In Euphrat & Tigris, players attempt to develop their civilization in four aspects--population, trade, agriculture, and religion. The challenge, however, is to build your civilization in a balanced manner with respect to these four aspects. Throughout the game, players earn points in each of these four spheres of influence--then at the end of the game, each player compares their weakest sphere of influence to each other player's weakest sphere to determine the winner. For example, if a player has the most points in each of three spheres, but none in the fourth sphere, his score is zero! This unique scoring system adds a fascinating dimension to the game's solid play. Highly recommended.

The rivers are still flowing since last year's review of this game, as players aim to build the most powerful civilization along their banks in ancient Mesopotamia. You earn the colored cubes as victory points for placing resource tiles on kingdoms with leaders matching their affiliation, are kept hidden. Your greatest weakness is your strength: The winner at the end is the player with the most victory points in his weakest resource! You will have to choose between placing resources or leaders, decide whether conflict or peace between kingdoms is best, build scoring monuments, and use nasty tiles to disrupt opponents. The game hasn't become any easier to learn, but your effort will be rewarded with a great experience.

Intense strategy game with every player able to change the gameplay at each turn. Very challenging, requiring flexible and agile playing.

Although board artwork is average you soon don't notice this once gameplay is underway.

Enjoying this game thoroughly!

Other games I have enjoyed - Settlers of Catan+expansions, El Grande, Carcassone and Elfenland.

Tigris and Euphrates languished on my game shelf for quite some time. Abstract games just aren't my cup of tea. Or so I thought. Then I played T&E, what a game. Definitely abstract, definitely fun.

T&E is easily the best game since Puerto Rico, granted it is older than PR, but I only recently discovered T&E. It is similar to Puerto Rico in the fact that it is a game where players gain only a couple points each turn, and games are generally quite close. Your final score is your smallest score in 4 areas of influence. So if a player is doing quite well in three areas they can lose by a large margin to a player that just plugged-along scoring only a few points but scoring evenly. It is not uncommon to have a surprise winner.

The tile laying mechanism is usually a boring mechanism as far as I am concerned. Tigris and Euphrates amps up the mechanism by providing the player with interesting tactical decisions, much more so than other tile games.

The downside of this game is the rule book. The writer of the rules assumed players would have a hard time understanding the conflict rules, so he over-explained the rules. The result has complicated the concept of conflict to the point absurdity. There are two types of conflict, those caused by placing a leader and those caused by placing a tile. It need not be any more complex than that. Unfortunately, it has been made more complicated than it needs to be.

Five enthusiastic stars but a warning: Choose your opponents well, it is a brain-burner. You might get bogged down with over-analysis.

I just want to correct an error made by a couple of the reviewers below. This game did NOT lose to Mississippi Queen in the Game of the Year voting -- it lost to Elfenland in 1998. In 1997, Mississippi Queen beat out the much superior Lowenherz for the title.

That notwithstanding, this game ranks #4 on my Top 300 Game list. (Lowenherz is #3.) This is Reiner Knizia's greatest masterpiece, out of many. Any serious game collector should have a copy of this -- preferably the German version, which has much better artwork than the American version.