We’re diving into the new expansion for Tapestry: Arts and Architecture. The second expansion for Tapestry, Arts and Architecture brings a brand new advancement track, new capital city mats, 8 new beautiful landmark miniatures, and a ton of new challenges for players to work through and strategize over. 

Don’t forget to check out our full reviews of the Tapestry base game and the Plans and Ploys expansion.

What Does Arts and Architecture Add to the Base Game?

The biggest addition this expansion brings is the all new Arts track. This fifth track sits alongside the game board and provides players a different track to advance their civilization upon. 

The Arts track includes two notable elements: Masterpiece Cards and Inspiration Tiles. 

Masterpiece cards: 

Players can earn these cards as they advance on the Arts track. They are placed on top of their ‘Maker of Fire’ space on their player mat. Now at the beginning of your income turn, you also gain the rewards showing at the top of your masterpiece cards. And these cards are stackable! Players can gain multiple masterpiece cards during a game, earning the benefits from all masterpiece cards at the beginning of their income turns. 

Inspiration Tiles: 

These are tiles players can earn when they land on the inspiration spaces. These provide upgraded income values for a specific track. Each player has one inspiration tile for each space, so they are free to choose which income track they would like to upgrade. It does not matter if that track still has income buildings on it, just remove them to place the tile, then put them back on the upgraded spaces. 

With the new Arts track also comes 3 track specific miniatures, along with 5 additional landmarks players can earn during the game by completing landmark cards. 

To account for the new advancement track, there is a new science die, a d20, that features all 5 track symbols. This die replaces the old die which will no longer be used.

Completing the new components and elements in the expansion are:

Five new civilization mats, six advanced capital city mats, 20 new tapestry cards, 11 tech cards, 1 reference guide, new player tokens, and Automa rules and cards for solo play.

What Do We Think of the Arts and Architecture Expansion?

For fans of Tapestry, the Arts and Architecture expansion is an absolute gem! 

This is a beautiful addition of new elements that highlight what you love about the original game without changing the game drastically. 

That said, the new elements feel significant! This isn’t a “more stuff” expansion in the same way that Plans and Ploys was. If you are on the fence between which expansion to get, hands down I would recommend picking up the Arts and Architecture expansion first. 

If you have both expansions, you can even fit them all inside the base game box too!

The Arts Track

We absolutely love the new Arts track! This track does a great job of bringing in two excellent new elements that help shake up strategies and give strong scoring options for players. 

The Inspiration Tiles are a welcome addition that felt really natural, almost like something that the game should’ve always had. 

I can’t say enough good things about the masterpiece cards. These can be powerful cards for players who are able to earn them early. Though not so powerful that they are overpowered! I think for a lot of players, these cards are going to ‘click’ and give them a visible goal to work towards, knowing that if they do, they’ll earn points. And goodness can these cards make your final income turn feel like you’ve hit the jackpot at the arcade. The points just keep rolling in!

My absolute favorite part of the Arts track is that it is an excellent option for those turns where a player has advanced on a track you were planning on marching down but now they’ve got all the landmarks so you’re thinking, “why bother?” The Arts track has some really valuable spaces on it that can make it a powerful part of your strategy. 

Advanced Capital City Maps and Civilizations

These maps are a lot of fun for seasoned Tapestry players. I really appreciate how they challenge players to change their strategy and really focus on planning out their city within these abstract shapes or confined within the map grid. It makes what was already a fun puzzle, even more challenging. 

It’s hard to pick a new favorite, but I really enjoyed the Archipelago and the Cavern mats. 

For that dash of new challenge the Civilizations are also great. I loved using the Urban Planners during one of our games. This civilization allows you to put your acquired landmarks onto your civ mat and place them into your capital city on a later turn, this can be a huge advantage as you can wait to place them until you know which landmarks you have and where it is best for them to go. The trade off is you aren’t able to gain any resources or points from completed areas on your capital city until they are placed. It’s a great risk/reward calculation to consider. 

Landmark Miniatures

I’d be remiss if I didn’t at least acknowledge the wonderful new landmarks in this expansion. They are without a doubt my favorite yet. 

Fans of Stonemaier Games are going to love the call backs and easter eggs to other games. The magnificent castle for Between Two Castles of Mad King Ludwig, the crush pad outside the little villa house for Viticulture, the clocktower for Pendulum, a birdwatchers house for Wingspan, and of corse the windmill — a staple landmark in many Stonemaier games! 

The only tiny bummer is a couple of the landmark cards have a reversed image of their footprint, so if you are planning your capital city around what the card shows, know that you’ll need to mirror it to fit on your map.

Final Thoughts

For me, Arts and Architecture is everything an expansion should be. It brings in new elements that enhances the game you already love. It does’t try to turn the game into something different, yet it provides that perfect dose of new that requires players to try different strategies or take new paths. 

This is an expansion for folks that already love Tapestry. It isn’t trying to win over any new players or change the game to meet the demands of critics. If you didn’t like playing Tapestry before, odds are you still won’t. But for the players that have enjoyed Tapestry, Arts and Architecture is an expansion worth getting.

If you would like to bring home a copy of Arts and Architecture, click here.
Reminder: this is not standalone game and must be played with the Tapestry base game.

Find this and all our board game recommendations on our Amazon Storefront.

A special thank you to our friends at Stonemaier Games for sending us a copy of Arts and Architecture for review. As always, our thoughts and opinions are our own.

If you liked this post you may also like:

Viticulture with Tuscany Expansion Review
Wingspan Review
Pendulum Review