Tapestry - How To Play

[Music] hi and welcome to watch it played my name is Rodney Smith and in this video we're going to learn the 1 to 5 player game tapestry designed by Jamie Stagg Meyer and published by Stoudemire games who helped sponsor this video you'll start with a few meager resources and a dream it's not much but every civilization has to start somewhere right and pretty soon you'll begin to grow you'll discover new lands technologies and capabilities you might even touch the Stars but history doesn't wait for anyone and your people are eager for you to lead them into this new age so join me at the table and let's learn how to play to set up place this double-sided board in the middle of the play area with the big map face up for 4 to 5 players or this one for 1 to 3 we're setting up a two-player game in this video so we'll use this side the cards with this back are the technologies also known as the tech which you shuffle into a facedown pile here dealing three face-up in a row in this next spot you shuffle and place the tapestry cards facedown which have this back these are the territory tiles which you shuffle into a facedown group near the board along with the larger space tiles this is the landmark board which has outlines with pictured buildings inside find those matching landmark pieces and place them on their spaces it'll look like this when you're done you'll also have some landmarks left over which you can set beside the technology deck each player now collects and places in front of them one of these income mats which has four income tracks at the very top aside from the leftmost space of each one fill them with their matching colored buildings so it looks like this these represent markets houses farms and armories on the bottom row of your mat place these four tokens on the zero space of what is known as the resource tract and these represent food workers coins and culture each player is now dealt a random capital city mat unless you're playing a one two or three player game in that case check the board for these symbols on the map they have pairs of numbers like three five two four and one six find those numbered mats as labeled here at the top and randomly give one of those pairs to each player they pick one map to keep discarding the other your capital city mat is placed to the right of your income board along with ten outpost tokens in your chosen player color now look at the number on your capital city six in this case and then take two of your outposts and place them on that number territory of the board next shuffle the civilization mats and deal two randomly to each player everyone will pick one to keep placing it to the left of their income board along with the player tokens in their color all of the unchosen and undealt civilizations are then shuffled into a facedown collection which you place nearby on the main board there are for advancement tracks one for science military technology and exploration on the first space of each one every player puts one of their player tokens above the science track set this green science dye and above the military track put the two conquered dice on the outside of the board you have the victory track and on the zero space everyone should put one of their player tokens finally place the reference guides nearby for the players to use as necessary and then randomly pick someone to be the first player and that's the setup in tapestry you'll be guiding your civilization through five main eras collecting and using resources to advance your people in science technology exploration and military which are the tracks we saw on the main board how much you focus on each will be up to you but they'll also influence your capital city which you'll fill with buildings and wondrous landmarks all of this will tell the story of your civilization and score your victory points the player with the most points by the end of five eras will win the game is played over a series of turns starting with the first player and going clockwise around and around the table until the end of the game and on your turn you either start a new era by collecting income or you advance the one exception is that every player must start a new era as their very first turn of the game so let's see what gathering income looks like first you refer to this chart on your income mat which shows the four steps of collecting income and you'll notice small numbers by each step these refer to the era that you are currently in and you only resolve the steps of your current era looking at your mat you'll see the five eras numbered here and the highest valued one that has a labeled picture above it is your current era so right now we are in era one as makers of fire referring back to the steps of the income turn you'll see that only the last step refers to era one and so this is the only step that we resolve at this time called gaining income to do this you look at all of the exposed symbols on your income tracts and resolve them the first symbol on each tract represents one of the four types of resources in the game coins workers food and culture and when you resolve a resource symbol you gain one of it to show how many resources you have you move its matching token here upwards on the track so each of these go up by one and at most you can have eight of each the laurel wreath symbol represents victory points and anytime you see another symbol inside of it it means you gain a victory point for each of that type of thing this here is the symbol for technology cards but we don't have any of these yet so we get zero points from this this is the symbol for your capital city like we see here it scores you one point for every filled in row or column for now that means we score nothing but we'll see how to get tech cards and add to our capital city a little bit later this is the symbol for collecting a territory tile so we take a random one from the pile beside the board and you always place these face-up in front of you and we'll learn how to use them a little bit later finally this is the symbol for a tapestry current so we draw one from the top of the deck and you can always look at your own but keep them a secret from the other players that ends our income phase and our first turn of the game now going around the table once each person performs this exact same step in other words everyone gets one of each resource a territory tile and a tapestry card when it gets back to the first player and from that point on your turns will be made up of the advanced action until you decide to start a new era usually because your resources are running low starting a new era means completing an income action again like we just did but those later ones will have a few more steps and will make you much wealthier then this first one did but we'll come back and look at that a little bit later for now let's see how to perform the advanced action this is the most common action of the game and you start it by picking one of these four tracks on the board and paying to advance your token there one space to the right so let's say we picked this exploration track each track is broken into four tiers labeled at the top as one two three and four and each tier has a cost which is shown in the banner beneath its label every time you advance your token the cost you paid to enter a space is the one showing within its tier this symbol represents any resource so to move here you pay any one of your resources if you were already in this spot and wanted to move here then you'd pay one food and one additional resource of any type as you spend resources move there related tokens down on the track and when you run out of a resource you cannot pay costs that require it until you get more after paying for and advancing on a track your civilization has learned the related skill in this case scouting and then you get the benefits that are shown here for example this shows two territory tiles this means I collect two from the pile and add them face up to my collection and that would be my turn then the next player goes and they might advance on the same track or a different one and there's no limit to the number of players who can share the same space on my next turn let's say I decide to advance on the exploration track again I'd pay a resource of any type and then resolve this symbol now some spaces also have a bonus which is shown in a highlighted box like this I can then if I want pay the cost on the left to gain the bonus on the right so I could pay one more resource to draw a new tapestry card and when resolving a bonus on your turn you may only take it once except for bonuses which are optional you must always take the reward on a space unless it would be impossible to do so now as you've seen each track has a variety of symbols and we won't go over each one in this video as the games included reference explains every space once you understand some of the key symbols so let's go over those important ones right now this is the Explorer symbol and it lets you choose a territory tile you've collected and place it onto an unexplored hex of the main board which are these light brown spaces you can place the tile in any orientation but it must go adjacent to a territory you already control to control a hex you must be the only player with an upright outpost in its space so at the beginning of the game the blue player only controls this area and that means their new tile would have to go here here or here the orientation matters because you'll score one victory point for each side of the hex which shares at least one type of terrain with the explored areas that are adjacent to it there are four types of terrain that you'll find water grass lands desert mountain and forests if I place the tile like this it would score me three points because I have three sides where at least one terrain type matches on the touching side desert here water here and water again here again the entire side doesn't have to match but at least one part of it does if I had oriented the tile like this there is desert on both sides here but they're not directly touching so that would not score me a point you'll also notice there is a thin line of river surrounding the edge of every hex but that's for aesthetic reasons not for scoring so you can ignore it for example even though we have water on this side and it's very thin strip of water here between it on this tile that does not count as matching a water space when scoring victory points you advance your token on the score track around the board we gain three points so we'd go here if you ever reach 100 points Bank them by adding one of your tokens here and then keep counting again from the start of the track advancing this token once more every time you complete another loop to wrap up our explanation of the explore symbol I'll point out that the territory tiles that you place will show a symbol in the middle and you claim that benefit after placing a tile so in this case my culture resource would go up by one towards the end of the exploration track you'll unlock interstellar travel and this symbol here means that you gain three space tiles from the facedown stack by the board then the symbol beside it means that you explore any one space tile that you have unlike territory tiles once explored you place space tiles beside your income mat and gain all of the benefits showing on them now you'll notice there are a limited number of space tiles so they could run out meaning that other players will not be able to collect them now let's look at this conquer symbol found most frequently on the military track to resolve this you place an outpost from your supply onto any territory adjacent to one that you already control as long as that target space has no more than one token already on it this space only has one token so I could conquer here tokens on the map will usually be other outposts but some effects may add other pieces to the territories as well which will also count towards this limit in a case like this the blue player could conquer either of these spaces but not here or here as there's more than one token present in each territory you also couldn't go here either because you cannot conquer a space that you already control so again to conquer you need to target a space adjacent to one you control that doesn't have more than one token already in it that means I also couldn't go here because although I have an outpost adjacent to it it isn't up rate and as we said earlier to control of space your outpost must be upright that said up right or not these do count as two pieces in a space and that means no one will be able to enter and conquer this territory now once you have a valid target and have placed your outpost there you roll these two conquered dice and then pick benefits shown on just one of them this die mostly has sides that award you a certain number of victory points for in this case it also has this symbol which instead means that you gain a point for every territory you control so the situation we have here blue would gain two points if they pick this die the black died mostly gives you resources but if it shows this symbol you gain the benefit printed on the territory that you just conquered as the game continues of players spread across the map it's possible that you'll find yourself able to target an opponent's territory for conquering and you can do that as long as there's only one token there you just place your outpost with it and topple there is over you now control it and you roll the dice as normal collecting one of the benefits however there is one catch after picking another players territory to conquer they may be holding one of these trap cards which they can play to keep control there are only a few trap cards in the game but they look just like a regular tapestry card from the back so you won't know of a player is holding one if they decide to play one in response to you trying to conquer one of their territories they resolve it and discard it to a shared tapestry discard pile beside the board after playing a trap the attacker still must place their outpost into the targeted space but it is toppled over and the target leaves theirs up right the attacker does still get to roll the conquer dice and claim a benefit but as you see here the person playing the trap also gets to collect one resource of any type in the game if you ever run out of outposts you will not be able to perform the conquer action anymore but you can still advance into spaces that would give you the conquer benefit you just ignore that part of it as I mentioned earlier you must always collect the reward showing in a space you've entered unless you can't now we come to the invent symbol when you gain this as a benefit you take any one face-up technology card or the top one from the deck if you take from the row then you immediately replace it with a new one tech is always put besides your capital board in one of these three rows and you can have any amount of tech in each row just add new cards to the right of other ones now when you're first gaining new tech it always goes into this X row and it doesn't give you any immediate benefit however this is the symbol for upgrading and when you gain this reward you select any tech you already have in either the bottom or middle row and you shift it upwards to the next row cards already in a top row cannot be upgraded when tech enters the row with the circle you gain the benefit shown in its circle here when tech enters the top row you gain the benefits shown inside of its square however to upgrade to the top row you or one of your neighbors that is the player see it directly on either side of you as represented by this symbol must meet the prerequisites shown here in other words you or a neighbor would need to have already advanced a token into the second tier of the exploration track before you can upgrade this Zeppelin into the top row now let's look at the science track here you'll often see this research symbol either with or without an X and in either case you roll the science die which will then display a symbol representing one of the advancement tracks in this case the exploration one this then lets you advance your token on that track for free into its next space though if after seeing the result you don't want to advance your token there you can choose not to if the research icon has an X beneath it like this then you get to move your token on the track but you do not gain the benefit or any bonus there if it shows no X with its symbol then you do gain the benefit of the new space you move into and you can choose to pay for any bonus there if you'd like similar to the research effect you'll also encounter benefits that show the symbol for an advancement track and that just means you advance for free on the related track again paying attention to any X's that might be showing with them to determine if you get the benefit of the new space you move into or not just keep in mind you also ignore any effect that would try to advance you past the last space of a track sometimes when benefits are presented it will show slashes between them and this means you can only pick one of those options not all of them in this case it shows three of the building symbols and there's also a fourth building symbol which is this one here these types of symbols instruct you to remove related building from your income track and let's say in this case we chose the firm now we take the leftmost firm from its track and place it onto any empty space of our capital city map that does not contain one of these dots these are considered impassable spaces and nothing can be placed on them so maybe I'll instead put my firm over here this board represents the birthplace and capital of your civilization and as the game goes on you'll fill in more and more of its spaces with buildings like these and you'll notice your capital is divided into nine main areas as shown by these darker bordered lines and if you ever completely fill in one of them as shown here you will immediately gain one resource of any type and this is where the dots come in handy because those spaces are considered to be filled in already so as soon as I place another building on this space the entire area here is filled and I gain one resource any time you would need to resolve this symbol it means that you score at your capital city and you gain one point for every completed row and call them on your board again remembering that spaces with a dot are already considered complete so this case I'd score one two points now if you want to fill up the spaces in your capital even faster you'll need to collect landmarks so let's go back to the advancement tracts and I'll show you how that works the first space of each second third and fourth advancement tier shows the symbol for a landmark located on this board the very first player who enters a landmarks space collects that piece and then gets to add it to their capital city anyone else entering the space in the future still gains the other benefits here but not the landmark the spy you take the landmark from will show you its size in squares and then you place the landmark into your capital covering up that arrangement of empty spaces remembering that you cannot go into spaces showing a dot or that have other buildings you've already placed though you can if you wish place buildings so that they extend beyond your capital grid which may be necessary when things start filling up either way these landmarks are an excellent way of filling in several of your capital spaces at once some upgraded tech will also provide you with a building which you take from the supply that we set the technology deck during the setup with that we've covered all the key symbols you'll find on the advancement tracks any that you encounter that you're not sure about you should refer to the reference guide for if you have any questions and the other side shows all of the various technologies if you need clarifications about how they work as well going back to the board you'll find three achievements that players can work towards and as soon as you accomplish one you place a token onto the highest valued space and score those points so blue here just stored ten points the next player completing this achievement would then score five points and once you have won you cannot lose an achievement and you cannot gain each one more than once as returns continue eventually you'll stop taking advancement actions most likely because you've run out of resources at that time you can instead choose to take an income action again which will advance your civilization into a new era this will be like the income action you took at the start of the game but will now involve all of these steps and this first one lets you activate your civilization abilities if they apply your civilization is represented by the board to the left of your income mat and it will have a special ability and some of these will resolve at the beginning of your income turns as indicated by this red text allowing you to gain its listed benefit right now there are a total of sixteen different civilizations in the game and each is quite different from the others some effects in the game might even allow you to gain a new civilization from those in the set-aside pile in which case you add it to the left here and then you'll have access to its ability as well now some of these don't resolve during the income phase and instead they just provide an ongoing effect so make sure you read your civilization boards thoroughly the next step of the income action is to play a tapestry card from your hand onto your income mat into the leftmost empty space that doesn't have a labeled picture in the very rare case that your hand is empty you draw the top tapestry card from the deck and place it facedown there instead in this case I do have one and I'll choose academia now if you are the first of your neighboring opponents to put a tapestry card into a particular era you gain the benefit on the space under it so in this case any one resource Tapestry cards are important because they indicate what era your civilization is currently in and what's important to realize about that is players may take their income actions at different times and that means that while I'm in the second era another player may still be in the first era for several turns or may eventually get ahead of me either way the tapestry continues to build the story of your civilization and it will have an ability here if it says this era that ability has an ongoing effect that lasts until the beginning of your following income phase if instead it says when played you resolve this effect once at the time the tapestry card is put into play the next step of the income action lets you resolve a tech upgrade if you're able and then you gain victory points from every exposed victory point icon on your income tracks for example let's just say that our tracks looked like this the civil here gives you one point for every tech card by your capital city mat in this case that would mean one two three four points now since we've uncovered multiple of the same scoring symbol you would score each one so for tech cards I would actually get three times this for a total of twelve points some of these other scoring symbols we've talked about already this one for example would score you four points this one scores you a point for every complete row and column in your capital city and this gives you a point for every territory tile you control finally you resolve this step of the income action which we learned about at the beginning of the video turns will continue around and around the table with players advancing of civilizations on the tracks or moving into new eras by taking an income action and when you take your fifth income action your civilization has come to its end for that final income you activate your civilizations abilities if they apply and then you upgrade one tech card avaible and score all of your victory points one last time from the exposed spaces of your income tracks but you skip any of the other income action steps like gaining resources or playing a tapestry card after entering the fifth era your turns in the game are over while other players continue to take turns you won't gain anything else except for victory points from any passive effects you might have on your civilization mat once all players have taken their final income turns the game is over and the player with the most points wins in the case of a tie at the tied player with the most remaining total resources wins and if there's still a tie the tied players share the victory the game also comes with a variant for two players which adds a non-human opponent who only takes landmarks and blocks achievements which helps increase the interaction between the players there's also rules and components for playing solo as well but both of these I'll leave for you to discover on your own otherwise that's everything you need to know to play Tapestry now if you have any questions at all 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 to get notification any time we post a new video but until next time thanks for watching [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Watch It Played

Views: 237,627

Keywords: Board Games, Game Rules, Tutorials, Learn How To Play, Watch It Played, Tutorial, Board Game, Play Throughs, Jamey Stegmaier, Instructional, Miniatures, Rules, Card Games, Instructions, Tapestry, Learn To Play, How To Play, Learn, Tabletop, Stonemaier Games, Instructionals

Id: J5FzMpkbasM

Length: 25min 55sec (1555 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 21 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/basketball_curry]

A lot of comments are people worried that players will be able to delay their income phases and thus itll take forever to end the game or one person will sprint to finish and be done for a half hour while others finish. The iteration I played held no benefits for finishing early, so there was no incentive to rush for the end.

But its ultimately kind of out of the players hands how long they can drag their feet for. Every turn, you must advance on one of the 4 tracks or take one of your 5 income phases. Each track requires at least 1 resource to advance and the cost goes up with each tier. So eventually, you will run out of resources and be forced to take income. The only reason to take an income phase early, while you still have resources that could be spent, would be you dont have enough or the right resources to advance to the next tier in a particular track and you're hoping to do so before somebody else can. But by and large, you'll play until you have too few resources to advance in a track and then you'll take income.

Players likely will still finish at different times, because some actions you take will earn you additional resources outside of the income phase and unless everyone takes the exact same options and somehow ends up with the same rewards, there will be differences. Also if one person tries to deep dive into one track only and ignore the rest, the cost for advancement will be higher than someone advancing multiple tracks, so they'll run out of resources quicker and need income. But from what I saw, players typically finished within a few rounds of one another.

[u/Radhil]

Cool, I know the designer notes have been ongoing, but it's not the same as seeing it in motion.

[u/TeKKy21]

Rodney is great at explaining games. He's my go to along with Jon Gets Games. I'm excited to watch this one and see if I'm interested in getting this.

[u/kforte318]

I am just looking forward to yelling "YOU'VE ACTIVATED MY TRAP CARD." That's my main take-away.

[u/SpeedyOwnt]

Seems a lot more interesting the the dev diaries but the price I feel is still going to turn me off initially.

[u/kingoftown]

I wonder what sort of interactions players have in different eras. Will there be any penalty to being slower to develop (it seems like a huge advantage currently as you most likely are doing more actions in a game).

I can certainly see in our group one person finishing their game a solid 20-30 minutes before the final person. I guess they tally up their score and go make another drink.

I could be wildly underestimating how many more actions someone can take vs someone else though.

[u/F-b]

I need to see it played because it looks like there no real table talk encouraged by the gameplay (that looks like a puzzle). It's not necessary bad but what I like in Civilization is when you feel a sense of (or the illusion of) diplomatic, strategic relations. So far in Tapestry I just see another race for victory points.

[u/KAKYBAC]

Looks really clean and elegant. Strangely, my only criticism is that the special buildings don't really look like anything. Too chunky and toy-like, to the extent that I would rather have polyonimo tokens! Also the fact that you can have buildings stick out of the grid just seems like a missed opportunity to double down on the tetris-like like aspect of the capital board.

Other than this, it looks stellar. I particularly like how players can be in different eras from one another. That you can finish up and proverbially put your feet up; only for your opponents to creep towards you on the VP track.

[u/eggson]

I was slightly confused by some of Jamey's rules explanations in his designer diaries, but with this tutorial all has been clarified. Excited for the release and will be probably pre-order when it's available. I've enjoyed all of the SM games I've played, and know even if it's not the most innovative or exciting game, it will at least be a treat to see on the table.