Tigris & Euphrates | BoardGameGeek

Reply: Tigris & Euphrates:: General:: Re: Tigris and Euphrates Treasure Cube Error

nunyabisnas — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 23:06:51 +0000

The replacement components from Mayfair arrived today via USPS. The game is now complete and ready to play.

Thank you to everyone at Mayfair for the fast response and speedy shipping.

If anyone encounters the missing cube problem in the future, I can attest to the fact that Mayfair will get the issue resolved in a timely fashion.

Reply: Tigris & Euphrates:: General:: Re: What game would be a good gateway game towards the Tigris and Euphrates? And will girls like this game?

Karlsen — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 22:33:12 +0000

by Karlsen

It is hard to learn [thing=42][/thing] straight from the rules, but it is actually quite easy to learn from somebody else who has played before.

There's quite a few girls playing in the Autumn League tournament at the moment here at BGG, so probably yes.

I would say a T&E light game is [thing=35910][/thing], although it is probably a bit difficult to get hold of at the moment.

Reply: Tigris & Euphrates:: General:: Re: What game would be a good gateway game towards the Tigris and Euphrates? And will girls like this game?

Amandil — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 22:42:26 +0000

by Amandil

A number of people have suggested that Ingenious is a good gateway toward T & E. If someone (in this case my wife) doesn't like Ingenious, is it probable that she won't like T & E? I'm pretty sure she won't, especially given that she doesn't much like ancient themes and prefers economics and "building stuff" to direct conflict (she really likes Puerto Rico, Caylus, and Settlers of Catan).

Reply: Tigris & Euphrates:: General:: Re: What game would be a good gateway game towards the Tigris and Euphrates? And will girls like this game?

knowsnoboards — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 07:04:35 +0000

by knowsnoboards

Nope, it doesnt really have to be T&E but it is one of the many games that I want to try with them so I wondered what you guys thought. So far, the replies have been very informative and great. Learn a lot. Thanks. Still waiting to read more of your opinions. :)

Reply: Tigris & Euphrates:: General:: Re: What game would be a good gateway game towards the Tigris and Euphrates? And will girls like this game?

sightreader — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 04:36:44 +0000

by sightreader

Jambo wrote:
it's a deep game and not altogether newbie friendly.

What do you think of the card version?

Reply: Tigris & Euphrates:: General:: Re: What game would be a good gateway game towards the Tigris and Euphrates? And will girls like this game?

Jambo — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 00:23:42 +0000

by Jambo

I will second people's opinion on Ingenious! That's definitely the light T&E.

Regards T&E, I've unfortunately had little joy introducing and teaching to the wife. In fact, most females I've tought it to have found it rather confrontational for their liking. Plus, it's a deep game and not altogether newbie friendly. Overall I think there's maybe been only one or two guys who've enjoyed it and seen the true potential! Sad considering how good it is.

Reply: Tigris & Euphrates:: General:: Re: What game would be a good gateway game towards the Tigris and Euphrates? And will girls like this game?

sightreader — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 00:14:52 +0000

by sightreader

Yargo wrote:
sightreader:
I always love your posts, you make them interesting, insightful, and lots of nice pictures :)

(turns beet red) Aww.. thanks, Dude!

Reply: Tigris & Euphrates:: General:: Re: What game would be a good gateway game towards the Tigris and Euphrates? And will girls like this game?

Yargo — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 00:10:46 +0000

by Yargo

sightreader:
I always love your posts, you make them interesting, insightful, and lots of nice pictures :)

To the OP:
Does it HAVE to be T&E? :) If it turns out they don't like it, then there's many other games which they might like :)

Reply: Tigris & Euphrates:: General:: Re: What game would be a good gateway game towards the Tigris and Euphrates? And will girls like this game?

sightreader — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 23:56:57 +0000

by sightreader

tmredden wrote:
It's not an easy game to teach to newbies.

I would probably agree, but I would also defer to the posts above describing success at teaching this game to neophytes.

Certainly, for experienced gamers, it's well within reach. However, if the players are not experienced or - most especially - if your players aren't sure games are their kind of thing, then the host is going to have to rely on their presentation skills to pick up the slack. If the host's teaching skills are insufficient or if there is just too much skepticism and impatience to overcome, then the session is unlikely to survive the learning curve.

I leave it up to the reader to judge how much slack will need to be to picked up in a given situation, and I also leave it to the reader to assess for themselves where that balance of teaching style and player interest was struck in the success cases described above.

Reply: Tigris & Euphrates:: General:: Re: Tigris and Euphrates Treasure Cube Error

nunyabisnas — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 16:17:39 +0000

by nunyabisnas

Last night I discovered that I was missing the notorious 4 treasure cubes and all of the small green cubes. I promptly sent out a geekmail to Alex Yeager and an email to custserv@mayfairgames.com

Less than five minutes later I received a response from Alex confirming that Mayfair was still shipping out these missing components and that emailing custserv@mayfairgames.com was still the best way to proceed.

Less than 12 hours later Kim at Mayfair responded to my email letting me know that the missing replacements will be on their way shortly.

Why can't other industries have this kind of amazing customer service?

Many thanks to Alex, Kim, and the rest of the team at Mayfair.

Reply: Tigris & Euphrates:: General:: Re: What game would be a good gateway game towards the Tigris and Euphrates? And will girls like this game?

tmredden — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 15:54:46 +0000

by tmredden

It's not an easy game to teach to newbies. I had the unfortunate experience of teaching T&E to a group at a convention a few years ago, and one player (happened to be female, but I'm not suggesting gender has anything to do with ability to learn) couldn't grasp the concept of scoring based on lowest acquisition. She ended the game thinking she won because she had the lowest score of anybody in one color (perhaps it was my teaching that was at fault, not confirming everyone understood. As I recall, I taught something else wrong in that game also, so maybe that's a bad example.) We didn't realize that kind of screwed the game for everybody until the very end.

I would suggest perhaps Leo Colovini's [thing=4636][/thing] which is a much simpler area acquisition game with some infiltration characteristics just to get a feeling for that type of game.

Reply: Tigris & Euphrates:: General:: Re: What game would be a good gateway game towards the Tigris and Euphrates? And will girls like this game?

sightreader — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 17:55:16 +0000

by sightreader

knowsnoboards wrote:
and will a female player like this game even if it is considered a wargame by some?

From what I've seen, the primary obstacle to introducing non-gamers into analytically intense fare like Tigris & Euphrates is not intellectual, but cultural. I may, for example, have the capacity to rake leaves or mow the lawn, but that doesn't mean I do these activities for fun!

As an example, I introduced Dominion to a math major a few months ago - there's simply no question about her patience or incredible intellectual abilities - but, for whatever reason, she simply got bored with reading all the card details and chafed to play something else.

]]>
If someone is unconvinced that games are a fun thing to do with their free time, then they are looking to minimize their investment of effort into something that may turn out to be boring. As a result, their attention span may be artificially reduced by their skepticism. Once a person is convinced that games are worth the effort, then the only real limit to what games you can play is the matter of taste, which is quite a different thing from skepticism.

As asserted above, given a good presentation, most people can learn the dynamics of Tigris & Euphrates play it correctly, and there is a reasonably good chance that they'll be patient enough to withhold judgement until the game can prove itself. If, however, you don't want to gamble on their goodwill, then a staged approach may be better - that is, ensure they like games in the lower category before testing their patience by trying to push them up a notch.

]]>
Here are the "gamer levels" I've noticed so far:

Non-gamer: Not yet sold on the idea of spending an intellectual night playing games.
Casual gamer: Likes the idea of a sedentary night of games, but strategy guided mostly by instinct (flight or fight) rather than analysis
Full gamer: Consistently devises strategies based on a dispassionate analysis and exploitation of game mechanics

Each level has "gateway" games of their own, then more engrossing ones that probably require "buy in" before attempting them. It took 2 years before my first wave of non-gamers got into the heavier stuff after an initial diet of random party games, but on the other hand I didn't see these folks that often.

Reply: Tigris & Euphrates:: General:: Re: What game would be a good gateway game towards the Tigris and Euphrates? And will girls like this game?

Grakkus — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 17:37:06 +0000

by Grakkus

If her response is, "is it fun?" or "what's it about?". You have a chance. show it to her and see if she wants to give it a chance.

if her response is, "its not long is it" or "I don't like to have to think". it's Game Over man. show her your collection and let her choose she will be more receptive that way. if her only question is what's easy or what's quick. she will never play T&E

Reply: Tigris & Euphrates:: General:: Re: What game would be a good gateway game towards the Tigris and Euphrates? And will girls like this game?

ousgg — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 17:12:13 +0000

by ousgg

Yup, I would say Ingenious would be the perfect gateway, too. I always introduce T&E as having 'Ingenious-type' scoring.

An, no, my experience is that women find T&E too dry and confrontational a game. But - allegedly - they are all different. Women, that is, not games.

Reply: Tigris & Euphrates:: General:: Re: What game would be a good gateway game towards the Tigris and Euphrates? And will girls like this game?

cagriggs — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 17:03:53 +0000

by cagriggs

I'd suggest [thing=23981][/thing]. It's another Knizia design where groups of tiles are being built together on the board. Players don't have a color but a symbol, similiar to Tigris & Euphrates. There are dice involved and there is no conflict, but it feels like a T&E light to a certain extent. A fun game and might help with the transition to T&E because it shares some characteristics with it, but Genesis is not very complex.

The challenge with T&E isn't that it is overly difficult to understand how to play, it's that it takes a while to click in a person's brain. While a person might understand all the rules, the strategy involved, what may happen when a tile or piece is placed, and just how everything functions takes a while to get. I still remember my first game, playing a tile and expecting one thing to happen and something totally different happened. I knew the rules but I couldn't wrap my mind around it at first. I had a similar experience introducing it to some gamer friends of mine. They never really got the game during that first play, though they both said they understood what they were doing.

Reply: Tigris & Euphrates:: General:: Re: What game would be a good gateway game towards the Tigris and Euphrates? And will girls like this game?

franchi — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 16:56:53 +0000

by franchi

jpat wrote:
Perhaps I'm stretching a bit, but I would also suggest considering [thing=9674][/thing], which also uses the Knizia-brand score-based-on-lowest-color mechanism.

I got T&E a few weeks after my son had got Ingenious as a gift. It was VERY easy to introduce the family to T&E, I heard "Ah, like in Ingenious?" several times: placing tiles, scoring your lowest color...

Reply: Tigris & Euphrates:: General:: Re: What game would be a good gateway game towards the Tigris and Euphrates? And will girls like this game?

decumanusmaximus — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 16:54:06 +0000

by decumanusmaximus

Here's some resources to better teach Tigris & Euphrates

Teaching Aid:
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/filepage/17571

Excellent podcast by Ryan Sturm:
http://ryansturm.libsyn.com/index.php?post_id=542658

I hope that'll help.

Reply: Tigris & Euphrates:: General:: Re: What game would be a good gateway game towards the Tigris and Euphrates? And will girls like this game?

CrankyPants — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 16:34:37 +0000

by CrankyPants

Puerto Rico is quite a bit more complicated than T&E.

You really have to know your audience and know your own ability to teach the game.

I think T&E is an easy game to teach and play if you have enthusiastic learners with at least some exposure to Euros. The first few conflicts will need to move slowly but everyone I've taught not only got it but were good players.

However, if you're hoping to teach complete boardgame neophytes (coming from the world of party games and MB), the game might be overwhelming. The best bet here would be to fall back on the traditional gateway games like Settlers or Ticket to Ride. If they enjoy those and you have broken their preconceptions of what a boardgame can be, T&E would be a good next step.

Reply: Tigris & Euphrates:: General:: Re: What game would be a good gateway game towards the Tigris and Euphrates? And will girls like this game?

adiamant — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 16:33:23 +0000

by adiamant

I was also going to suggest [thing=9674]Ingenious[/thing]. Both for the scoring, and for getting used to score when you place a tile. One thing less to consider when you later learn T&E. That said, T&E can be learned directly as well.

Reply: Tigris & Euphrates:: General:: Re: What game would be a good gateway game towards the Tigris and Euphrates? And will girls like this game?

jpat — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 16:14:00 +0000

by jpat

NateStraight wrote:
I'd start 'em off with [thing=5][/thing], even though it has a little bit of a learning curve itself. The gameplay is very similar.

I'd second that. Perhaps I'm stretching a bit, but I would also suggest considering [thing=9674][/thing], which also uses the Knizia-brand score-based-on-lowest-color mechanism.

Reply: Tigris & Euphrates:: General:: Re: What game would be a good gateway game towards the Tigris and Euphrates? And will girls like this game?

oudknoei — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 16:02:22 +0000

by oudknoei

knowsnoboards wrote:
and will a female player like this game even if it is considered a wargame by some?

This game isn't a true wargame, but it does involve direct conflict between the players. My wife doesn't like it for that reason; she prefers the indirect conflict of competing over common resources that describes most euro games. Neither does one of the male friends I play games with. I don't think it's a gender issue, but more a play-style issue. What types of games does this player enjoy?

Oddly, my wife enjoys [thing=25417]Battlelore[/thing], which obviously has direct conflict as well. I think the difference is that Battlelore is clearly about engaging in a battle. Tigris is about building something (or so it feels to her) and she doesn't like it when I can wreck that which she is building.

Reply: Tigris & Euphrates:: General:: Re: What game would be a good gateway game towards the Tigris and Euphrates? And will girls like this game?

broken clock — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 15:55:08 +0000

by broken clock

Start with this game. It's super easy to teach. Just go easy on them and provide them with examples of interior and exterior conflict earlier in the game.

Reply: Tigris & Euphrates:: General:: Re: What game would be a good gateway game towards the Tigris and Euphrates? And will girls like this game?

NateStraight — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 15:51:40 +0000

by NateStraight

I'd start 'em off with [thing=5][/thing], even though it has a little bit of a learning curve itself. The gameplay is very similar.

Reply: Tigris & Euphrates:: General:: Re: What game would be a good gateway game towards the Tigris and Euphrates? And will girls like this game?

Hatchling — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 15:47:40 +0000

by Hatchling

I think you should start with Tigris & Euphrates. If you are diligent in preparing a smooth and clear presentation of the rules and examples of gameplay, new players will be able to enjoy the game.

Different people have different tastes in games. The best you can do as game explainer is be hospitable, patient and encouraging. T&E is worth the effort. If people don't like the game, it only means they have different tastes. It has nothing to do with their sex organs or gender identification.

Thread: Tigris & Euphrates:: General:: What game would be a good gateway game towards the Tigris and Euphrates? And will girls like this game?

knowsnoboards — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 15:42:04 +0000

by knowsnoboards

From what i've been reading, the general consensus is that Tigris and Euphrates is a great but fairly hard to learn game.

So now, I am wondering, what game would be a good start to play so as not to surprise my other players with the difficulty of Tigris and Euphrates when they I do get to teach them Tigris and Euphrates?

Or what would be a good progression of games to get into this game?
(for example, Carcassonne ->> Settlers ->> Puerto Rick ->> Tigris Euphrates)

and will a female player like this game even if it is considered a wargame by some?

Reply: Tigris & Euphrates:: General:: Re: T & E First edition vs. second edition. Which is better?

Kelanen — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 17:44:57 +0000

by Kelanen

It's definitely a matter of taste - I've played on the Hans Im Gluck and Pegasus versions, and I own the Mayfair version, and I vastly prefer the board and tiles on the Mayfair 1 version.

I can see where there could be a tiny amount of confusion for new players where there are little 'artistic' tributaries on the board, but the spaces aren't river spaces, but otherwise I like Mayfair 1 the best.

Reply: Tigris & Euphrates:: Rules:: Re: Learn how to teach and play Tigris and Euphrates from the "How to Play" podcast.

Riptcord — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 16:04:57 +0000

by Riptcord

I just downloaded this and look forward to listening. Thanks.

Thread: Tigris & Euphrates:: Rules:: Learn how to teach and play Tigris and Euphrates from the "How to Play" podcast.

RyanSturm — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 03:16:21 +0000

by RyanSturm

My new podcast episode #5 focuses on the game Tigris and Euphrates

This podcast gives an explanation of a popular game which could be used for....

-Learning the Game yourself
-Learning how to teach a game
-Teaching an entire group prior to the game

You can access this podcast by subscribing on itunes via this link:

http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcas...

OR download it from this website;

www.howtoplaypodcast.com

If you like the show please support it by becoming a subscriber on itunes and by joining the How to Play Guild ( http://www.boardgamegeek.com/guild/746) and leaving feedback.

Enjoy!

Ryan Sturm

Reply: Tigris & Euphrates:: Strategy:: Re: Desperately needing red points... what to do?

matthew.marquand — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 15:21:23 +0000

by matthew.marquand

amaltena wrote:
If really very desperate and no reds at all (or almost out of tiles)....

Try an internal conflict in any other color using a stronger position. Even twice in your turn if you have to. This doesn't require reds and might give 1 red.

[emphasis mine]

Are you playing correctly? Internal conflicts are fought by using red tiles only.