Review: Tigris and Euphrates

Tigris and Euphrates is a game that Eric got for some event last year. Perhaps Christmas. I really don't remember.

It is a game that causes much contention. Eric always wants to play it. I usually don't want to play it.

The basic idea is a game of warring states. Each player has four leaders, each leader represents one type of service- religion, markets, farms and government. You play tiles to build onto your kingdoms and strengthen your leaders. For each tile you lay in the kingdom where you have the leader of the corresponding color, you get a cube of that color. If you add a red tile in the kingdom where you have a red leader, you get a red cube. Likewise, if you add a green tile in a kingdom where somebody else has a green leader, then that player gets a green cube. In the end, your total point value is the number of your lowest color. So, if you have 14 black, 12 red, 10 blue, and only 3 green, your score is 3.

The fighting comes when you merge kingdoms and kick off your opponents leaders in order to strengthen yourself and gain points in a specific color. Usually kingdoms are intertwined with leaders, so if you merge two kingdoms, it involves all the players, not just you and one other.

The game is 2-4 players. Usually takes 1-2 hours. Can cause many fights. Scores can be very close, but there can also be huge discrepancies. There is a fair amount of luck in the tiles you get, but there is a lot of strategy involved- knowing where to put your leaders, when to pick fights, etc.
There are also monuments and treasures. I'm not going into those, though.