“It’s been a hard day’s night
And I’ve been workin’ like a dog
It’s been a hard day’s night
I should be sleepin’ like a log” Beetles, Hard Day’s Night

Another week of nights, that was topped off with an eleven hour shift. Oh and a double sausage egg McMuffin on the way home (I deserved a treat for doing that).

So my first of two days off was spent mostly sleeping, but also in the evening playing Tapestry.

There had been two previous attempts to get Tapestry to the table but you know life likes to throw a spanner in the works from time to time.

Tapestry has been one of the more polarising Stonemaier games. But I like it as do the folks I play it with. Which is all that matters.

We were going to be playing Tapestry with both expansions Plans and Ploys, plus Arts & Architecture. Basically all in.

I really do like what the expansions bring to the table to Tapestry. In the case of Plans and Ploys, landmark cards, and more of everything else. And in Arts & Architecture a fifth advancement track (Arts), masterpiece cards, inspiration tiles, advanced capital cities, plus more of everything else.

More of anything is great as it adds to the replay ability of a game. But the other new bits add to the game but with very little complication or game play overhead. Personally I’d include these all the time. Even with new players. Ok I wouldn’t give a new player an advanced capital city. But otherwise I see very little to no draw back to playing with everything possible.

With so many tapestry cards in the game now we went with a suggested house rule by Ben that if you had to draw a tapestry card you drew two, choose one and discarded the other.

Also during setup I dealt out four civilisation cards to everyone to choose one from. Also for the same reasons as the house rule we went with above.

The following are the civilisations that we ended up going with, along with the drawn capital city and landmark card.

• Futurists/Wetland/Bridge – me (red)
• Inventors/Mountain/Birdwatching Perch- Charlene (blue)
• Merrymakers/Forest/Windmill- Julie (green)
• Historians/Grassland/Castle – Ben (grey)

We also used the civilisation adjustments as given in the Arts & Architecture rules booklet.

Which meant Ben’s Historians were starting fifteen points down.

I’d never played Futurists before. So it was an interesting experience starting on the second era of all the advancement tracks.

With the civilisation adjustment I started with only two extra resources, not four.

With my advanced moves costing an extra resource to everyone else it meant I was going to my second and third income phase a lot earlier than everyone else.

But on the plus side I got an early mastery card and inspiration tile.

Luckily on my later turns during my third and fourth era I was able to generate more resources and do more.

Once again I did seem to focus on exploration and getting into space. Placing a tile did get me a resource. Which I needed to generate as my turns were more expensive.

My fourth era saw my spacefaring futurists turn their attention earthwards again and becoming expansionists with their plans grabbing territory. This enabled me to finally complete my landmark card. Plus using warplanes enabled me to capture the centre tile and get my second achievement. My first being reaching the end of the exploration track.

I did take the fifth and final income phase first setting the score that everyone else had to beat. A turn later Charlene did the same. It was very nerve racking as she clocked up the points getting closer and closer. In the end I had a waver thin lead of two points.

A couple of turns later Julie joined us in doing her fifth and final income phase.

More worryingly Ben was still on his third era! That’s two income phases of scoring. We all watched as he did his fourth income phase closing the points gap. He then started to “beautiful mind” his final era with the aid of his mentat (oops wrong game) Charlene to maximise his points. The gap closed a little bit more.

Then Ben went to his final income phase. That was enough to smash the total I’d set to win.

What a great game of Tapestry. Loved the whole experience. Played with three lovely friends. There was a little banter. Heck Ben and Charlene have even been elevated to named players in the bgstat app now!

A great evening of gaming.

I did buy the stl files for some bases to all the landmark miniatures and asked Colin if he’d print them for me. Which he is doing. Sadly these were not ready for this game. But next time.

The advantage of having these will be that with these on each landmark miniature when placed on the capital city they will occupy the correct number of squares.

I can’t imagine once fitted I’d remove them. So the lovely inserts that currently come with the game and expansions might become redundant as I believe they then won’t fit.

But that’s a problem for another day!