Are you in a mood for this?

What are your thoughts on Tapestry? Especially on its balance issues? It has gotten some flak in the past for some of its mistakes (rightfully, I might add), but depending on our mood, we are still drawn to it.

So why the dependency on the mood?
✅ 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).

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

❌ The Tapestry cards and Civilizations make the game shine… or 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. 😮 Civilizations are completely asymmetric - however this is where the aforementioned flak also stems from, as some of these are just simply unbalanced. There is an official PDF with a kind of balance patch, but some of the changes are a bit rough, like starting the game with additional VPs.

❌ 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.

💬 If we are in the mood to overlook the balancing faults of Tapestry, for us, the fun outweighs the negatives!