Tigris & Euphrates - is a game of early civilisation building or so it claims. There are certain elements of this theme however it is a little abstract and in play is soon forgotten. In reality this is a deep game which is cleverly designed, with innovative and smooth mechanics, and many strategies that can be deployed to achieve a victory. This game will take a long time to master, although the play is not complex, the strategies require a lot of thought.

The Game

Colour plays an important role in this game. There are four colours - red for religion, black for population, green for trading and blue for farming. The playing tiles come in these 4 colours; the victory point blocks come in these 4 colours; the players each have a leader of each of the four colours. This can be initially confusing as players leaders are not all a single colour as in most games, instead a symbol is used to distinguish each players leaders.

Setting up

Each player starts with their four leaders, 2 catastrophe tiles, a player screen and 6 playing tiles, drawn randomly from the tile bag.

Ten temple (red) tiles are set up in specific spaces on the game board, each of these temples has a non-coloured wooden block placed on it representing a treasure

The Objective

The object of the game is to earn victory points in the 4 aspects that form your civilisation. These are religion (red), the people (black), trade (green) and farming (blue). The coloured blocks represent the victory points. However there is a neat twist to the scoring, and it probably the single most important element in making this game so good. Your final score is the number of victory points you have in your weakest area. A balanced civilisation is good. So if you've scored 12 in 3 areas but only 4 in the other your score is 4!

Game Play

The game play is surprisingly simple. In your turn, you may perform 2 actions from the list below. You can perform a single action twice. After both actions players draw tiles from the bag to replenish their hand back to six tiles. The game ends when a player can not draw a tile at the end of their turn or only two treasure remain (see below).

The actions available are :

• place, remove or move a leader on the board
• place a tile on the board
• place a catastrophe tile on the board
• discard and replace up to 6 tiles from your hand

Leaders must be placed adjacent (not diagonally) to temple (red) tiles. Any leader linked to a set of adjacent tiles forms a kingdom. As you can only collect victory points by having leaders on the board it’s a good idea to get your leaders into play and try to keep them there. A leader may be moved to any space on the board that so long as it is adjacent to a temple.

Tiles can be played anywhere on the game board with one exception. Only farm (blue) tiles may be placed on the river spaces, and they may not be placed anywhere else. A victory point of the appropriate colour will be awarded for each tile that is placed adjacent to a kingdom. If there is a leader of that colour in the kingdom the player who owns that receives the point. If there is no leader of that colour but there is a King (black leader) then the player who owns the king receives the point. The lay a tile collect a victory point is the most common activity in the game and normally the active player will gain the victory point. However, from time to time a player will give someone else a point if it strengthens his own position in a kingdom, or expands it in a direction which he wishes. This is important because if you join two kingdoms a conflict will ensue.

There are two forms of conflict in the game.

1. A leader is placed or moved into a kingdom that already has a leader of that colour. To resolve the conflict each player counts the number of temple (red) tiles adjacent to their leader. The attacker may then add temple tiles from his hand of 6 to this total. The defender may now do the same and try to match the attackers total in order to survive the attack. The winner of this conflict will gain one red victory point, while the loser’s leader is removed. All tiles used from the players hands are discarded.
2. The second form of conflict is far more serious, and fun. This conflict occurs when a tile is laid that joins two separate kingdoms. The tile that was used to join the two kingdoms together (thus causing the conflict) is covered by a special "unification" tile, and it does not score a victory point. If the now unified kingdom has any leaders of the same colour then civil war breaks out. The difference here is that tiles of the leader's colour present in their original kingdom are used to represent the strength of a leader. The loser must remove his leader and all supporting tiles from the board. This often leads to the kingdom becoming fragmented. The winner of the conflict will earn as many victory points in the colour fought over equal to the number of tiles removed from the board. Hence large numbers of points can be awarded in these conflicts.

A catastrophe tile destroys the tile it is placed on. This can change the drastically. A common use is to split a kingdom to weaken it before a conflict. Another is to remove a temple and hence its adjacent leader thus allowing a new leader to be placed without conflict.

Another source of victory points are the monuments. Any player can build a monument by placing a tile, which forms a 2x2 square of identical tiles. Each monument has two colours and will generate one point in each colour for the player who has the leader of that colour in the kingdom at the end of that players turn. Hence monuments are very valuable and frequently fought over.

And finally the treasures, these start the game on the board and are slowly captured by players. These treasures are valuable as they represent generic victory points that can be used to increase any colours score. However to claim treasure a kingdom must first contain two treasures and then the player with the trade leader (green) in that kingdom may claim one of the treasures immediately.

Conclusion

This is a truly great game with plenty of depth. It is fun and reasonably simple to play, but not easy to play well. It can be played in a friendly manner or outright aggressive. So I will wholeheartedly recommend this to any games player.