Cartographers: A Roll Player Tale

I managed to squeeze in a solo game of Cartographers last night and wanted to share my first impressions in the form of a comparison with #Welcome to..., another fantastic "roll and write" game. I will compare the two across these categories:

• Unboxing Experience
• Theme
• Ease of Learning/Playing
• Interesting Decision Space
• Player Interaction

Unboxing Experience -> Cartographers

Both come in a small box and contain a deck of cards and a bunch of sheets for the players. Cartographers comes with pencils, Welcome To doesn't. Overall, I'd say that Cartographers packs a bigger punch in terms of first impressions. The cover art looks amazing and the card quality, illustrations, and sleek graphic design all go hand in hand in making it feel like there's a bigger game contained in a small box.

Theme -> Welcome To

Subjective for sure, but I'd give this to Welcome To. I like the idea of charting a map in Cartographers, to explore different terrains and ward off monsters while fulfilling the Queen's edicts. But it's not at a level where the theme adds a whole new layer of fun to the gameplay. It's set in the Roll Players universe which I'm not familiar with, so the brief "lore" behind the gameplay feels like it's just there (and that's okay!). To be fair, the expansions appear to add more depth to the integration of theme and mechanics, but I'm just comparing apples to apples between the base games only.

In contrast, I appreciate the overall "homey" vibe of Welcome To. From coming up with silly names for your neighborhood, to drawing in fences and filling in your pools and parks, it's more relatable and hits closer to home in a good way. And bonus points for fun retro 1950's art.

Ease of Learning/Playing -> Welcome To

Both of these games fall under the category of games that are super quick to learn and play. The rulebooks are done well and the solo mode rules just take a minute to go through. BUT, I'd give the win to Welcome To for one main reason: There's less room for ambiguity.

Unlike Welcome To, where the way you score remains identical across all plays, Cartographers features 16 scoring cards, of which 4 are used in one play. And while most of them are clear, there were just a few cards that forced me to do a quick google search for answers. It turned out that my overall strategy was flawed from the beginning becaue of a small misunderstanding about one of the scoring cards.

If you plan to bring this out for your group, I'd highly suggest that before starting the game, make sure everyone's on the same page about the wording behind the way you score. Otherwise, you may have some poor unfortunate souls devasted by their plans falling apart midgame! And you'd hate to hear that "You didn't tell me about this!" from someone.

Interesting Decision Space -> Cartographers

This category is a tough one to measure because the feeling behind the gameplay is actually quite different. While both games leave a decent amount of room for long term planning and situational plays, Welcome To focuses on probabilities and Cartographers leans closer to a spatial management game with tetris shapes.

It's a tug of war between my love for "push your luck" thrill and the puzzliness of games like #Tiny Towns, and I'd give the win to Cartographers because of its slightly deeper decision space and variability in setup.

Player Interaction -> ......Tie?

Typically, during Cartographers' Exploration Phase, the group will draw from the deck and it will give you an option for a shape and a terrain type to place on the map. Sometimes, your group will encounter an Ambush card that features a monster. When this occurs, players pass their map to an adjacent player who will draw the monster shape on any location. It's a chance to mess with your opponent big time, but it's not as likely to leave sour feelings since it's mutual destruction!

On the other hand, you have Welcome To with zero interaction among players, at least mechanically speaking. The great thing about Welcome To is that it's a solitaire game that feels more socially interactive than others in the genre. Because of its simplicity (less thinky), ease of play (marking 1 or 2 things as opposed to drawing), and the overall vibe of the theme, I've experienced that it naturally leads to tabletalk and catching up on one another while playing. For Cartographers, this is harder because you're more focused on pulling off your grand scheme.

Considering both of these sides, it's a tie in terms of player interaction.

Edit: Wow, I completely forgot about one thing. Welcome To has goal cards that players have to compete for. So there's some amount of interaction.

Final Verdict

It's a close one, but I'm giving the overall win to Cartographers. What tips it over for me is that ultimately, my wife and I like thinkier games. And having soloed both, I also feel that Cartographers is one that I'd actually want to get to the table more often. I hope some of my thoughts will help you choose between these two great flip and writes. Feel free to ask any questions!