Tigris & Euphrates is what I'd call a "puzzle" game, or maybe a "cognitive" game. There is a background, concerning the rise of civilization in the Fertile Crescent, but that's mostly color, decorating a simple but involved set of core game mechanics.
Players: 3-4
Ages: 12
Playing Time: 1-2 hours
Complexity: 3-4 (of 10)
This game is often considered one of Reiner Knizia's tile-laying trilogy, along with Samurai and Through the Desert (though those aren't the only tile-laying games Knizia has written).
Tigris & Euphrates is produced in (the original) German by Hans im Gluck as Euphrat & Tigris.
The Components
Tigris & Euphrates comes with a pile of stuff, as is often the case with European games.
These include:
- 1 game board
- 153 civilization tiles
- 16 catastrophe, unification, and dynasty tiles
- 6 monuments
- 16 leaders
- 140 victory point counters
- 10 treasures
- 4 screens
- 1 bag
- 2 rules book
The game board is fairly standard: 6 fold-up sections with a map of the Fertile Crescent pasted over the board surface. The art is workmanlike, but clear. Borders give a feel for the time and also highlight the symbols of the four dynasties in this game, something done throughout the various components.
The civilization tiles are small square cardboard tokens which fit into squares on the board. They come in four colors--black, blue, red, and green--and each one depicts the type of peoples associated with those colors (kings, farmers, priests, and traders, respectively). The back of each tile shows a quarter of the foundation for a monument.
The catastrophe, unification, and dynasty tiles are cut just the same as the civilization tiles, but are used for different purposes in the game. They unfortunately have the same back as the civilization tiles, which makes it a real pain to sort them out if you accidently mix them together.
All of the tiles are of solid, sturdy cardboard that'll clearly last. Their only downside is that the perforations end up being still visible after you punch them, but that's pretty common, except for real high quality cardboard pieces.
The monuments are the first of the wood pieces. They actually come in two parts, which you assemble before your first game; this allows each monument to be two colors. They match the same colors as everything else: red, blue, green, and black. The monuments are very nice looking, though we had to struggle to get a few of them together because their cutting clearly isn't precise.
The leaders are circular wooden pieces. They come in four dynasties--bulls, potters, lions, and bowmen--and each dynasty has a piece in each color--red, blue, green, and black. One player commented that the colors don't stand out quite enough on the leader tiles because they're stamps rather than the whole disc being colored.
(For the first couple of games you'll also be confused by the fact that your tokens are marked by an icon, not a color as is standard in most strategy games. It's an annoyance, but it gets better with time, and was probably the only way to produce this game.)
The victory point counters are painted wooded cubes. They come in the typical four colors, and also in two sizes, small and large. The treasures are small, unpainted victory point counters.
Each dynasty has a short screen. The main point of the screen is to hide a player's tiles and victory points. However, some of the core rules are also printed on the screen, which is nice if you're new to the game. Overall the screens are very nicely cut and look quite good. They also appear to be very sturdy.
The bag is used to hold the tiles, so that you can draw them out. It's large, and made of cloth. Nothing special.
Finally, there are 2 rules book: an overview and a rules book. They're printed in four colors and very pretty to look at. They're also full of pictures to explain how things work. They do manage to explain the game decently, but they're absolutely terrible to use as reference because of the lack of contents or index, and the fact that the organization isn't obvious. We searched through them for several minutes a couple of times during each game we played.
Overall the components are above average, but not as spectacular as some other European games, especially given the high price point of this game. They thus give the game a style rating of "4" (out of "5").
The Game Play
Tigris & Euphrates starts out with placing ten temples (red civilization tiles) on the board in specified places, then placing one treasure box on each of those ten temples. Then, each player is handed his four leaders, his two catastrophe tiles, and draws an initial set of six civilization tiles. Play begins.
During a turn a player may take two actions (which can be the same), drawn from the following list:
- Move, withdraw or place a leader
- Place a civilization tile
- Discard and replenish up to 6 civilization tiles in your hand
- Play a catastrophe tile
Placing Leaders: Leaders are the whole heart of Tigris & Euphrates. You'll always have four of them: king (black), priest (red), farmer (blue), and trader (green). They can be placed on any empty square adjacent to a temple that's not a river space. They also can't be placed in such a way as to join together two kingdoms (which are touching groups of tiles each containing a leader).
Note that you can also move a leader directly from one location on the board to another.
If you place a leader in a kingdom that already has a leader of the same type, you generate an internal conflict.
Internal Conflict: When you place a leader in a kingdom already containing the same color of leader you generate an internal conflict. The attacker (who placed the leader) counts the number of temple (red) tiles directly adjacent to his leader and then commits a number of additional temple tiles from his hand. The defender counts the number of temple tiles directly adjacent to his leader and then commits a number of additional temple tiles from his hand. The person with the highest temple total is the winner; a tie goes to the defender. Whomever won gets one red victory point; whomever loses removes his leader back to his hand.
Note that the defender knows the exact attacking force before he decides what to commit.
Placing Tiles: You'll have six civilization tiles in your hand at the start of each turn drawn arbitrarily from the following four types: settlement (black), temple (red), farm (blue), and market (green). You can place them in any empty spaces, except that only blue tiles can be placed on river spaces (and blue tiles can only be placed on river spaces).
When a tile is placed it generates a victory point of the appropriate color for the player who has a leader of that color in that kingdom. If there is no such leader it generates a victory point for the king in that kingdom. If there is no king, no victory point is generated.
The exception is if a tile is placed in such a way as to join two existing kingdoms. (A tile may not be placed in such a way as to join more than two existing kingdoms.) In this case a "unification" tile is temporarily placed over the joining tile, and the new joined kingdom is investigated to see if there are now two leaders of the same color in the kingdom. If there are, an external conflict occurs for each pair of like-colored leaders.
Placement of tiles can also lead to the building of monuments, discussed after external conflicts.
External Conflicts: When a newly united kingdom has two leaders of the same color in it, an external conflict occurs. If there are multiple external conflicts, first the placing player resolves his, in an order he chooses, then resolution continues clockwise around the table.
The attacker (who either placed the tile, or was the first person clockwise) counts all of the tiles of the appropriate color for the involved leader in his half of the kingdom. He then adds a number from his hand. The defender does the same.
The player with the higher number of tiles committed wins the conflict, ties again going to the defender. The loser has to remove his leader and all his "supporters" (those on board civilization tiles which counted toward his total), with the exception that temples which are adjacent to leaders are not removed. The winner gets 1 victory point of the appropriate color for the leader and for each civilization tile that was removed.
Note that the resolution of an external conflict can deunite two kingdoms, at which point no more external conflicts are resolved.
Collecting Treasures: There's one other result of uniting kingdoms: if, at the end of an action, there is more than one treasure box in a kingdom, the trader in the kingdom takes all but one of the treasures; if there is no trader, the treasure boxes sit around until there is one.
Building Monuments: Whenever a civilization tile is placed in such a way as to form a square of four of the same color of civilization tile, the player may immediately decide to flip them all over and build a monument on top of them.
Each monument is two colors (e.g., blue/red), and one of the colors must match the tiles that were just flipped over.
At the end of each turn the player whose turn it was looks at the monuments on the board. He is awarded one victory point in the appropriate color for each leader he has in the same kingdom as a monument of the appropriate color.
Note that each monument can thus generate two victory points, in different colors, per turn, and also that a leader can generate victory points from multiple monuments.
Causing Catastrophes: Castastrophe tiles can be played, as an action, to make a space unusable, destroying the tile on the space if there is one. This is typically done to break apart a kingdom into two parts.
Winning the Game: The game ends when there are only one or two treasure boxes left (meaning the civilization of the Fertile Crescent have largely been united) or when the civilization tiles run out. At this point, each player adds up his victory points in each color; treasure boxes act as wild cards and may be used as a victory point in whichever color is desired.
Each player's lowest victory point color is used as his final score (meaning that treasure boxes are used to increase low-point victory colors).
For example if, at the end of a game, a player has 8 red, 13 blue, 13 green, 13 black, and 2 treasures, he'll count the two treasures as red, and his score will be "10".
The Game Design
I find it slightly difficult to provide a good analysis of the game design of Tigris & Euphrates because it's very abstract and, at heart, it seems to be fun to play and generally to work. What more can you say?
Well, I'll try and say something.
On the good side:
Superb Tactical Play: Tigris & Euphrates is not a strategic game. To a large extent you can't make plans turns in advance because the possible actions undertaken by other players introduce a strong chaotic element to the game. However, it does allow for excellent tactical play, where each turn you can carefully examine the situation and make carefully calculated moves that will push you toward victory, via the acqusition of required victory points.
Victory Point Mechanism Original & Interesting: The core VP mechanism of Tigris & Euphrates is that you are gaining points in four different categories, but you actually win based on the category that you're doing worst in. This creates some nice, implicit balance, because if you get lucky in one sphere of influence that won't win you the game. In addition, it allows for some complex gameplay, where you can give a player Victory Points in a sphere that's worthless to him, in return for something advantage for yourself.
Multiple Paths to Victory: There are three different ways to acquire victory points: through playing tiles; through monuments; and through winning conflicts. This creates nice balance because if you don't have the resources to gain victory points in one particular way (e.g., none of the appropriate tile), you can still gain victory points in other ways (e.g., place a leader in a location with a monument).
Interesting Brinkmanship Play: The advantage given to defenders in this game is sufficient to often deter an attack, and this causes for some fairly interesting brinkmanship play, where civilizations hover near each other for an extended time before smashing together. This lets skills such as "gutsiness" and "chance-taking" play a real role in victory in this game, which is nice because it makes the game that much more visceral, and gives you a constant underlying question turn after turn: do I attack or not?
Good Use of Hidden Information: The fact that each opponent holds six civilization tiles that you can't see makes nice use of hidden information in this game. You can never gauge exactly how an attack against a foe might go ... but at the same the effect of randomness on the game is much lower than in, say, a game that resolves conflict with die rolls.
On the bad side:
End of Turn Moves Easy to Forget: There are two end of turn things which can occur: you can recover treasure boxes and you can get points for monuments. Because these aren't directly linked to other actions within your turn, it's fairly easy to forget them (particularly the monuments). This would clearly improve through repeated play, but was an issue in the couple of games I played.
Theme is Very Loose: I've seen one person comment that Tigris & Euphrates could have just as easily been called "Red, Green, Blue & Black", and that's a fairly apt comment. The theme of "building ancient civilizations" is really loose, because the gameplay is so abstract. That drains a little of the color out of the game.
Red Tiles are Important: The red (temple) civilization tiles seem unbalanced with regard to the rest of the tiles because they serve multiple purposes: anchoring leaders, fighting internal conflicts, and gaining red victory points. An attempt is made to rebalance this by having more red tiles than any other tile color in the game, but in my experience, and that of other commentators on the net, it's insufficient.
Cerebral Play Lowers Comprehensibility of Tactics: The play of Tigris & Euphrates is sufficiently cerebral that cause and effect aren't immediately obvious. After a few games, understanding dawns, but until this can be annoying for new players.
Overall, the gameplay of Tigris & Euphrates is very solid, and looks like it'll have high replayability because of the fact that its abstractness makes every game quite different. I give it a "4" out of "5" for substance, and would have given it more if the background theme was more tightly integrated into the game, rather than just being a facade.
Conclusions
Tigris & Euphrates is a nice game with good pieces and solid gameplay. It's fun and makes you think. However it's also very abstract, fairly cerebral, and the background of the game is a fairly light facade.
If you like thinking games, this is a superb buy; if you're looking for a standard civilization-building game, this might not be quite your cup of tea.
Looking back at my definitions of game components I'd say that Tigris & Euphrates makes primary use of arbitrary tokens (the tiles) though representative tokens (the leaders) are also present; there is also an abstract environment (the gameboard). This is the same general category that I put Scrabble in.
Looking back at my definitions of game play I'd say that Tigris & Euphrates is primarily a token interaction game (reminding me in some ways of Othello), though marker collection is also an important gameplay element, through the acquisition of the victory point cubes. At the end, victory is determined by marker acquisition--the on-board tokens you control in the end are irrelevent. Titan: The Arena, also by Reiner Knizia, is another game I place in this same general category.
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