Tapestry

The Game

Tapestry is a civilisation game in which players develop their civilisations from prehistoric tribes to modern day nations. Player actions are designed as making progress on four tracks - science, technology, exploration and military. Every turn you simply decide which track to advance on. You pay the required resources and perform the actions specified on the space you advance your token into. Actions at every step differ. They get more powerful as you advance further. The four tracks have different characteristics and let you do different kinds of things. Let’s look at the various aspects of the game.

You have a hex map. One action lets you collect hex tiles. One action lets you discover new lands, and this is when you pick a tile you have to place on the board. One action lets you place your marker on a tile. This translates to expanding your controlled territory. When your border gets in contact with others, you can attack and capture their lands. However warfare is limited and on each tile there will only ever be one battle. 

You will spend quite some effort on your capital city. It is a 9x9 grid which you try to fill up as much as possible. Some spaces are already filled at the start. You gain resources by filling 3x3 sections. You gain points for filling complete rows or columns. Think sudoku grid, but without the numbers. Some actions let you remove small buildings from your player board to place in your capital. When removing these from your player board, you reveal icons which let you produce resources. If you beat your opponents to certain spaces on the tracks, you get to claim large buildings which help you fill your capital quickly.

Some actions let you claim and upgrade tech cards. They give various benefits. Sometimes you get tapestry cards, and every new era you get to play one to augment your abilities. The game is called Tapestry, but the tapestry cards in the game are just one of several mechanisms, not the main one. I guess calling a game Four Tracks is not exactly sexy. 

Ultimately you win by scoring the most points. Some actions give you points directly. Some give you points based on how well you have done in a certain aspect, e.g. territory you control or tiles you hold. Every era you start with some resources. Actions require resources. When you eventually run out, you must end your current era and enter the next one. You want to be able to collect resources efficiently because more resources mean more actions. Players may have different numbers of turns in this game. 

The Play

I found it challenging to understand how Tapestry works. The rules are not complicated. However I had little idea what the right things to do were. The decision you need to make every turn is simple - which of the four tracks do you want to advance on? What I struggled with was how to evaluate the four options. I did horribly in my first game, missing out on almost all the large buildings. I learned the hard way that balanced development wasn’t a good idea. In my second game I decided to almost exclusively advance on the technology track. It worked better. However I wasn’t very comfortable that an arbitrary rule of sticking to one track worked relatively well. It felt like the game was playing me and not me playing the game. I only made an arbitrary policy, stuck to it blindly, and it worked, without me really understanding why. I only did some minor maximisation, e.g. if a space offered an additional benefit for a fee, I made sure I could afford the fee before I advanced to that space. 

It might be because I played on BoardGameArena.com that the game was less fun for me. I hadn’t taken time to understand all the rules well. So I felt I was making arbitrary decisions. I find the way civilisation development is translated into game mechanisms is rather abstract. I can’t quite associate the game mechanisms with the theme. The four resources in the game could have been called anything, even by their colours. They don’t make much difference other than being needed by one of the four specific tracks. 

The Thoughts

Tapestry didn't work for me. I feel most of the game mechanisms are disjointed from the theme. I do like the civilisation theme. I would say Tapestry offers something a little different from other civilisation games. Maybe it'll work for you.