Knizia's Masterpiece

(Originally posted on BoardGameGeek.)

Two to four players, the more the better. About an hour-and-a-half to play, longer if you suffer from analysis paralysis.

Knizia has a reputation. His games are deep, strategic, abstract. Tigris & Euphrates (T&E) is one of his best. Part of a “trilogy” of tile-laying games (Samurai and Through the Desert being the other two), T&E is thought-provoking and loads of fun.

The game places you in a godlike position, watching over the birth of human civilization. You place tiles on a map of the namesake rivers, representing districts in civilizations that are expanding through the game. You may also place leaders – avatars, if you will – who influence these civilizations in four different aspects. The black leaders are Kings, the political leaders. Green are Traders, the economic leaders. Red are Priests, the religious leaders. Blue are Farmers, the common man’s leader. As a deity, you are represented with a stamp of your symbol on these leaders.

Through the game, you gain victory points by placing tiles that match aspects you have influence in: placing a green tile in a nation with your Trader will give you a green victory point. (If nobody controls that colored leader, it goes to the King in the nation, or nobody.) When another player’s Trader is placed in a nation that already contains yours, there is a revolution – the Trader (or other duplicated leader) with the most temples (red tiles) next to him will remain with the support of the religious, and gains a VP. The other leader is forcibly removed to his player’s hand. If a tile is placed that joins two nations, there is a war – the attacking player (who placed the tile) chooses a duplicated leader type to contest, and both leaders count the number of tiles in their nation that match their own color. A King in a nation with four black tiles defeats the King with three, and so on. The losing leader is, again, forcibly removed, as well as all the tiles of their color in their nation.

Beyond this, there are treasures to be had, monuments to be built, and catastrophes to be rained down on civilization.

This is widely considered Knizia’s masterpiece, and it shows. The winner is the person with the most of the least: if you have fifty red VPs and only two blue VPs you only get two points total. I haven’t yet played a game where everyone isn’t sweating bullets near the end, sure that the player across from them is winning. If you don’t have a perfect memory, often the only way to estimate someone’s score is to watch how often they trade in VPs.