Cartographers Review - Chairman of the Board

hey everybody today I'm talking about cartographers which is a 20-19 flip and right star board game the game has just been announced as a nominee for the Kennish bill for 2020 alongside the King's dilemma and the crew so the Kennish bill was a slightly more advanced version of of kind of the most famous board game related award out there so it's got quite a lot of buzzers got a lot of praise and it's kind of renowned quite you know quite unanimous T is one of the better flipping right or roll and white star arm games out there so this one has quite a cool theme where we are basically map makers I believe and we will have a personal sheet with kind of a lot of it squares on them some of the squares are already filled in with ruins or mountains and basically the setup of the game is going to be four different objectives out there which kind of go hand in hand with four different seasons and in each of these seasons and a certain combination of those four objectives are going to score so in round one I'm a and B will score in round two I things B and C and then C and D and then DNA so there's lots of different kind of sets you can do as well so some of them might say score X amount of points for each column you've got filled or each row or each set of houses or you know every ruins surrounded by a certain terrain type because the flow of the game is gonna be very simple you're just going to flip a card from a stack of cards and that card is going to show basically one or two things that you can choose to earn fill in on your board where it's going to so a shape basically by kind of kind of a Tetris style shape with a certain terrain type of sign twist you've got I think it's three or four different terrain types you've got the water you've got grass you've got houses and you've got forests as well so you've got four different terrain types there and you're gonna basically one of these reveals you are going to basically fill in your sheet and trying to you know make a nice spatial puzzle trying to fill in as many gaps you can I'm trying to get out and of cater your sheet two to those scoring criteria so they're because at the end of each round and you're going to score based on the criteria there's already set up and there are number different things to take into consideration as well because when you when surround mountains you kind of accumulate coins and the coins give you kind of you know points at the end of the round depending on depending on how many you've ticked off on your sheet so you can accumulate more and more and more as the game goes on so something to explore and keeping the back in mind there but also some of the sheets have or some of the cards have these kind of monster tokens where or monster icons where you actually have to take an opponent sheet and you can draw a certain configuration of shapes with this monster terrain type and that's going to basically be a way to interact with your opponent's trying to cost them as many points as you can to interact with them that way and then they've got to kind of work around the way you've put those monsters on their sheet so a nice little worm a nice little touch there the obviously those decisions each round are gonna be quite interesting because not only you trying to cater for what's scoring this round and all the information is very available at this start of the game so you know in each round what different criteria you're going to score so not only do you have to worry about now you have to kind of set yourself up for the future turns and which is a nice touch balance of the game is is great because obviously everybody's getting the same sheets all the same cards revealed each time so everybody is completely singing from the same hymn sheet there's nobody getting powers that you don't have or anything like that and everybody's going to take their own approach on how to tackle the game which is a really nice thing and always the best player or the most efficient player is going to win every single time and the game mechanisms are very smooth as I said just reveal when those cards filling your shape and trying to cater to those different criteria the game takes pretty about half an hour to play on average you know give or take but and that feels completely right for me it doesn't help state as a welcome at all it has a nice fast flow to it and you can get through the game pretty quickly without any kind of scope of losing your interest uptime as well is really cool because again not a lot of time to you know be subject to analysis paralysis or anything like that because you know what you need you know what the score all the scoring is up there and you know it's not a kind of a brain burner e style game but you you still do have a lot of scope to make sensible and good decisions there's a lot of different setups that you can do in the games and the replayability is really good on this one Briggs and pull the player sheets are two ciders so you've got the kind of the basic sheet where all these squares are kind of available and you've got the reverse side where a big chunk of the the map is already cut out making things a bit tighter and a bit more difficult to place all your different shapes there's all the different scoring criteria and you know for as I put every game you're not going to use all the all the cards so every game is going to feel a bit different than the end than the last so that's that's a nice touch and yeah so a lots do a lots to think about there and the player interaction they know a lot of the time a lot of the criticism these games get all these roll and write or flip and write games is that they are so solitaire you don't really have any interaction with your opponents which to me isn't a bad thing but I like the fact that we're all the way that cartographers has this kind of unique feel to it where you know they've forced player interaction but in quite a fun way because as I said when when those monster cards are revealed you're gonna have to pay salon the board or draw them on your opponent sheet which is knowing you're going to mess that up in terms of the spatial puzzle but if their every kind of square around those monsters that's not covered they're gonna score negative points and so and just as something to throw a spanner in the works and gives you a bit more of an influence of what the other players are doing which is which is really nice aesthetically the game is it's pretty simple but it works well I mean the player sheets are obviously ones that you draw on but they have nice kind of you know a nice layup and a nice map and I've see as you're drawing on the sheet with drawing all the different terrains and the work rivers and that and houses and stuff it does really start to develop and it starts to you know look like a little map which is nice and also that you need scan of scoring criteria cars and that they're nicely Illustrated component quality no complaints whatsoever what you'd expect with the roll and write game so I'm not really much to explore there and the theme as well I think this is a really fresh and original approach to a roll and write style game and most of them are pretty abstract in their approach no basically add numbers together and get synergies and combinations and stuff but this one has that has that kind of more I don't know a more kind of tangible theme to it where you are I said of making these different maps and you know washing we'll have the trains interact with each other and a yet so the theme works really well and this is actually part of the the roleplay universe which I think there's been a two or three games now I'm already in that universe you've got like the game roll player itself which is kind of a dungeon dragon style themed character creation style thing and I forgot what the other ones called it about the prisons but now this is a part of that I don't know if that's really relevant but just something to bear in mind you feel like there's existing games this is kind of the the third part of the trilogy I guess and my setup and teardown time as well is a breeze because I said just give each pair the their own players sheet and I've set up those scores know those different scores and the different months you're good to go and I'm to explain it as well is very simple because I think most people who understand that kind of spatial Tetris style puzzle idea the game has a good kind of cadence to it because also you're as the game goes on you're trying to fill more of those objected up you're going to score more and more points the game goes on but also you're going to be more subject to restrictions as the as the game develops because you're going to run out of space and some other cars might say you must cover one of these ruins already printed on the board and keeping those options open can be a can be a problem so you have weighing up these decisions there's something else do you ever think about and I'm scalability as well is it's just fantastic because as I said it's one of those bingo style games where everybody's playing at the same time you're not really waiting for other players at all and which is a really nice touch and if I had to compare this to anything else obviously there are so many of these facial puzzle style games with all these different you know Tetris style shape see what you patchwork you or the movie Rosenberg series there are so so many but something that also struck me as a direct comparison would be I love sky and because of the the scoring criteria where you have those four different objectives and they're going to score in different combinations each round which is pretty much dead on comparison with Isle of Skye so um you know if you do like the game's art this is something definitely bear in mind but I can definitely see how this game has been nominated for the Kennish bill and personally I would actually give it I don't know and why this hasn't been normally for the normal children jars because it's not it's not complex at all I didn't there's anything here that a brand new you know a family weight gamer couldn't understand or comprehend it's very simple it's very clean that said I I think it's a really nice put together game there's you know enough to think about to keep you engaged it's a nice kind of a game that you kind of take ownership of your little board with it's engaging it's fast enough to you know to use as a filler but still has enough meat to it to not just be a throwaway style game yeah it's a really nice put together package nothing you know terribly original here but as I said it's just it's just a nice kind of wholesome game and it's nothing here that not there or nothing there this unnecessarily tacked on it's very clean it's um it's that easy to introduce somebody and it's just a really fun experience so it does get a good value for me which is a seven out of ten I've enjoyed it I'll happily play this any time and I think it's a worthy nomination for the Kennish bill and I think it's got a well I imagine the crew is probably going to win the game and because of that's blown up but this is more than a worthy nominee so that's my thoughts on cartographers a really solid flippin right style game with a nice visual puzzle and a really cool theme so if you have enjoyed the review piece hit like and subscribe my channel and check out my other videos too you can also follow me on Instagram or support me on patreon and I'll put the links below I for everybody else I'll see you next time on chairman of the board bye