with it. Another time, two friends brought their copies and the one used their deck to search for cards drawn, keeping the other table informed. This afternoon, I attended a tournament with about 20 people and the cards were displayed on a big monitor displayed for everyone to see.
What is Cartographers? The name is a bit misleading, it’s more like…kingdom planner? You are playing out a full year in the kingdom and each season has two scoring goals. Spring is AB, Summer is BC, Fall is CD and winter is DA. You draw on a mostly blank map - a few mountains already fill in spaces - attempting to arrange the random shapes and terrain that appear on the cards flipped during that season. When the season ends (there are numbers on each card that tell you how much time has passed) you add up your score - a combination of the two challenges, coins and monsters. After the year is done, you add up your score for the 4 seasons and whoever has the most points wins!
Oh, you saw that bit about monsters? Yes, each season, a monster is shuffled into the deck and if they appear, you pass your map to the person next to you and they draw the invaders onto your map. Any exposed sides of the monster blocks make you lose points so now you have to find a clever way to surround them while still working towards your goals.
While the original game only comes with some pencils, most people dusted off that box of crayons in their closet and matched the colors of the terrain types. When the Collector’s Edition box was released, Thunderworks slid a small pack of colored pencils inside, confirming what we all knew - this game is more fun when you’re coloring in your map! Some people get really extra and draw the terrain and goblins.
And, like most flip & write games, it can be played solo which means you can take all the time in the world coloring in your wheat fields, developing your forest tiles or drafting your villages to be more than just polynomial pieces, but little works of art.
Cartographers is part of the Roll Player universe, though I have not played any of the games in that series beyond this one. There is one large expansion - Heroes - and then lots of maps that come with a few extra cards to change up the game. I finally played the volcano map this weekend and it added some new cards, which caused lava to flow out of the volcano into the center of the map!
Cartographers is a solid game and one that is a must-have for anyone who is playing solo or playing with all their friends.