Cartographers Solo Review: Lovely Maps, Frustrating Scoring

Introduction

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You know that cozy feeling when you curl up with a fresh sheet of paper, some colored pencils, and just lose yourself in creating something? That’s exactly the magic I found in Cartographers, a flip-and-write game that’s become a staple for board game nights. As someone who spent countless hours drawing fantasy maps as a kid, this game speaks to my inner cartographer while satisfying my craving for crunchy strategy.

Today, I want to share my journey through the realm of Cartographers and why it’s earned a permanent spot in my board game night rotation. Spoiler alert: it involves mountains, forests, and the occasional monster ambush–because apparently even fantasy cartographers can’t have a peaceful day at the office!

Overview

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The queen has tasked you with mapping out her realm, and as her royal cartographer, you’ll spend four seasons carefully documenting the landscape. At its heart, Cartographers is a polyomino flip-and-write game where you’re drawing various terrain shapes onto your map sheet. Each round, cards are revealed that give you either a specific terrain type to work with or let you choose from multiple options. The real genius comes from how you manipulate and place these shapes – every player starts with the same options, but trust me, no two maps ever look alike!

The meat of the game comes from the edict cards – these are your scoring objectives that change each season. Maybe the queen wants you to focus on clustering villages together, or perhaps she’s more interested in having farmland border water features. You’ll always have four edicts in play, but they score in different seasons, creating this delicious tension between immediate gains and setting yourself up for future rewards. You may be familiar with the sort of scoring if you’ve played Isle of Skye: From Chieftain to King, for example.

Gameplay

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What really makes this game sing for me is the actual act of drawing on your map. While the base game comes with standard pencils, I highly recommend treating yourself to some colored pencils. There’s something deeply satisfying about taking your time to shade in each region, watching your realm slowly come to life. I’ve seen some absolutely stunning maps on BoardGameGeek where players have turned their scoring sheets into legitimate fantasy cartography–we’re talking full RPG overworld map quality while still following all the game rules!

The explore cards offer a brilliant mix of constraint and freedom. Sometimes you’re given a specific terrain type to work with, other times you get to choose–but you always have some agency in how you manipulate and place the shapes. This creates these wonderful moments where you’re trying to puzzle out the perfect placement that will score well now while setting up future opportunities.

Now, let’s talk about those ambush cards. In a game that’s otherwise pretty zen, these add just enough spice to keep you on your toes. When one pops up, you pass your map to your neighbor and they get to deviously choose where the monsters should appear on your map. The ambush cards are essentially a take-that mechanism, but one that feels thematically appropriate – after all, what’s a fantasy realm without some monster-infested wilderness? These ambushes create delicious tension as they slowly drain points each season until you can surround them with terrain.

One of my favorite strategic elements is the coin system. You can choose to opt for a “weaker” terrain shape or surround a mountain to earn coins, which opens up interesting decisions about building a point engine versus focusing on map scoring. You can separately buy a skills mini-expansion for Cartographers (which I highly recommend) that makes this even more interesting by giving you special abilities to purchase with those coins.

The edict cards that define your scoring goals are truly the treasure of this game. The randomized setup offers endless variability, and the order of edicts per season impacts gameplay as much as which particular edicts are drawn. I love how only certain edicts activate in particular seasons–it keeps you focused on your present round while still considering how current placements will affect future scoring. It makes me feel like a worker ant storing up food for the winter, hoping for a big payoff later in the game.

Solo Play

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The solo mode is particularly elegant, maintaining almost all of the multiplayer experience with minimal rules changes. The only real difference is how ambushes work, using a straightforward algorithm to determine placement instead of having another player choose. You’re competing against a high score table in the rulebook, which is primarily a Beat Your Own Score (BYOS) experience.

While I’m usually fine with BYOS systems, I felt the solo experience was soured for me in Cartographers. The way initial edict card draws can significantly impact your possible score felt too swingy for me. The game cleverly has you reduce your score by point values defined by each edict to normalize scores, but which edict you draw first can have a massive impact still and that is not accounted for. If it’s a high-scoring edict early on, you likely won’t have enough time to put anything together for Spring. This isn’t an issue in multiplayer since everyone deals with the same cards, but it can make solo score comparisons feel less reliable. I’m no stranger to random number generation (RNG), but in this case a single card draw can make or break your high score run. Fortunately, this happens before the game even starts so you could house rule the edict setup for more consistent scores, but this just seems like an oversight that should have been addressed.

Components and Design

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The physical production really helps sell the theme. The aged parchment look of the map sheets, complete with compass rose and space for your cartographer’s family crest, makes each game feel like you’re creating something special. The artwork on the cards matches the established Roll Player Ulos universe style, with a fantasy aesthetic that’s both familiar and distinct.

The rulebook sets the premise that you are a cartographer in the world of Ulos working for the queen. I think the designers missed the opportunity to make this an RPG meta game like Roll Player. For example, in Roll Player you are creating an fantasy character for an RPG. In Cartographers, you could have been designing the fantasy map for your RPG. This would have worked out better as a traditional cartographer documents what they observe of the world around them, but the puzzle-like nature of Cartographers empowers the player to choose where features should go like a fantasy map creator.

Final Thoughts

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After dozens of plays, Cartographers remains one of my favorite flip-and-writes. It hits that perfect sweet spot of being easy to set up and play while offering meaningful decisions and a satisfying conclusion. Each completed map tells a story, and the variety of scoring conditions ensures that story is different every time. Unfortunately, I cannot recommend Cartographers as a solo board game due to the inconsistent scoring, but you may find it enjoyable as a creative exercise or therapeutic activity.