Cartographers: A Roll Player Tale

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Each turn a card is drawn given you a shape or two to choose from and a terrain or two also. You will each sketch one of these terrain/shape combos on to your map, anywhere you like. Depending on the scoring cards you might want to cover ruins or place next to mountains or near the edge of the board. To add some complexity, there are the aforementioned mountains that are already printed on the sheets. They provide a coin bonus if you surround them on all four sides and are also featured in several goal cards. Some terrain cards also require you to place them over ruins, which complicates your job a bit more. Other cards will give you the option to place a larger tile or choose a smaller tile and get a coin bonus on top.

Each Season card has a different number printed in the top left corner of the card. This is a sort of time counter that dictates when the season will come to an end. This number corresponds to the numbers printed on the Explore cards. During each season Explore cards will be flipped up one at a time and, in addition to dictating which shapes and features may be drawn that turn, these cards will also use up time as well. For instance, Spring has a time counter of 8. If you turn up an Explore card that has a 2 printed on it then you have used up 2 of your 8 total time. If you ever reach or exceed that number with a card flip, that season comes to an end once everyone draws in their features on their maps. Players will score at the end of each season based on that season’s scoring conditions before moving on to the next one. Pencil Me In The map sheets are also double sided. One side is a normal map with the reverse side containing a cavern in the middle, restricting your available space and thus making it more difficult. For the Great City in scoring space A, you can expect to score 10 points in Spring if you plan on taking the larger tiles, but as much as 40 points in Winter. Three Sisters combines drafting game mechanics with the classic Roll and Write formula. The result is a combo-heavy game that makes gardening feel truly thrilling. While real gardens take months to bear fruit, you can get all the satisfaction of a green thumb in under an hour by playing Three Sisters. a b c d Law, Keith (26 February 2020). "Best new board game apps of 2020". Ars Technica. Archived from the original on 7 July 2022 . Retrieved 19 November 2021.Ruins: If one or more ruins cards are revealed, each player must draw one of the available shapes, depicted on the next explore card that is revealed, so that it overlaps a ruins space on their map. If not possible, instead draw a 1×1 square anywhere on their map and fill it with any terrain type. Once the players have completed and scored for Winter, then they’ll add up their scores from each season and the person with the highest final score is the winner. Thoughts Components wise, this is typical roll and write, or flip and fill stuff. A pad of 100 map sheets, double sided with one side being more of a basic game and the other side having a wasteland of unusable squares in the middle to create more of a challenge. Pencils wise, you’ll notice that my score sheets in the photos, I don’t draw the terrain, I use a set of colored pencils instead. In the box, you simply get four golf pencils and are told to draw symbols on squares to know what they represent. I’m not artistic, so I just went with colors and it works perfectly for me. Cards are the only other component and they are a fine quality, although they are a bit thin and my fat fumbly fingers have marred a couple of them already trying to pry them off a solid surface. The theme is a little pasted on (what roll and write theme isn’t), overall it works really well. Even though my map making skills aren’t the best, I enjoyed creating my map and even found myself telling little stories along the way. “Oh, there is a village here right by the mountain for easy access for the workers.” That being said, players are still going to primarily be going after those goal cards. Each player loses one reputation star for each empty space adjacent to a monster space on their map, writing that number in the corresponding box. (If an empty space is adjacent to multiple monster spaces, the player still only loses one reputation star for that space.)

The conditions of goals vary: sometimes you’ll need to place forests on the edge, then you’ll need a large village, but it must not touch a mountain, or maybe your water will only score if it touches a mountain. At the start of a round, a pool of dice is rolled and assigned to various tasks on a board. You’ll choose which dice to take on your turn, which grants you its action as well as the result on the die, which is used to plant or water crops in your garden. You’ll do this by filling in boxes on your garden sheet – fill every box in a section of the garden, and you’ll score points. Now in each season, you will be scoring two of the queen’s edicts. Edict A & B in Spring, B & C in Summer and so on, until each edict is scored twice. Score your two edicts. Add the number of coins you have gathered, and deduct points for each unfilled square that is adjacent to a monster square. At the end of the round, regather the explore cards and add in one more hero and ambush card. Any heroes or ambush cards that came out are discarded. Rooting For The Wrong TeamRemember that a group of 5 houses only needs a single tile to get to six, which means a single Riftlands could get you there if you plan for it (which means never put a Riftlands house into a group of 3-4 houses, as any two tiles can make six even without it), which means you might even get 16, then 24 points. Mastrangeli, Tony (17 April 2020). "2019 Board Game Award Winners". Board Game Quest. Archived from the original on 1 September 2021 . Retrieved 19 November 2021. There’s also a single-player mode against a high score, where the monsters are placed with a pair of very simple rules. Although the solo mode is satisfactory, I see the potential for a more structured, campaign-like mode, especially since this is sort of implied in the narrative on the box. Now take the Scoring Cards; you’ll notice that there are four of each set signified by a red, green, blue or yellow symbol. Shuffle each set of Scoring Cards and then draw one from each set, and place these four cards, at random, below the four Edict Cards. These give players the Edicts – the scoring conditions they’ll be working towards – so make sure everyone can see them! One thing I found frustrating was when the hero cards came up before the monsters. You end up placing them in really odd spots, which end up being nowhere near the monsters as your opponent places them. I’m also more excited about the monsters than the heroes. Whilst the monsters are classic fantasy opponents, like a dragon and a troll, the heroes are a little generic. The monsters also have some really interesting abilities. Like the ever-spawning zombie plague, which grows exponentially if you don’t pay attention to it.

Each time that an Explore card is drawn, there are three steps to follow. First step is to flip the top Explore card for everyone to see. This is called the Explore phase. Although I haven’t yet tried them, there are a handful of expansions available. They mostly add new map sheets with different layouts. Since I can tell that the gameplay on the original two layouts is different, it’s fair to assume the same from expansions. Each player is given a map sheet to map the lands as they are discovered. The map sheet starts exactly the same for each player. You’ll have mountains and some ruins marked on the map already. 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. If they can’t overlap a Ruins space, or there are none left, then they must draw a 1×1 square with any terrain type anywhere on the map.

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In Fall and Winter, coins are just a solid bonus, but not always the right choice. Predicting How Much a Card Can Score

I am not sure if the small expansion that is in my copy comes with the retail version or not. The expansion adds some Skills to the game. At the beginning of the game three skills are randomly drawn, and each season a player may pay the coins noted on the skill to use one of the skills. These skills of course will allow you to break the rules in your favor. Allowing you to draw shapes differently than assigned or different terrain types than what was drawn. They add a bit more flexibility, which is always welcome in games where sometimes, you are just going to paint yourself into a corner. We haven’t used the skills too much early on, the need to have more flexibility grows as the game progresses, so most of the time any skill use is saved for the Fall and Winter seasons. Finally, and perhaps the most important step, each player writes a name, a title and draws a family crest on their map sheet (this crucial process often adds 5+ minutes to the playtime!). So far, I’ve played just under 10 games and it’s not getting old yet – but I suspect that after a couple of dozen plays and after you’ve seen a fair amount of objective permutations, it will be. But by then, the game will pay for itself anyway.There are four scoring cards with two our of the four being scored every round. Each card is scored twice per game. Players can also acquire points for gold coins earned. They lose points for monsters that are not surrounded by other terrain types. At the end of the forth season, all players tally up their points and the one with the most points is the winner. Take time at the beginning of the game to familiarise yourself with how each Edict works. 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. You might still win the unofficial “Most Beautiful Map” award though…. The symbols on the tiles are spot on. They are distinct enough, so you easily tell the difference between a tree and a monster, yet fast and easy to draw. Even if you’re, like me, not a big drawer, you’ll have no problems recognizing the images. You can use your own symbols or even colors for greater clarity – there are some true works of art created by the players on BGG. Scalability and playing time The final terrain type is monsters. When a monster card is drawn, you’ll pass your sheet to the player on your left (or right), and she will place that tile in for you. Since every adjacent square to monsters scores negative points, it’s in their best interest to make it as difficult for you as possible to box in those monsters afterward. Of course, you’ll do the same to them.