Cartographers - How To Play

[Music] hi and welcome to watch it play - my name is rodney smith and in this video we're going to learn the 1 to 100 player game cartographers designed by jordi aden and published by federal work schemes to help sponsor this video the Queen wishes to reclaim the northern lands and she sent you all out to map its various regions and she'll reward the katara fer who can find her most desired landscapes but it won't be easy because things lurk in those dark unexplored territories so join me at the table and let's learn how to play to set out give each player one of these double-sided map sheets but players must all agree to use the same side for a particular game we're going to set for two players so we've pulled off two sheets there are a total of 100 sheets included in the game and that's why it says you can have 1 to 100 players but if you run out you can also download extras for free from the Thunder works website now give each player one of the included pencils for come in the game so if you have more players than that you'll need to provide some extras at the top of your sheet you can write in your name and optionally a title a name of the region you're exploring and if you want to you can even draw in a family crest these are the 4 edict cards which you'll order in a row like I have here a B C and then D the cards with these backs are the scoring cards and you'll sort them into four stacks according to there are four different backs and then you'll shuffle them separately and randomly place one card from each stack face up below the edicts in any random order the rest you can then return to the box these are the four season cards which you'll arrange into a face-up pile starting with spring and summer fall and winter now take the cards with this back known as the explore cards and find amongst them the four ambush cards which will have illustrations of monsters on their front and a purple border here at the bottom you'll shuffle these into their own facedown pile and then take one of them unseen to shuffle into the rest of the explore cards which you'll set facedown nearby than the rest of these ambush currents just so they don't get confused with the other ones that you have out you can set aside but keep them nearby because we'll need those later and that's the setup in cartographers players will be mapping sections of land on their personal sheet from the shapes that are revealed from the deck all the while trying to avoid monsters that might pop up and satisfy the scoring requirements set out by the Queen's Edict the game is played over four seasons broken in deterrence and each turn is made up of three phases starting with the explore phase here you'll flip over the top card of the explore deck so that everyone can see it and let's just stop here and take a quick tour of what these will show most will show some combination of terrain types within these square boxes for example here we have forests and farms as well as villages and water and then below that you'll find either one or two different shapes and sometimes a coin as well these are the standard types of cards you'll find but you may come across some other ones as well but we'll discuss those a little bit later with the card revealed move to the draw phase we're at the same time each player will choose one of the shapes shown drawing it for themselves on their own map and then filling it in with one of the types of terrain that are offered now in this case there's only one shape here so the players will each have to draw this one but then they can pick to either turn it into forests or farmland you draw the shape by outlining the boxes on your sheet but you cannot overlap spaces you already filled in from previous turns or draw outside of the borders of the map these are mountain spaces and you can't overlap these either now if you had agreed to use the other side of the sheet for this game these are wasteland spaces and they can't be drawn over either now you are allowed to rotate or flip the shape that you picked as long as you keep the original arrangement of squares for example I might choose to flip this shape and then draw it in on my sheet like this once you have your outline drawn you will fill in the spaces with the chosen terrain type to make it obvious which type of terrain it is it doesn't have to be an exact drawing like you see here sometimes for the forest I'll just draw circles or if I'm feeling creative I'll keep a couple of colored pencils nearby and then just color in the whole space again the most important thing is that anyone especially you can look at your own map and know exactly which type of terrain you chose as we'll see as the game goes on you'll be receiving new shapes to draw and fill in on your sheet and eventually as your sheet fills up it may be impossible to legally draw the given shape and if so then you must outline just a single space and then fill it in with one of the given terrain types now just keep in mind if there is a shape on the card that you can legally fit somewhere as we obviously can here then you must draw that shape you can't choose to ignore it and just draw in a single square now I realize we're getting a little ahead of ourselves because now I've drawn a second card and started filling in other spaces on the map which wouldn't happen just yet but let me finish filling in these spaces so I can tell you about another feature that you'll find on these sheets as I mentioned earlier these spaces here are mountains and if you ever fill in all four spaces directly adjacent to a mountain in other words not including diagonals then you fill in the first available coin on this row going from left to right now some shapes on cards will show a coin beside them and if you ever pick that shape to draw let's just say we decided to put let's say two forests down here in this corner drawing this shape then you would also cross off the next available coin on your track and we'll see the value of these coins a little bit later all right let's go back to talking about the steps of a turn so first of all you have the explore phase where you draw a card from the top of the deck and then you have the draw phase reach person picks one of the symbols shown and fills it in with one of the types of terrain so I've reset my sheet here so I only have one symbol again and it's a farmland my opponent drew at that shape and in a different orientation and turned it into forest when all the players are ready you then move to the Check phase where you'll check to see if the current season has ended and to do this you look at the values shown here in the top left hand corner of the current season's card which in this case is an 8 you now add together all of the time values from the explore cards revealed so far we only have one here so our total time is 2 if the total ever meets or exceeds the time threshold the current season ends and you proceed to the next season which we'll talk about in a moment if the total is less than the time threshold the current season continues and you'll start a new round with a new explore phase now as you continue to flip over new cards overlap them like this so the values can be easily seen when checking for the end of the season but with that understood there are also some special cards in this deck which we haven't discussed so let's do that now sometimes you'll flip over an ambush card which will have a purple border at the bottom and a picture of monsters attacking when this happens check the direction of the arrows shown here each prior then passes their map sheet to the player in that direction and then you'll draw the shape shown on your opponent's sheet you'll follow all the normal rules when drawing this shape but then fill it in with the monster terrain type symbol and if there's no space to draw the depicted shape on the ambush card just draw a single box anywhere and fill it in with the monster type symbol with the monster shapes drawn you then pass all map sheets back to their original owners and you discard the ambush card from the game returning it to the box the problem with these ambushes is that each player will score negative points for empty spaces around the monster squares on their sheet but we'll see when that happens a little bit later when revealing explore cards you may uncover ruins like this and if so immediately flip another card until you reveal a regular one you then draw a shape from it as normal except that at least one of its spaces must overlap one of the ruins spaces that are pre-printed on your sheet if you cannot legally draw one of the shapes so that it overlaps or ruins then you instead must a single square and fill it in with any one of the terrain types shown now during the game you can cover up a ruined space with any explore card shape that is revealed even if a ruins card wasn't revealed first but this may mean that you won't have any of these left if you are required to draw over a ruins when one of these cards is flipped later if after it ruins is revealed the next card that you draw is also a ruins then just ignore it and keep drawing until you get to an explorer card which you will then use to draw its shape over top of one of the ruins symbols on your map on the other hand if after revealing a ruin you get an ambush then stop and resolve the ambush effect and then when that is done draw another card and the ruins effect will then apply to its shape eventually you'll have revealed enough of the Explorer cards so that during the check phase the total values shown on them will equal or exceed the value of the current season which will cause that season to end and when that happens you'll now gain or lose some points first look at the season card to see which of these two scoring cards are now to be resolved here it says a and B so we'll be scoring these and ignoring any others each person now gains points based on how well their map meets the requirements of the scoring cards for this season in the illustrations stars represent victory points and you also have an explanation down here to explain how this particular card works so for example this one says that you score one point for every forest space adjacent to the edge of the map so for me with this configuration here I would score one two three four points which I would then fill in to the edict a space shown here which I'm trying to do upside down at the bottom of the sheet you will find scoring sections for each of the seasons this one is for spring this one is for summer and so on sometimes the card will refer to a cluster for example this one says that you earn eight victory points for every cluster of six or more village spaces a cluster is any group of connected spaces that all share the same terrain type and to be considered connected spaces the squares must share at least one full edge with each other so here we have 12 spaces that make up a single village cluster down here we have a separate cluster of two village spaces these are not connected because they only touch on a corner so if we were scoring for this card we would earn 8 points for this cluster here and nothing for this one it's important to realize that once spaces are connected you cannot break them apart for example to make one of these clusters we need only 6 spaces and there's 12 here but we can't say these are two separate clusters of six and then score this twice because all of these are connected as one big cluster if a card ever refers to filled in spaces you count any that are filled in of course and that will include monster and mountain spaces ruins are not considered filled in until terrain has been drawn over top of them like we see here we won't go through how all the scoring cards work as they are explained on the cards themselves and at the back of the rulebook if you need some additional help going back to our scoring for spraying we would also score edict B which we talked about earlier and unfortunately on my sheet I didn't have any clusters of six or more villages so I scored zero points for this one which I marked into the B space here in this space we're now going to score our coins to do this just total up the number of coins that you've filled in on the track here so this case it's a 2 for me which hopefully I'm drawing correctly again despite being upside down finally you lose one point for every empty space adjacent to a monster on your map not including diagonally if a space is adjacent to multiple monsters like this one is you just lose a single point for it so in this case I'd lose 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 points I'm going to want to get these spaces filled in very soon you mark any monster losses here and then you total all of these values together and put the final amount into this space and yes I realize my score is minus 1 I wasn't paying attention to the scoring cards when I was filling in space is on the map during my examples with the season scored you now remove its card from the game revealing the next season and these will show a new combination of edicts that will be scored at the end of its season but also be sure to check the value here as some of them will be different as time goes on either way you now collect all the Explorer cards that were played including any of that were in the deck and you add to these the next card from the ambush deck shuffling all of this together into a new Explorer deck and then continuing with a new round and I should point out if an ambush card didn't come out during a previous round that means you might have two or more in future rounds now eventually when you get to the end of the winter season the game is over and now it's time to determine the winner to do this each player will total all the points they have from each of the seasons marking that final value here and the player with the most points wins if there's a tie the type player who lost the least total number of points to monsters wins and if there's still a tie the tied players share the victory you'll also find rules for a solo mode included at the back of the rulebook but those I'll leave you to discover on your own otherwise that's how you play a cartographer now if you have any questions about anything you saw here feel free to put them in the comments below and I'll gladly answer them as soon as I get a chance you'll also find forms for discussion pictures other videos and lots more over on the game's page at BoardGameGeek and I'll put a link to that in the description below and if you found this video helpful please consider giving it a like subscribing and clicking that little Bell icon so you get a notification any time we post a new video but until next time thanks for watching [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] you [Music]

Channel: Watch It Played

Views: 94,859

Keywords: How To Play, Miniatures, Rules, Tutorial, Board Game, Watch It Played, Card Games, Cartographers, Learn, Game Rules, Learn How To Play, Board Games, Tutorials, Instructions, Thunderworks Games, Instructional, Play Throughs, Tabletop, Learn To Play

Id: yCt5JFkbOvc

Length: 15min 25sec (925 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 18 2019