A printable Cartographers log lives or dies on the one record nobody keeps: the season-by-season score, because the winner is not decided by a single final total, and every season scores a different pair of edicts. Spring scores edicts A and B, summer scores B and C, autumn scores C and D, and winter scores D and A again, so each scoring card is used exactly twice and each season's total is built from different goals. Add to that one star per filled coin symbol and minus one star per empty space next to a monster, and a game that looks settled on the map can flip on a single miscounted coin or a single monster-adjacent gap. Nobody at the table argues about the terrain they drew; they argue about which edicts were scored when, which coins counted in which seasons, and which empty spaces really sat next to a monster.
Coins are the quiet trap the sheet is built to catch, because a coin scores in every season after it is earned, not just once. Surround a mountain space by filling all four spaces orthogonally adjacent to it and you fill in one coin symbol, and small explore shapes sometimes grant a coin outright, and every filled coin is worth one star at every season scoring from then on. A coin earned before spring scoring is worth four stars across the game, a coin earned in summer is worth three, and a coin earned in winter is worth exactly one, because winter is the last scoring. The log records when each coin was earned and carries it forward season by season, because a player who counts a winter coin in all four seasons has invented three stars, and a player who forgets a spring coin in autumn has thrown one away.
Monsters are the other trap, because the penalty is counted per empty space, not per monster, and adjacency is orthogonal only. When an ambush card is revealed, maps pass in the direction of the arrow and an opponent draws the monster shape on your map, exactly where it hurts most, and at each season scoring you lose one star for each empty space adjacent to a monster space, up, down, left, or right. An empty space next to two monster spaces still costs only one star, a space diagonal to a monster costs nothing, and filling an empty space removes its penalty entirely, which is why the log tracks monster-adjacent empties per season rather than once at the end. Ruins add a third thing to track: when a ruins card is revealed, the next shape must cover an unfilled ruins space if possible, and a player with no ruins left can only draw a single square, so the log notes ruins used and ruins remaining alongside every season.
Here is the worked four-season tally the sheet is built to settle. Player A scores spring edicts twelve, one coin, minus two for monsters, for eleven; summer edicts fourteen, two coins, minus one, for fifteen; autumn edicts thirteen, two coins, minus two, for thirteen; winter edicts twelve, three coins, minus one, for fourteen, giving fifty-three in total, from fifty-one edict stars plus eight coin stars minus six monster stars. Player B scores spring edicts fourteen, no coins, minus one, for thirteen; summer edicts thirteen, one coin, minus two, for twelve; autumn edicts fifteen, one coin, minus one, for fifteen; winter edicts thirteen, two coins, minus three, for twelve, giving fifty-two in total, from fifty-five edict stars plus four coin stars minus seven monster stars, and A wins by one even though B scored more edict stars, because A's coins arrived earlier and A's monsters cost less.
Fill one of A's winter monster-adjacent empty spaces and A's winter penalty drops from minus one to zero, A rises to fifty-four, and the win stretches to two. Count B's second coin, earned in winter, in all four seasons instead of winter only, and B falsely gains three stars to fifty-five, flipping the winner, which is exactly why the sheet dates every coin. Count a space diagonal to a monster as adjacent and A falsely drops to fifty-two, tying B on a penalty the rules never impose, which is why adjacency on the sheet is marked orthogonally, with diagonals drawn as a different symbol. Every one of those lines has decided a real game, and every one of them is on the sheet.
That is why the sheet sells as a download rather than as a blank score pad. A blank pad records a final total nobody can audit; a worked season-score log records the decisions the table actually argued about, with each season's edict pair, the coins carried forward, and the monster-adjacent empties on the same sheet, so the winner falls out of the log instead of out of a twenty-minute recount. Print it, update one line per season as edicts rotate, coins accumulate, and monsters land, and the next time someone says their Cartographers total adds up, the answer is on the paper, not in anyone's memory.
This is an unofficial fan-made log sheet, not affiliated with or endorsed by Thunderworks Games. Cartographers is a board game designed by Jordy Adan.
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