Tapestry 7 Basic Strategy Tips

Hey guys, first off I want to say thanks for checking out my blog.  I have been putting off writing new content for awhile now as I haven’t felt that I could be consistent until now.  And I think you deserve a consistent dose of strategy insight.  With that in mind I wanted to start breaking down a few more modern games outside the heavy heavy Diplomacy that we love oh so much.  That brings us to Tapestry! 

I just received it a month ago for Christmas (yes I know I’m a few years late to the game) and already we have 8 plays under our belt plus I’ve reviewed every video I can find on YouTube about it so I am going to condense what I’ve learned from experience and what I’ve picked up from the YouTube.  If you disagree with any of the tips or have your own to share I’d love to hear them! Leave them in the comments below.

**UPDATE** this list of tips has been updated thanks to the feedback on BBG, hope it helps!

Tip #1 Get the buildings off your income mat!

This should be your fall back rule whenever you are questioning which option to take.  If one of the options leads to you moving a building off your income mat you should have a REALLY strong reason not to do that if you choose not to.  Not only is this the most important way for you to score points on your income turns, it also dictates how long each round can last by providing more resources.

Always remember to prioritize your buildings coming off your income mat.

Tip #2 Plan your Capital City layout.

Tip #2 ties in with tip #1 because you need to know where you’re taking those buildings. If you are playing the Craftsmen it is often better to prioritize your wonder rather than your capital city layout as you can get benefits much faster from those buildings which then propels your game even further.  If you are the architects its important to plan out where each type of building is being placed so you can take advantage of that benefit but the most important consideration is where your landmarks will be placed.

Take a look at the track that you want to focus on *cough* Technology *cough* and plan where those landmarks are going to be placed.  The Technology track is especially good in this regard because its Tier 3 landmark is the largest landmark in the game “Rubber Works”.  Another important piece to keep in mind is that Tier 3 landmark is the largest on each track so if you can get to two of the Tier 3 landmarks first without worrying so much about the Tier 4 landmarks you’ll be in a good position to fill your Capital City.

Tip #3 Pick a track and Specialize.

If you disagree with this tip and want to share your experience in the comments I’d love to hear it.  It’s been my experience and that of those I’ve spoken with that the only way to break 300 is through specialization.  I’ve seen successful strategies built around each track but in my opinion for a smaller player count or for newer players looking at the Science and Technology tracks are easiest ways to start building a strong score.

Tip #4 Make sure you have a tech card before your 2nd Income Turn.

You get 4 free upgrades to your tech cards in a game with all to few opportunities to upgrade, don’t miss out on your first one.  Fortunately you only need one resource for your first step on the Tech track so this one is not hard to get.

Tip #5 Not all tech cards are created equal.

My suggested priority of Tech cards to you when choosing goes as follows: 

Can it get me a new income building? First choice

Can it get me a resource? Second choice (Often these are the same cards)

Can it get me more tech cards or upgrade additional tech cards? I like these because as mentioned in tip 4, I take every upgrade opportunity I can get, especially the free ones.

Tip #6 Avoid the Military and Exploration Tracks

Stay Flexible and work with your Civ abilities

My original Tip #6 was to avoid the Military and Exploration tracks as they did not allow for easy beginner strategies to develop well.  As I mentioned in the intro I’m not claiming to be an expert in this game and until receiving the feedback on this post I’d not learned how to approach the military and exploration track as a beginner, in my opinion it required to much division of focus and didn’t leave you as flexible but I’ve been corrected so let me see if I can synthesize the reasons shared by Arnaud and Zachary for this strategy.

One major point from Zachary is that each time you explore you have a good shot at a new resource or an income building if you’re lucky, these have the same benefit as the Tech track in getting benefits (resources) and they score almost as well if placed correctly.  Tech cards are scored at minimum 4 times during income, that means each tech card is worth at minimum the number of income turns you have left where the exploration action has the potential to be worth at most 6 VP when tiles are placed well.  I’ve seen them normally land in the 3-4 VP range with 5/6 being rare but scoring your Tech cards 4/5/6 times is also rare so there’s two different approaches to get those points.  Zachary also mentions when rolling the combat dice you have a 67% chance of getting a resource which is not far off from the benefit of picking resource producing tech cards.  Thanks for the input Zachary, really helped my understanding of how to use these tracks and I’ll try this strategy in one of my next games so I can try it for myself.

Arnaud delves a little further into why its important to stay flexible and work with your Civ abilities as well as playing within your era with the benefits from your tapestry cards.  Typically the go stay away from the point granting tapestry cards as they will distract you from cards that can be used to get you income buildings and resources.  Many Civs will also push you to adopt a certain strategy as its important to maximize the benefit from your Civ if you’re planning on scoring high.  A good thought experiment would be to gather all the Civ’s after your first game and see if you can identify the strategy that will best support each Civ, that way when you sit down for game two and you are deciding between your two options you have a better idea of what you’re actually deciding between. Big thanks to you as well for your thoughts! Hopefully these edits bring the post as a whole closer to a great launchpad to a beginners first 300 point game.

Tip #7 Prioritize resources over Victory points early on

You don’t need to worry about victory points per say until after your 3rd Income phase, everything before that should be resource collection focused.  If you start taking points too early you sacrifice additional advance turns in favor of a quick lead.  Tapestry is not a sprint, its more of a relay if played correctly with each stage in the relay getting progressively longer.  

The only time I would pick points over resources were if I rolled a 7 on the conquer dice, that can often be on par with the earnings from some of our smaller point gains in later turns so they aren’t bad to pick up early on if the dice roll that way. Otherwise, stick to your plan and take the resources.

Tip #8 and #9 Take the first to new era bonus and skip bad steps using the science die meaningfully.

These are a few bonus tips that should help the new Tapestry player.  Unless you have a compelling reason to max your resources in an era don’t be afraid to jump ahead of others and take income first.  This gives you a nice little resource bonus in the next round.

Not all the steps are worth the same, some of the steps further up the tracks are often a waste of resources if you don’t set your game up for them.  With that in mind it can be a great strategy to follow tracks to their step prior to where you don’t want to pay that cost then go to the science track and start taking those advances at that point.  This can normally save you many resources that are not worth the cost to get the benefit.  The other benefit is that you can pick up Landmarks still without paying for the benefit.  Often you can feel like you’re just paying for the landmark since you can use the benefit well so this avoids that trap.

I’ve really appreciated the feedback from the forum and I’ll continue to update this with feedback from the community as it comes in.  For some of the more detailed strategy notes that have been shared we may need to make a new post where we discuss those but until then I’m grateful for this communities support to help new players achieve those over 300 point scores!

Well there you go, maybe with another 8 plays this may adjust or I may just write a revised post aimed at more complex decisions down the line.  If you’ve scored more that 300 points in a game of Tapestry I’d love to hear from you! Please leave a comment with your score and a way to get in touch with you so I can develop more tips from the community to help improve all of our combined enjoyment of this awesome game from Stonemaier Games.