Tigris & Euphrates First Impressions
Tigris & Euphrates is tile laying in Western Asia.
A game that’s better than it looks or sounds.
Tigris & Euphrates is set in the ancient fertile crescent with players building civilizations through tile placement.
Easy to play, hard to explain due to the lack of theme but bear with me.
There are 4 different actions you can take per turn and you can take any 2 on your turn.
You have 4 Leaders which are cool plastic bits of 4 different colours and you can place one next to a Red tile anywhere on the board.
You can place a tile next to any Leader or any other tile, but Blue tiles have to go on the River spaces. If the tile placed links to your Leader of the same colour you get a point of that colour.
You can play one of your 2 Catastrophe tiles which cover a tile in play cutting off paths. If you cut off a Red tile and it can lead to a Leader being removed from the board…
At the end of your turn, you draw back up to 6 tiles but as an action, you can exchange some tiles you have for a random draw from the bag.
Building
If you make a square of 4 of the same colour tile you put a building on it. The buildings are in 2 colours and if your Leader/s of those colours are connected to these buildings you will get a point for each matching colour at the end of your turn.
It gets more interesting when you connect a group of tiles with your Leader to a group of tiles with an opponent’s Leader of the same colour… You start a war!
Leaders
The tile that connected them together is covered, breaking the sections in two. Each side then counts the number of tiles in the colour of the Leader. Then the attacker can reveal any number of tiles of that colour from their screen to add to that total. The defender does the same and will win ties.
The losers Leader is removed from the board as well as the tiles of that colour which fragments the board and the winner gets 1 point of that colour for each thing taken from the board.
You can play a Leader into another player’s area that contains their Leader of that colour to start a Revolt. A Revolt is similar to a War except you add Red tiles next to the Leader plus Red tiles from behind your screen. It’s always Red regardless of leader’s colour.
You do this until the bag you draw tiles run out. You add up all your points and the colour that you have the fewest points for is your total, most points win.
I’ve missed some ways to score points but you get the idea of how it’s played. It really is better than it sounds.
Tigris & Euphrates Summary
It’s one of those that is quick and simple yet has a lot of strategies. You have to balance building points across the colours and knowing when to Revolt or go for a War.
You need to make sure you get those buildings so you can score points for free every round. But you’ll have people trying to get you away from them, ignore buildings at your peril.
You can also go big during Wars and Revolts. But as you only draw up at the end of your turn, you can’t go into one early. Later players will know you’re probably weak in that colour and try to take advantage.
Tigris & Euphrates is a fun game I’m really looking forward to playing again. Now I’ve worked out what I need to try and do.
Jesta ThaRogue
