Cartographers Strategy Guide

[Rheagar]

Hello! I wrote a strategy guide for Cartographers on my blog - I hope you find it useful. I'd appreciate any feedback or additional tips if you think of anything that I missed. I hope that posting this is allowed here - if not then let me know and I'll remove it. Enjoy!

https://boostyourplay.com/cartographers ... ning-tips/

[DoctorFianchetto]

Hey! I love reading guides like this, well-written, great breakdown of statistics, informative tables and the helpful images. The one thing missing is the shapes for the Forest tiles.

I'm fairly experienced with ~250 games under my belt but I still feel like I have a lot to learn and I am in awe at how top players crush me.

My approach is exactly as you describe in Have a vision of your ideal board and build it. do this before I make my first move. I have a loose valuation of all the edicts in my head, similar to what you wrote down in your categorisation of edicts - which is beautiful, by the way.

When you start a game of Cartographers the first thing you should do is look at the four edicts and form a clear picture in your mind of what a winning board will look like. This will vary widely based on the combination of edicts, but you should be able to get a sense of how your board should be constructed to score the most points.

Coins is an interesting topic - when I started playing I went all out for coins, surrounding mountains ASAP, always picking the coin tiles. With experience I became less attached to them. As you describe, it's usually simple mathematics to figure out whether it's best to choose a coin in a given moment.

As I play more games I am becoming more conscious of the possible shapes for each category, but I'm not yet at the level where I can plan effectively for this - especially in relation to monsters.

Speaking of which, my biggest weakness is monsters. I feel like I don't place my monsters in the best positions. I'm always weighing up between whether to interfere with a high-potential edict or to dump them in an empty space. I usually opt for the latter - but stronger opponents find a way to surroun monsters easily and place monsters that are impossible for me to surround efficiently. I can't figure that out. There are so many tile shapes it's impossible to plan for all of them, right? That said, I had no idea there are only 4 possible Ambush shapes and they can only appear once, so that's useful to know.

Thanks!

[xxdahlia]

Great guide!

My only disagreement comes from canal lake - IMO the scaling potential with that one is the highest in the game, and it’s easier to play than the other high scoring cards. If it’s edict C or D, it regularly nets over 30 points per round.

Also, while cauldrons are the worst general map edict, they can still give you 10-15 points if played around, which is often 7-12 points more than your opponent who ignored them will have

[xxdahlia]

Question: how (precisely) do you envision the board?

I’ve never had the ability to do that, I always just try to count the points for each potential move and choose the highest scoring one, but the layout comes intuitively. I generally do quite well, but will still lose to a few of the best players thanks to them clearly being able to plan the layout better from the start.

[buv3x]

Question: how (precisely) do you envision the board?

I’ve never had the ability to do that, I always just try to count the points for each potential move and choose the highest scoring one, but the layout comes intuitively. I generally do quite well, but will still lose to a few of the best players thanks to them clearly being able to plan the layout better from the start.

You being a top 10 player and still asking this question kind of gives hope.
I don't plan far ahead for the whole board, only for local configurations. One thing that hits me often is that in the late game my board usually has more space for good monster placement (due to a neatly organization) than my opponent's. That is usually balanced by tighter boards scoring better, but I still wonder if it's something I can plan for.

Also, while cauldrons are the worst general map edict, they can still give you 10-15 points if played around, which is often 7-12 points more than your opponent who ignored them will have

I think, main issue is not that it scores bad, but that it has bad synergy with many other scoring (gold from mountains, Sentinel Wood, Treetower, Canal Lake, Mages Valley; to some extent also Greengold Plains and Stoneside Forest). A good synergy is only with Great City. So it mostly depends on the other scoring cards.