Tigris and Euphrates

The Cradle Runs Between "Best" and "Influential"

There’s a tension between “Best” and “Most Influential.”

Not always. Often the best are highly influential; but sometimes a great entry (in any medium, be it song, film or game) does not spawn any imitators. There’s no secret formula to steal, there’s no obvious way to improve it.

I’m usually all about the original cover, but this is lovely. Uploaded by W. Eric Martin, Image provided by publisher.

Reiner Knizia is one of the most prolific board game designers of all time¹, and had already designed several notable games before Tigris and Euphrates arrived at the famed Essen Game Fair (one year after Settlers of Catan).

Tigris is not a difficult game, but had a few odd ideas. There are four colors, but the colors aren’t players; instead they are types of tiles (and points). Players place their leaders (wooden discs) and/or tiles, and each tile placed typically provides one point of that color to the leader in that group. But when two leaders of the same color are connected, there is a conflict (resolved by each player spending tiles from their hidden rack).

Once the tiles run out, your score is the color you have the least of.

Most of Knizia’s games are notable for their simplicity, but Tigris breaks the mold. Each color has a special rule; two different types of conflicts (each with their own resolution), monuments can generate extra points, wild cubes.

A game in progress. You can see the Lion Players Blue, Black and Red Leaders (from right to left) and two monuments. Photo by Peter Mumford.

Tigris was in the inaugural class for the BGG Hall of Fame, which speaks to how well it holds up as a game.² So … Tigris and Euphrates is a great game, but is it an influential game? “Highest-Lowest scoring”³ is now a recognized mechanism and Tigris did it first, but most of the games that use it are also by Knizia and variations on this theme. Ingenious might be considered the platonic distillation of Tigris.⁴ In my heart, I don’t think Tigris spawned a genre or a bunch of knock offs.

But that’s because Tigris seems so polished that nothing could be changed. It’s design sits at the top of a hill, push it in any direction, and it has nowhere to go but down. It may be that Tigris and Euphrates doesn’t belong in the 100 Most Influential Games of the 20th Century, I’m loathe to not consider something so great.

1. Wikipedia says 813 games, BGG says 814

2. The BGG Hall of Fame is more about Board Game Geek than games, which is of course their right, but … My annoyance at the fact that a mere ten of the original twenty-five inductees were from last century is the impetus for this project.

3. Sometimes called Knizia Scoring according to BGG, but I’ve never heard anyone use that phrase. Then again, I’ve never heard anyone use “highest-lowest” scoring.

4. Yellow & Yangtzee which is like Tigris and Euphrates, with enough changes to merit interest. When you make 800+ games, sometimes there are going to be echoes.