Friday evening saw some Commander action taking place. This time it was against some ex-students.
The first game we played saw me take my Eldrazi deck out for a spin. But it was too slow, and none of us could stop Bob doing the inevitable and defeat us all. Once he had his Emrakul, The Aeons Torn out it was game over. I wasn’t finding any answers. I definitely wasn’t getting to my big Eldrazi hitters. All we could do was say “gg” through gritted teeth.
Our second game saw my Ur-dragon deck hit the table. Two cool things happened in this game. Firstly I got to play Tiamat. Which is an obnoxious card to play. Being able to get from your deck your five most nastiest dragons is obscene. It puts a big target on you as your opponents know what you just got.
Secondly despite having over 100 life I was still able to have my dragon horde swoop in and kill Bob. Giving double strike to them all really helped. Sadly only 20 points of that damage was Commander damage. Despite me trying to find a way to get that final single point of damage.
Taking Bob out meant I was also dead. But there was nothing I could do to stop the silly number of hydra tokens that were coming my way.
It was a fun evening of Commander. But my losing streak was continuing.
Saturday saw not only Diego playing Tapestry but Jonathan joined us as well.
Both had not played before. But that didn’t scare me off from teaching the game with Plans and Ploys (P&P), and the Arts and Architecture (A&A) expansions thrown in to the mix.
I had rigged the tech and tapestry decks so that we got to see the new cards from the newest expansion A&A. Plus we only chose civilisations from the two expansions. I also didn’t use the advanced capital city mats from A&A. However I did shuffle up both sets of landmark cards from the expansions before drawing four of them.
Even taking into account the above setting up, plus the addition of the fifth track and masterpiece cards. I don’t think with the expansions added into the mix there was too much additional stuff, or over complication to the game to make it too much for new players to take in.
I specifically advanced on the new Arts track because I wanted to see it in use, and try the new masterpiece cards.
I have to say I liked the new masterpiece cards. But not the card size! Can’t sleeve them unless I cut some sleeves down.
Loved being able to use the inspiration tiles to upgrade one of the resource tracks.
I was already a fan of the landmark cards after they were introduced in P&P. So having more of them is just great.
Another thing I like about the arts track is that you choose which type of income building you move to your capital city. It made hitting the landmark card trigger I had very easy.
I need to sleep on the above and get some more games in so I can expand on those very basic initial thoughts above. At the moment there is a germ of a thought that the above is too powerful. But is it? Does it balance out if others are also doing it?
I think this was the most I’d done completing rows and columns in my capital city. It felt pretty cool. It certainly looked pretty cool.
I knew Diego would like the game. But would Jonathan?
He did indeed like it. And that’s despite getting salty over the dystopia tapestry card I played allowing me to grab any landmark on the landmark board. Naturally I went with the tallest (on the off chance there was a tie for first place).
Plus the end of turn trigger for one of his landmark cards was an issue. Jonathan will explain better than me in the comments his issue with this. For me it was not an issue.
Anyway here are the final scores showing I had indeed broken the week long losing streak I’d been on.
You know how this post is ending.
As you’ve invited it, here are my thoughts on the game.
To begin, I enjoyed it. I hadn’t realised that there were two expansions in the mix; I just thought there was only one expansion for the game. I should have realised when the game was packed away that there were two expansions due to the boxes, but it never clicked. I am now wondering what the base game alone would play like without any of the expansions added in.
I did feel the Dystopia tapestry card was a bit powerful. My general thoughts are that if you have been putting in the effort and resources to climb a track to get access to a landmark which works well for you, it seems a bit crap move that a player who has not put in any effort on that track could potentially take the Landmark that you’ve been working towards from under your nose. You’d have to go back to the drawing board and put in effort on another track to get to a chosen Landmark, while other players could be well ahead of you by then.
My problem with my play is that I had planned, at the end of the final income round, to be able to advance my Technology card to the top, which would give me access to the Stock Market Landmark, which would fill my second District and activate my Game Store Landmark, which would complete another two rows/columns for final scoring. However, I was dismayed to find out that the final scoring takes place before I could have the Game Store, thus scuppering my plans. Why they did not allow this card to activate before the final scoring is absolutely beyond me.
A cosmetic criticism that I will level at the game is regarding the plastic Landmark miniatures. There can be no doubt that Stonemaier Games publish the most amazingly produced games in the business (my favourite game being Wingspan, which has such beautiful production values), but with Tapestry, I think the Landmark miniatures actually get in the way of the game. The smaller houses are absolutely fine, but the Landmarks could have done with being shaped cardboard (like other polyomino games, such as Patchwork); it would make looking at your area board much easier to see completed columns/rows.
Would I have another go? Yes, absolutely. Perhaps next time the base game only. I think I would have preferred my introduction to the game to have been in this way rather than everything in all at once. To be honest, I wasn’t even sure what some of the mechanics were and I’m sure an easier introduction would have benefited me greatly.
A great reply. The only difference for you (as you didn’t advance on the arts tract) if just playing the base game would be no landmark card (they were the “big” addition from plans and ploys, otherwise that expansion just added more of what was there).