Battle for Control of the Tigris and Euphrates

Command Your Army around the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers

Tigris & Euphrates is a classic Euro board game designed by Reiner Knizia. You battle you opponents for control of the lands around the Tigris & Euphrates and of the rivers themselves.

During the course of a game of Tigris & Euphrates, you will gain red, blue, green, black, and perhaps white (unpainted wood) colored cubes. At the end of Tigris & Euphrates, you will count each color (whites acting as wildcards that can be any color you determine) to see which set of cubes you collected the least of. That number is your final score. So it’s beneficial to try to gain cubes of each color throughout the game.

How do you get these cubes? There are several ways.

You have 4 leaders (wooden disks) that you can put into play on the board:

• Red – Priest
• Blue – Farmer
• Green – Trader
• Black – King

Each must be placed orthogonally adjacent to a red tile already on the board. (There are 10 such tiles preset on the board during setup – each holding a white treasure cube.) If you then play a tile from your hand next to your leader of the same color, you receive a cube of the matching color.

A second way to get cubes is by connecting 2 of the preset red treasure tiles with new tiles added to the board. If you can complete a connection and have your green Trader as part of the group, you get to take 1 of the 2 white treasure cubes.

Taking treasure cubes is one of the ways to end Tigris & Euphrates. When there are 2 or fewer treasures left on the board, you play a final round. The other method for ending the game involves the number of tiles left in the bag from which you draw to replenish your hand.

A third way to gain cubes is by building a monument. If you manage to place 4 tiles of the same color in a 2×2 square, you can flip them over and select a monument to set on top of them. As long as you have a leader that matches one of the two colors of the monument connected to that temple, you will automatically get a cube of that color every turn without lifting a finger.

A fourth path of cube collection is through revolution. If your leader can overthrow an opponent’s leader through careful tile play, you will get 1 red cube.

The final, and often most lucrative (cube-wise), way to get cubes is by outright battle between kingdoms. The winner of a battle will destroy parts (tiles) of the losing kingdom and will take a cube for each lost tile as a reward. At times, several battles can be triggered at once. If you are victorious in all of them, you can really rack up the points; that is, cubes.

Tigris & Euphrates can be difficult to learn at first, but once you get the rules down, it’s great fun for 2, 3, or 4 players.

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