Let's charts some lands

Become an intrepid explorer and chart the lands of a newly discovered island in 🗺️ Maps of Misterra, a tile-laying game from @sitdowngames .
I think it’s easy to overlook new tile-laying games, as there are so many on the market, and many more coming out, but I’m here to say that Maps of Misterra is actually a really unique take on the genre with some fun twists! 😊

Let’s start by explaining the main feature of the game, which can be hard to wrap your head around:
As you play you are laying cards on your Parchment board - these show terrain types and influence the main Island board, but the two don't necessarily have to match. ☝️
You see you have sponsors that have presumptions about this island that they want to have confirmed. However you consider yourself a respectable cartographer so you also want your map to somewhat match the reality. These are 2 aspects you have to juggle: 🧐 you get a bunch of points for matching terrain between your map and the island, but also a bunch of points if you match the sponsor’s objectives, which only apply to your map and not the island! 🤯

So you are basically doing tile-laying on 2 different boards. Whenever you place one of the domino-like cards on your board, you will check the island, either placing hazy “unconfirmed” terrain tiles, or confirming a previous hazy one, if the types match. So if 2 different explorations both find a forest, it will be confirmed that there is a forest. 👍 However hazy terrain types could always be changed until they are confirmed! 😮

Now you add a spatial aspect to this mix: your explorer meeple! You can only ever explore lands that are adjacent to you, so you have to keep moving around. The different terrain types have thematic effects too, that bring even more layers into the game. For example you see farther when on mountains, but forests block your line of sight, meaning you can’t place cards!

Maps of Misterra was a real surprise to us. When we first heard about it, we kind of let it slip under the radar, but taking a closer look during SPIEL convinced us of the game’s greatness! We will definitely write more about this gem! 🥰