Cartographers Solo Flip-and-Write: I Was Fired After My First Play

Cartographers Play Sheet: Rookie mapmaker Stafford Airbiscuit may not be a “culture fit” for this kingdom

As the backstory goes, the great Queen Gimcrack has just strong-armed a fat chunk of land from some other weakling, and it’s my job to help map it in the name of the Great Kingdom of Naloxone.

My name is Stafford Airbiscuit. I am a cartographer. 

“Will the mission be dangerous?” I ask the queen.

“Probably,” she says. “Now get your little pencil out there and zone this thing.”

“How shall I zone it?”

“I don’t know yet,” she says, “it depends on where the mass graves are and how quick we can get residential developers on board. Keep an eye out for my edicts. And don’t put two artisanal burger places next to each other, it messes everything up, ‘kay?”

***

So it is my adventure with Cartographers begins — a game that continues to rate highly in the tabletop community among the past few year’s crop of move-and-write, flip-and-write, roll-and-write games…basically puzzles and engine builders where you attack a particular setting with paper and pencil trying to combo high scores based on where you mark things on your map or playsheet in response to the game’s challenges.

In Cartographers, the challenge is placing strips and chunks of polyomino-shaped terrain — villages, streams, forests, and farms — onto a newly acquired land. This land was won with the utmost probity and respect for international law.

The job description for my Cartographer, Stafford Airbiscuit, will be a lot like yours: You’ve got four seasons to do the job. During these seasons, changes in policy or the Queen’s blood pressure means the terrain patterns you’re trying to place will be rewarded in different ways depending on which exploration cards and scoring cards are out. Those cards also contain some curveballs, like finding Ruins that constrain your placement choices or pulling a monster raid from the deck, which crowds your map with unwanted symbols that drag down your score.

Hadrian’s Wall was my first experience with this school of design. I talked about that back in Episode 90. Hadrian’s Wall’s historical flavor, action variety and resource-heavy scheme kept it on my table for quite some time.

Cartographers is much simpler, which is the whole point; what I’m after here is something light and fizzy with a little pulp: Something refreshing in between learning sessions of Comancheria: The Rise and Fall of the Comanche Empire, which is still hogging up my main table with its intricate procedures and massive scope.

So I sit down with a pencil and walk a few solo turns. Using the short and clear rulebook, the few solo turns quickly become my first game.

The turn framework is pretty simple and the conditional stuff is easy to get your head around: Set up a season, see which two scoring cards are in effect, then draw explore cards that show you what terrain types and shapes you have to work with.

***

I had an easy time with the mechanics, but not a particularly good game; Stafford Airbiscuit has to go back to the queen with a score of 37. Which translates into a job rating of -45 per the solo grading rules.

“So what were we doing out there, exactly,” she says, holding my map incredulously.

“Well, the goblins kept attacking and the gnolls stole my lunch and went to the restroom on my lunch…”

“And did they also force you to place these two farms in zones where we don’t even get tax credits? I specifically addressed this in Edict B. Did you get it?”

“It was in the same bag as my lunch. They didn’t even eat the lunch, that’s what was so hurtful and sick about the whole thing.”

“Listen,” she says, closing her eyes and pinching the bridge of her nose, “we covered gnolls in the kickoff meeting. Do me a favor, draw a timeout space somewhere on this map and get your head together. We’re trying to map a kingdom here, this isn’t adult daycare.”

Looks like poor Stafford has a lot of improvements to make if he’s ever going to become a proper cartographer.

There are still 99 map sheets on the pad. That’s plenty of chances to get better at reading the shifting cards for opportunity and scanning the map for better placements — and figuring out how to draw a house better. I still can’t believe how bad my houses look when I fill in a village space. It’s really starting to bother me.

My game 2 playsheet: Better than my first game’s score, but I’m still fired

---

If you like this style of game, check out my Hadrian’s Wall review.

Star Wars: Outer Rim Solo Session (Han Upgrades to the Confetti-and-Bicycle-Horn Cannon)

This is adapted from the script of Episode 97, “Sykes-Picot Plays With Colonial History (And Dry-Erase Markers)”

Despite being buzzed and rusty with the rulebook, I played most of a game as Han Solo, racing for fame against an automa-operated version of Lando Calrissean. I had my first decent stack of credits in the stashbox of my stubby, entry-level starfighter when I got a chance to buy an Aggressor-Class Assault fighter.

They wouldn’t let Han test-fly it because he was drunk, but when he woke the following morning after having passed out on one of its nacelles, the path forward was clear: He no longer had to worry about bounties or cargo or any of that bullshit. He didn’t even have to talk very much to the one crew member he acquired — a sullen Black Sun agent whose mealtime noises were simply distressing.

He had just become a ship-to-ship hunter. Any job that featured this kind of combat was the one he wanted. And if those gigs were scarce, he could just start turning his guns on any of the four NPC factions’ patrol craft.

Star Wars Outer Rim Solo Mode: Shit got serious and I had to break out the Rules Ladder

Which he did. Han cleaned out all the Hutt, Syndicate, and Imperial Level 1 patrols on his side of the board, unconcerned with the reputation loss; as long as he avoided planetside entanglements, he was in his lane and keeping pace with Calrissean, who skimmed planet to planet glibly dropping off cargo and buying points on the fame track like the two-faced degenerate he was. With the guns on that fighter, I could keep pace and simplify the game immensely.

Han picked up some Photon Torpedoes along the way, increasing both the amount of combat die he got to roll and the Fame he’d get for making a kill. He quickly upgraded his bird to the IG-2000 version, which had a Long Range Ion Cannon. With this toy, he could smoke patrols without incurring reputational loss, which generated a chuckle or two: Ambush a Syndicate pilot then brazenly land on a nearby planet under Syndicate control for gas. Listen to the heavily armed port boss mutter about somebody taking out their patrols.

HAN SOLO: Really? Gosh, that’s terrible!

PORT BOSS: Say, are those Long-Range Ion Cannons on your craft?

HAN SOLO: I don’t know. Probably. Which way to the bordello? I want to drift off tonight as the middle layer in a pile of rented flesh.

Star Wars Outer Rim Solo Session: Han Solo picks a fight with the Outer Rim’s version of Baron von Richtofen; look at all those goddamn hits

Han Solo had a clean line to the finish, that is, until the Level 2 and 3 faction patrols rolled out and my dice went on an extended strike. I couldn’t generate hits and kept having to limp around getting repairs because my fistful of dice would not perform.

Han lost a duel with an Imperial patrol. Then a Syndicate Class 3 craft. He pulled a job that let him attack Calrissean, who thankfully still had a crappy little ship at the time. Lando took his L and started racking up deliveries again like nothing happened.

One proper ship in my sights where the energy weapons could find their mark. That’s all I needed. I could still close it out in one strike while Lando hovered near the winning 10-fame mark. And I lost the dogfight again. I hadn’t generated more than three hits in any single dogfight down the stretch.

This carried over into Saturday afternoon and I was hung over, looking at the field of pieces and markers, wondering if solo Outer Rim made the cut.

You know people and their desert island boardgame lists? I succumbed to oddball visions of flight, like thinking about what I would have in the rear compartment of a reasonably clean used SUV if I was forced to sell my little shack and become some kind of Johnny Appleseed who sprinkles board game pieces and hangovers throughout the Interior West. Is Star Wars: Outer Rim in the small pile I take with me? Because I figure part of what makes the gambit work is to look like a carefree tourist and not a car tramp with a vehicle interior that looks like a curb in front of an apartment building after an eviction.

Looking at the game with dried-out morning eyes had me crankily zeroed in on a very important ratio: How did the fuss of setup and board management weigh against the flavor of the experience and the stimulation of the decision space?

In this view, solo play dropped off the menu. Yes, I keep the game in the back of the SUV because a) I’m not ready to ditch an $80 title after just four plays and b) on the odd night I got a hotel room and found myself in the lobby with some tipsy nerds, I could break it out because my multiplayer sessions with this one really crackled.

But the fuss-to-fun ratio isn’t the only criteria. I have Unfinished Business, the expansion for this game that seems widely admired on comment threads across the galaxy. It adds new dynamics, characters, ships, gear…so I’m going to re-read the finer points of the solo rules I misapplied when I was in my cups and see if it adds any depth before I just start reeling off verdicts with a hangover.

I’ll get back to you on that one.