Four ways to make a map on game night

Fit a kingdom into a small square: Kingdomino

In Kingdomino, each player builds a separate kingdom around a castle. You choose dominoes showing two squares of terrain, such as forest or lake, and add them to your growing map. At least one square must share an edge with the same terrain already there, or the castle’s starting square, which accepts any terrain. Everything must fit within five squares by five.

At the end, each connected area scores its number of squares multiplied by the crowns printed within it. For example, four connected lake squares with two crowns score eight points. The same four squares without a crown score nothing. You want room to extend valuable areas, while making sure those areas contain crowns. The highest total wins.

Choosing a domino also affects your next choice. The offered dominoes are arranged in numbered order; the player on the lowest-numbered one chooses first from the next selection. A tempting addition to your lake may leave you choosing after the others next time.

The boundary makes every two-square piece worth checking before you take it. A domino that sticks beyond the five-by-five space must be discarded if it cannot fit legally elsewhere. Kingdomino gives you a small landscape to arrange, with the constant question of whether the next piece will still have somewhere to go.

Build one landscape together: Carcassonne

Carcassonne grows in the middle of the table. On your turn, draw a tile and place it beside an existing one, with roads, cities and fields matching at every touching edge. You can then put one of your wooden followers on part of the new tile, such as its road, provided that connected road has no follower already on it. Followers mark the places from which you hope to score.

A road scores when both ends are closed, for example by a village or a city. Its owner gains one point for each tile in the road, then takes the follower back to use again. Cities have their own completion and scoring rules. The player with the most points after the last tile and final scoring wins.

Imagine your follower on a short road with one end still open. A tile that closes it gives you the points and frees your follower. A tile that extends it can increase its eventual value, but your follower stays there for now. Another player may draw the piece that makes that choice possible, and decide to use it somewhere else.

This map changes under everyone’s hands. You can care about a road running across several tiles without having placed all of them. The limited supply of followers gives you a reason to finish parts of the landscape as well as keep it growing.

Draw the same shapes in different places: Cartographers

Each Cartographers player has a paper map. A card is revealed for everyone, showing terrain types and shapes you can draw. You choose from those options and fit the shape into empty spaces on your own sheet. You may rotate or flip it, but it cannot overlap earlier marks or cross the edge.

Four scoring cards tell everyone which arrangements earn points. For example, one forest card rewards forest squares beside the map’s outer edge. If that card is in use, fitting a forest shape along the border can help your score. A different scoring card could make another location more useful. The maps diverge even though everyone sees the same drawing options.

The game lasts four seasons, and each season scores a different pair of those four cards. The highest total after winter wins. Marks stay on the sheet, so a placement can help now and still matter later. Occasionally an ambush card makes you pass your map to a neighbor, who draws monsters on it before handing it back. Empty spaces beside monsters cost points, giving you another reason to fill awkward gaps.

You can draw simple terrain symbols and still make all the same decisions. The appeal is watching the map become your own through placement, while fitting each new shape around choices you can no longer erase.

Connect roads and railways: Railroad Ink

In the base game of Railroad Ink: Deep Blue Edition, everyone draws on a private grid. Each of seven rounds begins with a roll of four route dice. Their results show the road, railway and station pieces everyone must draw if possible. Each new piece must connect to an existing route or to one of the marked exits around the edge.

Your aim is to link exits into networks. A network reaching more exits earns more points, with additional points for your longest road, longest railway and filled central spaces. Roads and railways can join only at stations. An overpass lets them cross without joining, so two lines that meet in the picture may still belong to separate networks.

Every unfinished route end inside the grid costs one point at the end. Drawing a branch can help you reach another exit, but it also leaves something you may need a later roll to finish. You are deciding which connections to pursue with the pieces available now.

The box’s river and lake dice are optional expansions. Leaving them aside gives you this seven-round puzzle of roads, rails and exits, with a route map that records both the connections you completed and the ones you ran out of room or time to make.

Which map would you like to see grow?

Kingdomino keeps your attention on the next piece of a compact kingdom. Carcassonne makes the whole table responsible for one landscape. Cartographers lets the same drawing choices produce different territories, while Railroad Ink asks where a road or railway can still reach. All four turn placement into a visible record of your decisions. The map you want to make is a useful place to start choosing.