Tasty Minstrel Games Trade On The Tigris

Trade On The Tigris stands out against the efficient engine/deck builders, parallel-play worker placement, and set-up-heavy co-ops that often comprise the sea of eurogames. Its social drama was refreshing for a competitive game and added to the depth of strategy. As a bonus, it's fairly short (60-90 min), easy to teach, and quick to set up.It really lives up to its name in that trade is at the heart of the game, driving player interaction. Many valuable renewable resources *cannot* be directly utilized by their owner, who must subsequently trade them away to benefit. Even 'offensive' abilities lend themselves to extortion and bribery, which are often more useful than simply tearing down opponents. The time to trade is strictly limited and rules govern what may/may not be lied about, which lends some concrete leverage to players, like myself, who aren't great at negotiating.Played it at a board game convention and decided to buy a copy for myself. The mechanics are easy to pick up, but there's plenty of room for strategy. I feel the recommended player age (14+) is probably a good guideline because play requires notably stronger planning, reading, probability, and trading skills than say, Settlers of Catan.

This game has a bit of a different feel to it, due to an open trading period for five (clocked) minutes each turn where players can wheel and deal as they please. The first couple of turns the trading is easy, but it gets more interesting as the game continues and more cards end up on the table. There's a bit of a learning curve but nothing too crazy, and the first couple of turns in your first game will be straightforward enough for you to get the hang of it.There's plenty of variability in what will come out each session, so it's kind of hard to speak to how it will play for you on your first time. But I very much look forward to this one hitting the table again and know full well that that variability will make for a different play and produce a different narrative.Pieces are chunky and plush as you would expect in the genre, and the game was easy to work with in spite of my fading eyesight. Fonts and color choices made it easy to read the text, which drives the play.

Hopefully if you are reading this review, you will be aware of the board game revolution of the last 20 years or so. Game formats and designs are highly variable and provide a lot of fun.But board games have always been changing and there was a game in the 1980's, Civilisation, the precursor to the computer game. Unfortunately it was a long game that only really played well with lots of players.One aspect of that game was frantic trading between players to get sets of cards, with more cards of a particular goods garnering more and more points.It is this trading that forms the heart of this game, a much shorter experience than Civilisation. Play is virtually simultaneous for all players, so more players isn't likely to increase the play time considerably (give it about an hour and a half max).Each player plays a culture or city-state that develops their governments and religion as the game goes on with higher levels of each providing better options. Players can opt for one of two opposing governments (dictatorship vs democracy) and one of two religions (Ashur vs Marduk). These all give you access to developments that impact the game - giving you better cards or victory conditions.Each player then gets a number of trade cards from the basic goods and import goods stacks. The former provide points the more you have, but not much, so they are slow but steady. The Import goods on the other hand increase in value quite quickly, but there are generally less of them around and there is also the problem that they have disasters built in, so that whoever has the card at the end of trading will suffer some setback.Players swap cards - they have to tell the truth about the top half of the card (i.e. the type of goods), but can lie or bluff about the bottom half in order to get rid of cards that they don't want to enact.At the end of trading (a strict time-limit is encouraged), three cards can be kept in the warehouse (not disasters) and the remainder revealed for Points (which win the game). The revealed cards also have side-effects, from the obvious disasters to moving along the government and religion tracks and gaining barbarians and culture.At the end of each round points are awarded for certain developments and then Barbarians are assessed - with the person who has most Barbarian tokens losing points (and Barbarian tokens). Following that Culture tokens are assessed with the winner gaining an extra development due to a Golden Age, but losing Culture tokens in the process (this has a nice balancing effect with players unlikely to suffer from Barbarians two turns in a row or benefit from a Golden Age two turns in a row).The whole game is played over 5 rounds and then scores are counted, which will include points accumulated (in secret) during the game, along with points for going higher on the government and religion tracks and points for development cards. Everyone totals up and the person with the most Points wins.The trading means that game-play is highly interactive with everyone angling for a deal that benefits them more than their opponents. It also means that this will be more interesting with more players, though three player games seem to work reasonably well.There are two things that are wrong with the game - one are a set of numbered trading cards that are double-sided and don't provide goods, just some kind of benefit. These are a little too fiddly for my liking, but I'm not sure there would be an easier way to achieve this particular goal. The other issue is the iconography. Symbols appear on development cards, but often they are so small that they are not clear (less than 5mm square). In most cases there was no need to make them so small - double the size and they would have been manageable.I heartily recommend this game.

When I learned Tasty Minstrel Games was going out of business, I had to snap up a copy of this remarkable game. The game play is exceptional... trading, set collection, and advancing your political and theological society. One strike against it is the iconography on the cards is quite small.