The Calm and Quiet in Cartographers Heroes: Time to Play
Create maps of the surrounding areas, both familiar and in entirely unusual planes of existence, with Cartographers Heroes.
Time to celebrate some wonderful times with Cartographers and Cartographers Heroes! My maps have been few and far between over the years, possibly due to my lack of artistic skills… And possibly due to my painstaking efforts to carefully shade every single box. Ha ha! Yet with so many map packs and mini-expansions, I was excited to dive back into play!
Game Overview
Game Name: Cartographers Heroes
Publication Year: 2021
Designers: Jordy Adan & John Brieger
Artists: Davey Baker & Lucas Ribeiro
Publisher: Thunderworks Games
Solo Mode: Included in the Base Game
Over the course of the seasons, shapes fill up a map based on terrain cards. Fulfilling scoring goals is a lot of fun, as there are often short-term considerations and long-term planning involved. With all sorts of variety, no map ever feels the same… Particularly with heroes and monsters!
First Play
July 18, 2022
Complexity
2
Latest Play
December 24, 2025
Expansions
11
Setup Time
5 Minutes
Lifetime Plays
10
Play Time
50 Minutes
High Score
127
Game Area
24" x 18"
Low Score
72
Returning to Coloring
One of the rather funny anecdotes about this game is how long it takes me to play… And this is an example of a final map after I did a little more to add some notes to it!
I find myself taking forever with the coloring portion. As I had a little laugh about my hour-long endeavor, I paused before analyzing anything. Was there something wrong?
In a nutshell: Nope! This is a relaxing sort of activity for me, and I let my imagination make little scenes come alive.
Naming these regions took extra minutes and may have been a little too much, yet I definitely had a wonderful time!
Endless Ambushes
Monsters show up in ambush cards that are downright terrible in their destruction. These unpredictable cards appear out of nowhere, or hold off until the later seasons.
That randomness makes each card flip a little stressful, but in an interesting way. It’s always neat when the monster spaces actually inadvertently help with a scoring goal!
Heroes also show up to wage battle, or set up positions to protect various squares. Even more possibilities!
Together with the explore cards, every flip feels like it’s full of excitement and opportunities. Never a dull moment!
A Minimalist Approach
To speed up gameplay a bit, I switched over to try out a more line-based artistic style. It worked well enough, but only saved me around 15 or 20 minutes in total.
Sure, that sounds like a lot, but I also missed the coloring aspect. I might not be creating masterpieces, yet that act of doodling just for fun is something that rarely comes up.
This map was still an interesting one, particularly with the excessive activity from the ambush cards.
Thank goodness for the heroes! They cleared out a few monsters and helped me avoid losing a lot of victory points.
Beautiful Card Art
My coloring wasn’t exactly the kind of illustrations one would admire, but I loved seeing the scenery in the explore cards. So colorful and beautiful with a storybook look!
This was the play when I realized I couldn’t really draw towns, and my rivers needed some serious improvement.
With all of the mini-expansions, I stumbled across my new favorite card in the Architects Mini-Expansion. That’s right: An explore card allows new mountains to rise up!
I enjoyed puzzling through the scoring cards and thinking about how much higher my score could have been. Ha ha!
Slow Plays and the Idea of Not Wasting Time
Realistically speaking, this sort of solo game would normally take me around half an hour. My play time is double that, due entirely to my slow coloring. And make no mistake: I don’t think these even qualify as amateur art. Ha ha! I tried to speed up with other options, but filling in the squares with colors and taking my time is a big part of the game experience.
I sometimes feel like I want to play so many games, or celebrate my ability to fly through a session. But that’s not worth it for me. I like to slow down now and then. This simple act of coloring is relaxing, and I don’t see it as a waste of my time. I get to sit with my map a little longer and come up with very tiny stories that are so minor that they need no explanation.
For example… “This river flows out of this mountain.” Or, “Monsters cut off contact between these villages, but maybe there’s a path through the forest.” Completely unnecessary, and they often pass by as little snippets while I shade in a few squares. That’s what I miss when I speed up, though, and I’m not looking to skip over those calm, quiet thoughts.
Skills and Success
Finally! It took me long enough, but I finally earned the top title with this impressive play. Empty spaces dotted the countryside, and a stand of forest stretched north to south.
A pair of large villages helped, as did the placement of farms on ruins. I made use of some skills here and there, too, trying to spend just enough gold while still saving some!
The ambush cards weren’t all that bad this time, and I even got to discard a couple with how filled in this map was.
Plenty of fun! I felt ready to tackle a few new rules and finally move onto a map pack for the first time: Nebblis!
The Plane of Flame
Watch out for the magma! The first map pack takes place in Nebblis, where this minor detail is around… You know, just your everyday volcano that regularly spews lava. Ha ha!
New cards mean that the lava flows at an unpredictable rate, but my volcano was fairly active. I liked the way I had to leave some open space, or risk destroying nearby squares.
My skills remained intact, despite the heat. My highest score showed up thanks to some long-term strategizing.
Although my final maps all looked pretty similar, I never felt like gameplay was boring. I just kept on playing!
Legendary Lava Town
My final score wasn’t as impressive, but this play stood out for the clever way the lava flowed. It went everywhere! I had to keep an eye on my scoring goals and chose small shapes.
The best moment came shortly after the giant trolls arrived in the southeast, promptly waltzing right up to the edge of the lava. With a little luck, I just needed the 1×3 lava card…
And the explore deck delivered! With a great crash, the lava expanded across the terrain claimed by the giant troll.
Wait a second. Is that simply one single troll?! Apparently one is enough to cause havoc, or be havocked upon? Ha!
Affril and Knowledge
Content with my time in Nebblis, I vowed to try out another map pack before I called this session complete. Up next was Affril, which seemed to allude to a plane of knowledge.
Well, it was technically correct: I played a multiplayer session recently with this map pack, so I was prepared!
But not prepared enough to win. It became very difficult to manage everything when there were endless ambushes.
I was only lucky the solo scoring criteria didn’t subtract too much from my measly final score! A little more work was in order to call myself mildly knowledgeable about Affril. Ha!
Session Overview
Play Number: 3-10
Main Expansion 1: Affril: Plane of Knowledge
Main Expansion 2: Nebblis: Plane of Flame
Solo Mode: Included in the Base Game
Play Details: Maps A, B, C, D, N1, N2, A1, & A2
Outcome: 113, 85, 74, 120, 127, 112 (4 Wins & 4 Losses)
Much better! With a little luck and a lot more focus, the final winter season in Affril resulted in an excellent score. I had some very balanced islands, and almost avoided monsters entirely. Lots more map packs to try out down the line, and this one remains a very calm and fun sort of experience!
%
10 Plays
Affordability
Price & Value
10
Functionality
Challenges & Mechanics
10
Originality
Design & Theme
10
Quality
Components & Rules
10
Reusability
Achievement & Enjoyment
7
Variability
Distinctness & Randomness
8
+ Pros (Positives)
- Every card flip is an exciting moment, as each play feels balanced between the good and bad possibilities.
- The rules are easy to learn and remember, and the special map pack restrictions make sense with minimal effort.
- Filling in a map may be done in a number of different ways, which can make the experience relaxing or tense.
- Plenty of variety exists in a single game, yet the map packs add on new challenges to keep the system fresh.
- Random scoring goals offer interesting ways to plan how to build out the areas of a map, and what shapes to choose.
- Mini-expansions are far from needed for a fun time, although they add some surprising strategies and opportunities.
– Cons (Negatives)
- There are some unlucky seasons that have no way to mitigate the explore cards, and early scoring can be problematic.
- It’s subtle and minor, but when mixing cards from the games and mini-expansions, newer ones tend to bunch up.
- Following a monster card pattern takes a bit of practice to understand the pattern and where to draw the squares.
- Once a play ends, there isn’t any reason to hang onto the map, and the final scoring doesn’t feel like a full conclusion.
Victory Conditions
Earn the Legendary Cartographer Title
- Overall Goal Progress 75%
Goals and Milestones
Score at least 120 points.
Win at least 1 game with the Affril map pack.
Win at least 1 game with the Nebblis map pack.
Score at least 130 points.
Continue the Conversation
Do you have a favorite map for Cartographers or Cartographers Heroes? What stories have you come up with during play? There is a lot of variety and plenty more for me to explore in the future. It’s not just the randomness, though, but a sense of always being able to add to a map in a meaningful way. Plus, the calm coloring aspect is always something to appreciate!
I haven’t really gone down the Cartographer’s rabbit hole despite liking maps more than I would like to admit. Still, I like your subtle coloring that gives life to your maps. I don’t take enough time to stop and calmly look at my end games in order to take them all in. I agree it’s a breathing blessing.
Thank you for the kind words! Taking a little extra time made this a nice activity for me, and I’m looking forward to creating more maps in the future. Good luck when you play!