Pyramid Pick: Tigris & Euphrates

Pyramid Pick

Tigris & Euphrates

Published by Mayfair Games

Designed by Reiner Knizia

Illustrated by Stephen Walsh

Boxed Game (2-4 players, 60-90 minutes); $50

A lot of games claim to have fresh and unique ideas, but many of them fail to fulfill that promise. And if there is something really original, too often it simply does not work -- maybe it was not playtested enough, maybe it was a bad idea from the start. I'll try to explain in the following review why Tigris & Euphrates is that rare diamond in a coal mine, an idea that is truly and brilliantly unique. And why, nevertheless, it might not necessarily be a game for everybody. Considering the price tag of $50, the latter is certainly something one would like to know before buying the game.

So what is it all about and what will you find in the box? The playing board is a very beautiful map of the land between Euphrates and Tigris. As the game unfolds, small kingdoms will flower on its squares, grow larger and inevitably clash with each other. Your goal during all of this is to garner as much influence for your dynasty as possible. Each player gets a little screen to hide his nefarious schemes behind and four leader playing pieces with the symbol of his dynasty, one for each of the important areas of prebiblical politics. These areas are marked by a color -- red for the Priest (religion), black for the King (population), green for the Merchant (trade) and the Farmer (food) gets blue. The tiles that . . .

This article originally appeared in the second volume of Pyramid. See the current Pyramid website for more information.



Article publication date: November 16, 2001

Copyright © 2001 by Steve Jackson Games. All rights reserved. Pyramid subscribers are permitted to read this article online, or download it and print out a single hardcopy for personal use. Copying this text to any other online system or BBS, or making more than one hardcopy, is strictly prohibited. So please don't. And if you encounter copies of this article elsewhere on the web, please report it to webmaster@sjgames.com.