We have been playing Tapestry lately and I have to say, this is a really strange game in my eyes. I can confirm all of its “mistakes” it has gotten some flak for in the board gaming community, and we’ve “banished” other games for less from our collection, but depending on our mood we are still somehow drawn to this game. 

The game in a nutshell

It is a somewhat abstract civilization building game with streamlined gameplay and incredible colorful clay-like mini buildings. In usual Stonemaier fashion, accessibility is one its core strengths, and you could play with up to 5 players. Our experiences are based on 2-player sessions though.

The rules are quite simple: on your turn you either pay to go up on 1 of the 4 tracks and gain the depicted bonuses, or you go to the next era and gather income. You play over 4 eras, then the game is over – normally you try to maximize your gains in an era and only go to the next one when you are out of resources. 

So let’s see what these 4 tracks are about:

  • Exploration mostly has to do with drawing hex tiles and/or placing them down on the map. Upon placement you gain the bonus depicted on the tile, plus you are also trying to match terrain types for additional points.
  • Technology is about acquiring technology cards. If you fulfill their prerequisites, you can upgrade them with certain actions to gain their bonuses.
  • Conquest is for taking control of all those tiles that you lay down when exploring. It also involves rolling 2 dice and picking a reward from one of them. Attacking enemy hexes is pretty simple: you either automatically win, or the enemy plays a Trap card and you lose. 
  • Research often has you rolling a 12-sided die to additionally go up on another track at the same time.

Of course each track has many things going on, I only listed their unique actions. They also might let you draw tapestry cards which are an important aspect of the game. You can play one of these at the end of every era to gain some special effects for the next era – these allow you to customize your strategy on the go in really cool ways.

The 4 tracks also let you place down 4 types of buildings to unlock income and scoring opportunities. Upon reaching new thresholds first on a track you also get bigger landmark buildings. Every building goes on your city board, where you are trying to complete rows and columns for points or 3×3 sections for bonus resources – in a kind of Sudoku-way. There are blocked spaces that make this puzzle a bit more nuanced.  

The good and the bad

Here are my pros:

  • It’s super accessible with streamlined rules (the rulebook is basically 3 pages long), so downtime is minimal. Which is good because we are always looking forward to our turn, as despite the simple rules there is room for comboing. 
  • I like the game’s unusual structure. Similar to Everdell’s seasons, you could enter the next era, even though others are still playing the last one. This asynchronicity could mean that you finish the game and have to wait for your opponents to also finally end their last round. On the other hand it’s great because you can’t be pressured out of your strategy, and you are free to combo as you wish (you do get a reward for entering the next era first though, so that helps with this).
  • The artwork and production quality is amazing.

The neutral:

  • It is quite abstract. The progress of your civilization is symbolized by how far your markers are on the four tracks. Technology is represented by cards – you can basically research air conditioning and penicillin after inventing fire.

The cons:

  • The Tapestry cards and Civilizations make the game shine… and fall. They bring immense replayability. You play one Tapestry card each era, which gives some ability or mutator that will be active for that whole era. The effects are really varied to the extent where some of them feel unbalanced. Asymmetrical civilizations are something I really like, their balance is sometimes way off though. I am aware of the official PDF with a kind of balance patch, but some of the changes are a bit rough, like starting the game with additional VPs. There is a reprint of these factions announced, and I am really curious to try those in the future.
  • Though combat is not the focus of the game, for me this is the weakest link: If you put your piece on an opponent’s tile you automatically win, unless they play a Trap card. As there cannot be more than 2 pieces on a tile, any counterattack is automatically blocked on the recently conquered tile. 

So why the dependency on the mood you ask?

If I think of those balancing issues, I can’t help but wonder how it reached its current BGG ranking. But that’s just me, raging about the fact that I lost with a significant amount of points in our last game 🙂 

I think I know the answer. Beyond the obvious perks like accessibility and production quality Tapestry has something very soothing about it. The whole artwork and gameplay provide a very relaxed experience (if you want it) yet there is quite the excitement of outsmarting your opponent and racing up on those tracks to secure juicy buildings and effects. I imagine in a 4-5 player game the imbalanced factions feel differently too – or at least you are not alone losing, but with only 2 players it is very zero-sum if you choose the “wrong” civilization or do not have luck with the Tapestry cards.

Yet if we are in the mood for some smooth gameplay and civ building with not too complex rules, the fun outweighs the negatives! 

Disclaimer: We received a review copy from the publisher.