Cartographers

Thunderworks Games • 2019

A flip-and-write game where everyone draws the same Tetris-like shapes onto their own map grid. Each card tells you which shape and which terrain type (forest, village, farm, water) to draw. You pick where it goes on your grid. Scoring rotates across four seasons, with two of the four scoring cards active at a time. So in Spring you might score for "largest forest cluster" and "number of villages on the edge". In Summer, one of those cards rotates out and a new one comes in. This keeps you adjusting your strategy throughout the game. The twist is the Ambush cards. When one is drawn, you pass your map to your neighbour and they draw a monster shape on it. Monsters score negative points in areas that aren't filled — so a well-placed monster can ruin a carefully planned section of your map. This added interaction is the main difference from Welcome To. You can't just optimise in isolation. Someone might deliberately wreck the scoring zone you've been building toward, and you can do the same to them. Games run about 30-40 minutes regardless of player count, since everyone draws simultaneously. Works from 1 to 100 players. The solo mode is solid — you're competing against your own score — and the large-group experience is essentially the same game with more laughing about monster placements. The fantasy theme (you're mapping the kingdom of Nalos for the queen) is light but gives the drawing more personality than filling in abstract boxes. There are several map pack expansions that add new scoring goals and board layouts.