Euphrat & Tigris

Complexity Medium Cost £35 Duration Medium Players 2-4 Producer Hans Im Glück Size Medium

Premise

Build a civilisation in ancient Babylonia

Review

This game has recently been released in English by Mayfair as Tigris and Euphrates, but the German version unusually supplied a copy of English rules (from the manufacturer). From looking at the box of the Mayfair version, I prefer the original's graphics although the new ones are very good too. The new graphics are by ICE, and are done in their usual fussy style. The game components are generally similar, and many in the Mayfair version are obviously the same as the German ones. One small advantage with the new version is that the box is slightly smaller.

Quite a bit of the stuff that makes the game easier to play, such as the sample play sheet and the text on the player screens is in German. Nevertheless, once you've mastered the concepts it's an excellent game in every respect; beautiful graphics and tactile game parts. The wooden temples are excellent (even if the little buggers keep falling apart). The Mayfair version has a separate rules summary booklet, and its rulebooks are generally excellent - of course all of its text is in English.

This is a tile based game. You place tiles on an abstract map of the two rivers. Some of the sites have cities with treasures. These treasures act as victory point wildcards in the final scoring. In addition to placing tiles, you also have four "generals" in the four colours. These generals allow you to score in their colour as well as doing some special things; for example, the trader general allows you to nick the wildcard treasures.

You gain victory points in a couple of ways; there are the wildcard treasures, but also you get a point whenever you place a tile of a colour where you have a general of the same colour. You also get points by building and controlling temples and through combat (sometimes not of your own initiation).

The combat is the most facinating and mindboggling aspect of this game. Players don't control groups of tiles as such, multiple players can have multiple generals in a single area. The fun starts when two empires are linked or a player tries to kick out another general.

In the last case, the players add up how many red tiles a general is next to, throw in any red tiles from their hand. The winner gets a red VP and the loser gets kicked out. In the case where two empires are joined, all out war starts. The controlling player determines which order clashing colours are dealt with. The competing players throw in support tiles from their hands, the loser and all the tiles of that colour are kicked off the board, the winner gets a VP of that colour for each tile and general removed. The fun part is that if at any time the connection is broken, peace breaks out.

The winner of the game is the person who has the highest number of VPs in their weakest colour. This condition, and the fact that VPs are secret make for a very interesting and usually very close game.

Rating

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