Cartography of CarRel
Wanna get stuff?
What is it?
This is a simple, cozy game meant for relaxing while teasing the brain just a little. The gist is: you take a few hexagonal cardstock tiles from a stack and place one in an ever-expanding field of tiles making a simple map; you just gotta follow the rules of the tiles to play them legally and get points for placing certain ones. Each game is a mini competition against yourself to see how many points you can get! The theme of the game is cartography or ‘the practice of drawing maps.’
This is a single-player game intended for people 12 years of age and up (younger folks could certainly handle this with a little coaching).
Rules:
Place 1 'plain' tile in the center of a table. Draw 3 random tiles from the downturned, shuffled tile pile; place these face up in front of you. Play 1 tile from the 3 in a legal location, then draw another; always have 3 tiles to pick from. Continue playing and drawing until you cannot, or have none remaining. Count up your score, play again!
Standard tiles (no circle border) can only be played beside the same type, other standard tiles with the given tile type listed, or specialty tiles. ‘Plain’ tiles are playable adjacent to all standard tiles. On certain tiles, BONUS points can be earned if the tile is played beside another of the same type (e.g. stream beside stream).
Specialty tiles (circle border) can be played beside any standard tile, but listed points are only earned if all listed adjacency demands are fulfilled. Specialty tiles CAN be played beside other specialty tiles of the SAME TYPE (e.g. lake beside lake) and count toward each tile’s adjacency demands; otherwise, specialty tiles CANNOT be played beside other specialty tiles.
Tips:
Want to play with two people instead of one? Just take turns placing tiles!
If you want to take it just a bit further, make each player have 3 tiles to individually pick from while taking turns.
Don't forget to plan ahead for tricky specialty tiles.
It can be a bit tricky 'shuffling' the tiles, so at the end of a game, simply scoot around all of the tiles, swirl them a bit, get them good and random, then gather them all into a stack in the middle. Now the next time you play, they'll be ready to go!
The max score of the base game is 100 points. Rather than count up to this, simply find the tiles you were not able to get credit for, add up their points, and subtract this number from 100.
Is the game too easy for you? Try this:
At the end of a game, stack all standard (non-bonus) tiles together face-down and randomly remove 5 or 10 of them. Shuffle up the remaining standards with the bonus and specialty tiles. This will introduce a bit of randomness and scarcity into the next game!
You can also just remove 5 or 10 from the whole stack (specialty and bonus included) if you don't care about being able to get full points.
Using this to teach somebody about geography? At the end of a game hop onto Google Maps, or better yet Google Earth, and try to find somewhere on the planet that roughly matches the map you have created!
The Tiles
(some of them)Water
This is just a blanket term I've used to represent large bodies of water. It can mean ocean, gulf, bay, big lake, or really anything else that is not land.
Plain
A flat area that is usually treeless. In the game, this tile is an important 'wildcard' that allow players to create buffers between otherwise incompatible tile types and are also necessary for certain specialty tiles.
Tundra
A really cold area that is generally treeless due to aforementioned cold. From Russian and Sàmi words meaning 'uplands' or 'treeless'. Note here that the TUNDRA tile says it can be played adjacent to a MOUNTAIN tile, but the reverse is not true; this is intentional. If you want to play these two tile types beside each other, you must play the MOUNTAIN first.
Stream
This is a blanket term I've used to mean any running water. As rivers are not yet in the game, this tile fills in where rivers realistically would.
Jungle
In early editions, FOREST was JUNGLE. So, if you have a JUNGLE tile, congrats! You have a rare, first edition (like, for real, only 10 made). Treat these tiles exactly like a forest tile, they are interchangeable. For me at least, 'jungle' brings to mind tropical temperatures and excessive rain, which is not really representative of all forests, so I made the change.
Glacier
Realistically glaciers can be found beyond the constraints listed on the game tile and can be located adjacent to certain specialty tiles (like the fjord) but exist as it does in the game for balancing reasons. Feel free to make a house rule that changes this tile to more realistically represent nature!
Fjord
A long, narrow inlet with steep sides created by a receding glacier. From various Scandinavian words generally referring to narrow bodies of water as well as the traversal of said bodies.
Isthmus
A narrow stretch of land connecting two larger pieces of land (lookin' at you, Panama). From an ancient Greek word meaning 'neck'.
Mesa
An isolated hill with a flat top. From the Spanish word meaning 'table'.
