Tigris & Euphrates

Welcome to Replayable, where we go into depth on our favorite tabletop games that keep us coming back again and again. I'm your host Todd, and today I'm joined by David and Paul. For this, our very first episode, we're talking about Tigris & Euphrates, designed by Reiner Knizia and released in 1997. Why is it after all these years, you should try to get it back to the table? Dave, what do you think?

Well, it's one of those games that when I first came into Board Game Geek, it already had legendary status. So when I'm starting to getting into these games, I'm hearing about that game. And it was probably the fourth modern board game that I purchased. You know, I went in like a lot of people do, and you start with the number one game, which was Puerto Rico at the time that I came in. And I bought the number two game, three game and four game.

And I think it was it was rated three or four at that time. But it definitely gets to the table. And because as we'll get into what we're talking here, it's got the goods. It doesn't feel dated when you play it. There are some things we'll probably talk about, maybe a little bit dated. But overall, it's as satisfying now as when I first played it, you know, in the 2000s. Excellent. Paul, what do you think this game has some lasting appeal? Well, for one, it has a great deal of depth.

It is heavily influenced by groups think so everyone probably plays it a little bit differently. And the first time you play it, you're not going to have a clue as to who won or why. And the tenth time you play it, you're still not going to have a clue. So you can just keep coming back and especially for people who like conflict, which this game is conflict heavy, enjoying it again and again, year after year.

You know, it's funny that you mentioned that being conflict heavy, I totally agree with that. And in fact, when we started playing this game and revisiting it in preparation for this podcast today, I realized that I have gotten a little sensitive to the level of conflict that's just right up in your face that this game brings. It's like I lost my T and E chops. Yeah, this is the only game that I have been playing with someone who flipped the table. They were so upset.

You actually saw a table flip. I was present for a table flip. It happened because of me. In fact, so this, I mean, do you want me to tell the story now? Yeah, don't use me for sure. But this happened a long time ago, shortly after the game came out. And I was pretty new to gaming back then. So was my group of friends. And we started, I think, as a lot of people start thinking that each settlement is its own kingdom and it's your kingdom.

So we would just try to fit all four of our leaders into a single kingdom, build out from there and that inevitably created monster external conflicts, just like all out wars. And well, it's a very high risk strategy. So it could pay off loads, but the flip side is what happened here. Basically we were setting up for many, many turns. My opponent had thought, oh, this is going to be perfect.

Started an external conflict, showed some black tiles and he's like, oh my gosh, this is going to be so good. I'm going to get so many points in all four colors. And he's like, okay, I'm winning 10 to five, start removing your black tiles. And I'm like, wait, wait, wait. And then I reveal five black tiles from behind my screen and his face just started contorting. And like he froze and he couldn't do anything. And so I was like, let me help you.

And I started removing the tiles and I said, okay, what conflict do you want to happen next? And we looked at the board and there was really only one conflict we could do at that point. I forget what color it was, but again, he lost. So you had dedicated five tiles to it. You only had one left in your rack. Yes, but I was, after his black tiles were removed, all his leaders had only one tile left except for the red.

And so I don't remember exactly what happened with red, but the game progressed so that all four of his leaders were removed from the board after this conflict. It was like each time you remove the tiles of that color, the other remaining leaders lost their support. Exactly. And he couldn't speak and he just, he stood up as quickly as he could because he had to walk away and his legs caught on the table. And it was one of those old fold away square tables and just everything went everywhere.

Oh man. Well, I gotta say that I'm glad that it was an accidental table flip and not like he hooked his hands under it and then just totally pressed it up and over. True, true. And you know, he, he had a lot to say a couple hours later, he felt bad, but yeah, it was it was in your face conflict. I mean, you have to be willing to take your lumps if you want to enjoy this game. Yeah, that's so true. So you know, what do you think about the design of it?

Now one interesting thing I found out doing the research for this is that this was Reiner Knizia's 95th credit, the son, he started releasing games in 1980. So if you, if you look at all the games, which he has a link to designer credit, you sort them by year released and then start at the back. This is the 95th game.

So he's had a lot of at bats by the time he comes up with this designing and some of the notable ones, there's kingdoms in 94, which if you take a look at that one, it looks like a precursor, like he's testing the waters for this. But then he's also playing around with multiple currencies and scoring options in Medici, which is a 95 release. And then he hits high society and also in 95. It's a well received game. It's more of an auction game and that's, that's also kind of interesting.

So what are your thoughts about, you know, that development process that led him to create this classic that we know today? I don't know kingdoms at all. And Medici and high society, they're very different games. But when we talk about Knizia games, there are similar feels. There's the very sparse rule set with depth of gameplay, those kinds of things.

But the games themselves, unless it's part of like the tile laying trilogy or the auction trilogy or something like that, they don't really feel that similar. In fact, we'll get into it later. I had a tough time finding games that have a similar feel to Tigris & Euphrates. And I'm curious to see what you guys have to say about it as to what else is like it. Because this game, I see you've got, you know, you're listing these precursors, but really it feels like it just comes out of the blue.

Right. So you're asking about design. I don't know his process, but it leads me to want to talk about the strategy. Because I think if you analyze it from turn one, what's the least amount of actions you can take to get your first point? And if you look at it, it's just five. You can either play your king and then one tile of each color and that'll score you a point. Or you can play your king and your trader and three tiles of different colors that connect you to another treasure.

So one of the design choices I love about this game is to score points, you only need to play two of your leaders. That means that the priest and the farmer can be used as offensive plays to harass your opponents. And it really sets up this framework to allow for alliances and even maybe politics if you want to do table talk as well. Okay. That's amazing. So the same information here is you mentioned the king, that's your black leader. You mentioned the priest, that's your red leader.

The farmer's blue and trader is green. To get started, you're saying that your black and green leaders are your defensive, your home base ones earning you the points while your blue and red ones are out there as potential offensive weapons or creating alliances with other kingdoms. That's really cool. To get into it even more, a better way to earn points is to not take any actions at all.

But you can try and strategically set up a trap for other players to attack you where you are secretly strong defensively as a way to earn more points. Yeah. Wow. Okay. So I'm learning stuff that I'm going to use on you in the very next game we play. Well I'm wondering, so the green and black leaders as your first play, as there's a few spots on the board that are the strong places to start. If you're the starting player, I think that should be your first turn.

Put down your green and black leader. Yeah. Because that black leader can pick up any color tile that you play and green sets you up for reaching out for treasures. What I like about an early red leader, which I haven't done in the last few games we've played is if you play your black leader and you're building up a kingdom and I drop my red leader into that kingdom, now you can't fortify any of your leaders because if you try to drop red tiles in there, I get those red points.

So it can significantly weaken your kingdom if I drop my red leader where you are starting to build something out there. Yeah. I thought the same thing about the blue leader, right? The farmer. And if someone has a kingdom that's close to yours, but you're separated by the river, you can drop your farmer on their kingdom. And now they're disincentivized to cross the river and give you those blue points to create the external conflict. Right. Right. It helps to isolate.

And that's what's super interesting about the game is that what Paul was saying, 10 plays, you might have two or three tactics or gambits in your bag, but there's still 20 more to learn. Every time I play, I learn a kind of a new approach or a new way to solve this puzzle. Right. I wanted to just circle back and touch on one thing. So Paul, you mentioned that, you know, minimum five moves to earn your first point. By that, you met your first full point.

This was the game that created the idea of Knizia scoring or the most of the least. So you're gaining points in each of the four colors, but your score is whichever color of which you have the least. And if you don't have any, then your score is zero. You don't have any blue, your score is zero. About that, over the years I've played this, a lot of people just, their head shakes like they're in the Scanners movie when they try to understand that scoring mechanic.

And I found that it's a lot easier for those people to understand it as collecting sets. I say a set of one of each color is a point and they understand that a lot more easily. Yeah, that makes sense. I like that. We've had these great discussions about how we have leaders and we're doing these conflicts and different kingdoms. So is this a themed game or is this an abstract game? Well, there's a clear answer, but Paul, what do you got to say?

Well, I mean, you've asked me this a couple of days ago as a preface and I'm like, I don't understand how it's not an abstract game. That was my answer. Okay. So why is it an abstract? Why isn't it an abstract? You're simply placing pieces of four different colors to score points. I've always thought of it as an abstract my whole life. And when you ask me why it isn't or why it is, I don't know how to put it into words. I don't know. Dave, you seem to have an opinion.

Yeah. Well, this is one of the age old arguments on BGG. I don't know, I don't think it's being litigated anymore, but there are just pages and pages of posts on is this an abstract? Is this themed? And the longer I go with this game as part of my life, the more I see it as themed. A tiny bit of history.

I don't have a whole lot of history on it, but Knizia, there's some interviews out there, some audio interviews that you can find even in the like pre-BGG days, which I haven't heard, but I've read a little bit about them, is that this game is actually, when he originally designed it, it was like three or four hours long and he was looking to make the Civ game to end all Civ games. So it had mechanisms like, you know, your black tiles, your soldiers, they needed to be fed.

So you needed to have as many blue tiles in your kingdom that has the black tiles so that you can keep them fed or those soldiers are going to wander off or your political tiles, your red tiles or your green tiles, your merchants, they're somehow going to bring you income. And so he created this fiddly large behemoth that eventually those themes got abstracted down and some of those elements are still in the game, but not with those fiddly components.

They're just the farmer tiles go on the rivers or something like that, you know, the Tigris River and then whatever the name of the other river is. I can't remember. I guess it's your phrase. Anyways, but the point is thematically kingdoms are rising and falling kingdoms. You know, there's vacuums of power as kingdoms fall and left behind the political power of the priests.

That's why the red tiles support the internal conflicts, because you need that political power or wars as they come together. And the merchants need to reach out and gather the treasures as you're creating these merchant line. And I don't I mean, I can see how that's abstract. You're just playing colors onto the board. But I think it goes even further when you look at keeping the theme in mind can actually inform your strategy or what you need to do.

If I'm hurting in black tiles, I think, well, there's a few ways I can get black tiles. So keeping the theme in mind, I can install one of my leaders to grow up and create an insurgency in this other kingdom, or I can move from my leader, kind of build my armies from there and create a war with somebody else.

So keeping that theme in mind, it kind of helps me think of how I can solve the puzzle before me of when I need a certain color or I need to, you know, reduce somebody else's power or influence on my side of the board. Also emerging alliances. When I put my priest in where your king is, we're kind of working together with a tentative alliance. And I think the hallmark of a thematic game is when it's over, we've got a narrative.

We can talk about the hundreds of years that passed where this kingdom arose and you're like, I'm at the stretch, but you know what, what I will give you is that abstract games, at least boardgamegeek.com defines abstract games as ones without randomness and Tigris and Euphrates, you can just get completely demolished by the tiles you draw with no factor of how you play. You can just be buried because you only draw one color of tile. Yeah. In fact, I will agree with that very simple definition.

I think Dave touched on something when he was describing it. This is a game that has a lot of abstraction, but I don't consider it to be an abstract game. I mean, these empires, these kingdoms are rising. They're crumbling as you pull tiles off after losing an external conflict. The nature of the terms that we use, you know, leaders and revolts, wars, they lend itself to having theme. And so I think it may be as streamlined and reduction of theme as possible while still retaining a theme.

And that definitely helps. And then I agree with the definition that there is no randomness. Like when I play an abstract game, I think of it as I make a move. I know what the outcome of that move is going to be, whether you're going to talk about something in the GIPF series, even if you're talking about Onitama, which has a theme to it. I know when I make my play that what the outcome of that play is going to be. And in this game, who the heck knows?

When you start that conflict, you can cause a table flip. Right. Well, also the hidden information, too. In an abstract game, you don't expect there to be hidden information, although there are examples of that. But generally, you don't know what's in my rack. You don't know what tiles I'm holding. Right. I talked earlier about that I've lost my chops, right?

But I have to reacclimate myself to the level of direct conflict that this game presents, even to the point where Paul, we're playing in a game and you initiated a conflict between me and a separate player, which just blew my mind at the time. I wasn't prepared for investment at that time. Now, since I ended up winning, I was OK with it because I earned points on your turn. But it's amazing. There's a level of anxiety just waiting to take your turn that this game brings to it.

How does this game make you guys feel while you're playing it? Is it exciting? Are you nervous? I feel like Knizia has has mastered all of these different elements of making you feel anxious. Yeah, I totally agree with that.

In fact, one of the things that I wanted to mention, I think this is a great place to mention it, is I think it's funny that we're starting this podcast here with Tigris and Euphrates because and I know we're not pretending to be experts on it, but it is a game that every time I play, no matter the experience level around the table, especially as you hit mid game, absolutely everybody has to sit back a minute and think, I have no idea what I'm supposed to be doing.

Like I understand the rules, but I don't get this game at all. Everybody kind of has that feeling as you're going through, you know, that mid game, end game has a totally different feel. That feeling is a little bit anxious of I really don't want to step on my own foot. I really want to set myself up for a future, but I don't know what's coming. And there is definitely a level of anxiety there. What do you think, Paul? I don't pay attention to who's winning when I play this game.

And I find that I am far more invested and interested in what my best play is when I think I have a chance of winning. But as soon as I realized that I'm out of the contest for number one, I just start treating it as a sandbox and see if I can ruin other people's days, to be honest. It's a game where it's just, it's so much fun to cause chaos. If you feel like you're out of it, causing that chaos can create an opportunity for you to get back into it.

I mean, kingdoms get absolutely decimated and that vacuum that's left behind, maybe there's some good spots for you to put some leaders in. And it is a game where you can rebuild. Yeah. So creating that chaos is the way to go. Just start dropping bombs and then see if you can jump in on the fallout. Yeah, that's true. I mean, we've seen games where there is a dominant kingdom on the board and it looks unassailable.

And then somebody either starts an internal conflict by placing a conflicting leader on a branch, but they can back it up with a ton of red. And then once they're in there, they're able to connect two kingdoms. And suddenly that thing just gets torn apart. And I will say I've experienced some serious roller coasters of emotion on this game where I felt like I was totally out of it, started creating some of that chaos. And suddenly I just recovered three or four tiles as a kingdom got decimated.

And now I could be right back in it. I actually prefer the game with the hidden scoring because yeah, sure. It's hidden, but trackable. But I lose sight of that when the tiles are flying in the conflicts. And now I suddenly have a shot at winning. I think I don't like the hidden scoring as much. I mean, I do like that idea of it, but in practice, I mean, if you're playing on board game arena, you can always go back and count the points.

And because it's in that's in the log or even when you're playing it in person, it just favors the person who can remember that. And that sort of counting, it just isn't as fun. And I always feel like I'm playing suboptimally if I'm not tracking your points, because I absolutely should be, but it's just not as well. I disagree with that, Dave. I think the opportunity cost is too high to track points and the cost is the end game play.

I think if you're tracking points, it totally changes how the end game is played. And people start just trying to milk things and extend the game and realize that, oh, he's still winning. We got to gang up on him. Whereas for me, Tigers and your Frazier is at the most fun when you play it within an hour and doing that requires that people are not tracking the points. OK, yeah.

And I guess, well, I guess tracking the points really what that's going to do mostly for you is do I hurry the end of the game because I know I'm ahead or do I try to draw this out a little bit? Because there are some moves where you I mean, you can dump your tiles and draw from the bag for both of your actions and burn 12 tiles in the game.

So if I'm keeping track and I know where there's 12 tiles in the bag or 14 tiles in the bag, I can burn 12 of them right now and ensure that my turn or the next turn is the last turn of the game. Right. So I love that mechanism where the game end is player controlled like that. It's not a set number of rounds. It's not someone reached a certain point value that you can see coming.

But there is some mechanism in there, in this case, number of tiles remaining in the bag that I can choose to hurry up or slow down. Similar to St. Petersburg, right? You look at controlling windows, one windows, one of those decks exhaust and trigger the end of the game.

Well, and while we're talking about conflict, too, one of the things I think that makes you grow hair on your chest about the game is that it's not a gang up on the leader kind of thing, because if you're running away with something, there might not be anything I can do about it. And it's actually a gang up on the loser kind of thing, because if you just got your butt kicked in one kingdom, you might be a little weak over there.

Now I come in with an internal conflict and just start hurting you more. It's when somebody gets kicked down, you know, maybe you just burned all of your red tiles to defend something. And now I'm going to come back at you as you know, from the player to my right. Now it's my turn and I come back at you because I know you just burned all your red tiles. Hopefully you didn't draw anymore. And it's in some ways, which you did. Yeah, exactly. So it's mean because it's direct conflict.

It's not always like I'm making this best move for me and I'm sorry that it hurts you. But this move is really good for me. Sometimes it's like, no, I want to fight you like not just somebody else on the board like Todd, I want to fight you right now. Like it's very direct conflict. Not only that, I want to fight you because you just got your butt kicked and you're hurting. I want to kick you while you're down. And it's like that's as mean as you can get in board games.

But in this game, I love it. You know, if you think about where this game falls in the pantheon of Kenitou Games, first of all, it's his highest rated game. I mentioned that this was his 95th design. He has 687 total designer credits now, which is just an insane number. But this is his highest ranking game at 104 as of the recording day of this podcast. It won the Deutsches Spielepreis in 98.

Some of its contemporaries back then were Primordial Soup, the game about evolution, Elfenland by Ellen Moon, and then fourth in the DSP voting was Through the Desert, another Kenitou Classic. And how do you think this one stacked up against it? Probably it did well for this one particular award. But if you think about it within the context of 1998 releases, released 1998 award winners, understanding some of those get released in 97, a little bit like the Oscars.

How does it stand up against games of its time? I think it was incredibly forward thinking in that I think you mentioned this in the beginning, Tigers and Frays doesn't feel like it's a 19th, sorry, a 20th century game. It feels like a 21st century game. It really fits in with modern games, maybe excluding the conflict. There's not a lot of games that are released these days, heavy conflict. But of those that do, I think Tigers and Euphrates feels modern.

Yeah, a modern game is gonna have less conflict, catch up mechanisms, a sideboard where you're praying to the gods, just more junk thrown on top of it, more chrome. And it feels of its age because it's so efficient. It's so streamlined, elegant, you know, that way. But at the same time, like Paul's saying, it doesn't feel passe. It doesn't feel like these aren't the decisions are as good or better than modern names. Yeah, I agree.

Now looking at the list of the DSP nominated games, the Spiel de Jarr games, what I own only two of the other games, I've only played two of the games that were nominated that year. Through the Desert, which I just played recently, and then D-Mocker, which I played once. Right. You know, Caesar and Cleopatra was, I remember that was big for a little while. I never got to it. But those games, a lot of those games have kind of died away.

But here, Tigers and Euphrates, it's still on a lot of people's shelves and it's still, you know, getting traction, you know, getting a lot of traction on BGA. It's getting to people's tables all these, you know, 20 whatever years later. Right. It's pretty replayable. Hey now, that's going to be the last question that we talk about. But okay, I see that it's got your vote there. Through the Desert, that was fourth in voting, is also considered to be part of the Canisian Tile Lane trilogy.

Now I guess we're going to say Camels or Tiles or Pez Candy, depending on how you look at it. The third one is Samurai. And so these three games are a really narrow bracket, if you think about it. So if he starts releasing or designing games in 1980, these three games come out in 97 and then two of them in 98. And all three of them are now classics. You know, they're seeing constant play, at least implementations online or are still commercially available.

I think T&E is currently out of print. Well, yeah, because now it's Hwang. That's what's hot right now. What's hot? Reimplemented as Yellow and Yang-C and then now that's being redone as Hwang. So that's kind of where the T&E system is right now. And I'm sure there'll eventually be a reprint of T&E. Right. Is Yellow and Yang-C a hex space? Yeah. So it seems like he's doing that with a lot of these, but there are some extra rules put on there.

But the kernel of it is that it's Tigus and Euphrates, but hexagons instead of squares. So you will in order to build a monument, which are now pagodas, you only need three of them into a triangle. But they only create one color. They're not double colors like the monuments in T&E. Oh, that's far less fun. Well, but there's more of them.

And also what's interesting about it is that if you build a red pagoda and then you put it on, I don't know how many pagodas of each color there are in the game, but if we're out of them in the supply and I build a pagoda, I steal your pagoda, which thematically I'm taking your followers. They're coming to my kingdom and now your pagoda is this empty, like collapsing building. And then he did Babylonia as well, right? Yeah. It actually does a lot more.

Like it's introduced special powers on the leaders. That's modern. It is, right? Not in a way like you have a leader in front of you, like in Dune Imperium or something like that. But knowing that about yellow and Yangtze made me realize that in Tigus and Euphrates, each of the colors has its own special power. I always thought yellow or red has its special power because it's used in internal conflict, but green has a special power in picking up treasures.

Blue can be played on the water and black can pick up any other color. So in that way, they are double use in that point. Now in Why and Why, he actually gets into double use where you can discard tiles of a certain color to get use out of them, like you would as a card in San Juan or something like that, where you use it as currency or you use it as its function. Sorry, I didn't mean to step on your toes there, Todd. I think that's what you were getting into.

I hadn't even thought about it like that. So that goes to the point of how modern games just add more decisions, even if they are unimportant or insignificant decisions. There's just more of them. The tyranny of small decisions. I like that. Yeah. All right. So, you know, we've talked about the things we like about it. Is there anything about the game that you don't like?

I mean, like I said, the tile draw, just the randomness, it can really put you in a bad mood after you've grown all that chest hair and are fine with the conflicts. You can still get really frustrated with the tiles you draw. I think I remember one game, Todd, where you said you never drew a single blue tile the entire game. And it was tough. And I didn't take advantage of the fact that the monuments are dual colored.

So if I'm sitting on a bunch of red, green and black, I should have created a monument in one of those colors that had blue as its complementary color. So I could have least generated points in blue that way. Yeah, I think because there's so there's so many ways to solve the puzzles that you're faced with not drawing a certain color, especially not drawing red. I mean, that does put the game on hard mode. But I think the more you play, the more you learn to mitigate that.

But in the end, there are some games where you just I drew a bunch of red tiles and I just blew you guys out of the water because I beat I won every internal conflict. You know, if it really sticks a bug in your craw, you should learn the tile count. Red has by far the most tiles. I think a third of the bag is red. And then blue is next. And the lightest amount are in green and black. So that is something to consider while you're playing. I guess I do need to learn. I thought blue was the least.

Let me double check. There's 57 red tiles, 36 blue and only 30 black and green. OK, interesting. So so you just made it that much worse for me that I didn't draw any blue in a game. Well, you also never said action to pitch your whole hand, right? I didn't. I didn't. Well, and that's a that's a move that in most games, I think, avoid at all costs. Like if you're playing turn and taxes, if you have to wipe that board, that means you're in desperation.

And in this game, I think sometimes that tile exchange, it has enough functions, you know, speeding the game along or prepping you for a battle that where you could earn a lot more points than what you gave up on doing that. It's actually strategic. I mean, it can do very well for you. In fact, we did that just recently in the game we're playing online is that I had enough green. I was sitting on a green monument. I was set in green and I was holding four green tiles.

So I just dumped them, got enough red back that I used that to go start an internal conflict. So if I'm not drawing a certain tile, there's a lot of ways to get around it. But again, it gets in hard mode. If you're not drawing any red, you can still win. But it's going to take all your wits. Right. You know, one of the things that I have a hard time dealing with, and I think Paul mentioned it early on, is the idea that this is my kingdom. Right. I've invested my leaders there. I've built it out.

I feel like I'm creating my own little fortress. I'm trying to limit the number of attach points for internal conflicts to be generated. And then I can never build it strong enough. No, I can't defend it against someone that comes in with five red tiles and manages to overwhelm me. Or just a well-timed external conflict. Right. Exactly. And it's just it's soul crushing to see this kingdom that I've crafted. I've curated. I've broken whatever I've built out get ruined.

And I think the only way that I build up immunity to that feeling, that sense of loss is by playing the game more. Right. And realizing that I am disassociated from this kingdom. I don't really own this kingdom. Also you know, use your red and blue leaders offensively. Dave, did you want to follow up with your point about 18xx games? Well, if you want to get into that now, so later we're going to talk about one of the categories we're getting into is what game does this remind you of?

And I was going to go off the rails figuratively a little bit here. We can same it. If you keep 18xx in mind, that kingdom is yours just as much as a company in 18xx is yours. And that kingdom is there for you to exploit and get points out of it and let it die when it's time to die. When you think of it as your kingdom and if it's precious, you're going to go down with that kingdom. The same way you treat a company in 18xx, that company is there for you to exploit.

Just because you have the president's share or just because you have the black leader in that kingdom, that doesn't mean that that's you. That's not your company. That's not your kingdom. You just use it up, get what you want and get out and let it die. This one dumping a kingdom on someone else doesn't hurt them like it does, you know, the maintenance cost, which would be pretty awesome if there's a maintenance cost when you dump it on them. You know, they got to buy trains or something.

But still, I think keeping that in mind. All your temples have rusted. You got to build new monuments. You got to build diesel monuments. But I think keeping that in mind, like you were saying, Todd, you get, you know, this is your precious kingdom. But when you think, you know what, my leader can just pack up, grab some camels and head over to this other one with his priest set up camp there. And now all of a sudden he's in a strong position.

And forget that old kingdom that was doing nothing for me. When you let go of that, the only thing that matters to you are your discs. The kingdom itself is just those are your playthings out there. Right. You mentioned that I stole one of your answers for one of the prompts. Let's start working our way through them. So Gameway, what Board Game Arena calls complexity. By the way, this game may be out of print, but it is playable on Board Game Arena on a scale of one to five, no decimals.

What would you say that the complexity of T. Grissian Euphrates is? I don't really know how to rate complexity. I mean, the rules overhead is probably a two. Yeah. I mean, I want to say a 3.5. Yeah, no. Come in. And that's what DG is saying. I guess I'll go with four. I think it's medium heavy. And the reason why is because it can be obtuse. It can really leave you scratching your head as to who won and why at the end of the game.

And it takes many, many plays to start figuring out the little butterfly effects of each decision you make. I think of Chicago Express the same way. It's a super simple game, but the interactions of every decision lead to a confounding result sometimes until you've played it 20 plus times. And then you can start to see what led to what. Yeah, 100%.

Like I said, the rules overhead is a two, although because this was one of my first Euro games that I ever got, I actually struggled with the rules, trying to read it and what's an external conflict, what's an internal conflict. But once I actually played it and see the magic come together, and I feel like I can teach this pretty straightforward in a short amount of time. So I mean, the rule book is what, eight pages? Well, actually, it's a little bigger than that, but there's a lot of examples.

But like Paul said, you can play 10 games and still really only be scratching the surface as to what's really going on. Okay. I would say weight wise, it's a three. Back in the day, when I first went through and thought about it or complexity, I thought it was a four, but especially in light of the way games have evolved today with random setup this and variable power that and tableau building combos. This now is like a three. I feel like my ability to.

Well, let's get into what does weight mean? Is it the difficulty to learn the game and learn to play the game or is it the difficulty of the game play and the decisions that you make in it? How many things do I have to take into account when I make my decision? Like what's the size of the decision space on a given turn? Well then it's a five. I don't think it is. There are so many things to consider. I'll stay with my answer for then. I just wanted to clear that up. Thank you.

Well, cause that rolls into the next one. So strategy for strategy, I think it's a four and I don't think the strategy is obvious. You need the plays and solve the puzzles and see what are the options here. And suddenly things are going to emerge that you didn't even consider before. The rule set didn't get any heavier.

It's the way that the rule set gets expressed on the board and through the playing of your opponents that you start saying, oh, okay, now this is an opportunity where maybe I do create an external conflict between two other players and that's going to give me an opportunity to come in and mop up. Or I have an idea that if I segment my attacks in a particular order or resolve those leader conflicts in a particular order, I'm going to cut off support.

So like your table flip example, each time you resolve a leader conflict, the remaining leaders lost support. And so you ran the board and took all four of them off the table in one play, which sounds brilliant. Yeah, and we haven't even touched on it, but there's also the catastrophe tile. When the heck do you play that? It's not an easy decision. Yeah, just having them having that threat puts pressure on the other players.

So if you use them up early, you remove that threat and it changes the game. But getting to the end of the game and still holding them means that you didn't do all you could. Does it though, Dave? Because playing catastrophe doesn't make you any points. No, but usually when you play your catastrophe, your very next move gets you more points than you would have. I mean, not always. Obviously, every situation is different.

But usually I'm using that catastrophe to cut off a kingdom and usurp what I just isolated or something like that to put me in a much stronger position. I think it's a very opportunistic choice and you shouldn't feel lesser at the end of the game if you still have one or two. Yeah, I see. That's a good point. They're a bit like the intrigue cards in Dune Imperium. Yeah, I guess. If you don't have one, no one fears you in the conflict. Yes, that's right. You need to be able to bluff.

All right, so what about luck? How much do you think luck plays a factor in this game? Again, same scale, one to five. Wait, I wanted to say, are you talking about strategy versus tactics or just kind of in general strategy? Because it's very tactical. You can't plan that far ahead on your turn because of the changing board state. I don't know what I'm going to do two turns from now. One of the things that I absolutely love about the game is I think it unfolds in really three phases.

There's the early game where everyone's moving their way out onto the dance floor and putting their leaders on and you're kind of setting up these little kingdoms and maybe joining alliances by putting my green leader where your black leader is or something like that. And then mid-game where I said even experienced players start to sit back and scratch their head, I'm like, I'm not really sure where I need to go right now. And that lasts for a few turns, but it's that end game.

And that's what really, or the late game, I should say that. And that's what I really love about the game where you have some very specific problems that you need to solve. And then it becomes a puzzle and it's still a very interactive conflict game, but it's also a personal puzzle I need to solve that I'm really hurting in green. Here's the board state. Here's what I'm holding. How can I solve that puzzle?

And that is where I think it gets very heavy because some of those puzzles are very difficult. And strategically or tactically, I got to be able to navigate through that as the board changes to keep my problems in mind and to solve those problems as we get into the end. And that's my favorite part of it. That middle game is just so confusing. But after we get past that point and we're solving those puzzles for each of us, that's where it really starts to get fun. All right.

So you would say that feels more tactical than strategic. Yeah. I mean, there's definitely strategies where these like long-term things that you have in mind. But in general, I might come into a turn thinking I'm going to do one thing and go, well, hold on. You guys just had a conflict over here. Maybe I can start moving in this direction. So you got to be on your toes ready to move in any direction. Maybe it doesn't solve exactly what I read right now, but maybe I need right now.

But maybe it shores up another color or something like that. And I'll worry about my deeper needs later or whatever. Like I said, you can't really plan two moves ahead. Right. Okay. That's fair. Now on to luck. Same scale, one to five. Which of a part does luck play in the game of T&E? I think it's moderate because of the power of defending.

Winning ties means not only do you have a benefit of a leg up on the count for determining who wins the conflict, but if you can win, you're going to get a cube partial point that's not on your turn. So to me, if you're lucky enough to be able to win a few defenses, that's going to put you in the lead. Right. I think scoring points outside of your own turn is definitely a key element of the game. And if you are able to do that. But I agree.

So when you say moderate amount of luck, one to five, no decimals, are you saying that's a three? A three is my rating. Yeah. Yeah, I would agree with that. What do you think, Dave? Yeah, I agree with that. I think it's a three because it's not just the tiles that you're drawing. It's also the tiles that your opponent's drawing. I mean, we played recently where you came at me with, I don't know, three black tiles in your hand and I had four black tiles.

So I mean, it's that kind of game where there is going to be some chaos and luck is going to play into it. And you have to embrace it. But if you're the kind of player who is going to flip the table when that happens, then just maybe don't play TNA. So we talked about the theme of this game. Same scale, one to five. Paul, are you saying it's a one equivalent to chess or go? Again, there is some randomness. So it's not equivalent to those. But I have always thought of it as an abstract.

So yeah, I'm sticking with one. Dave, where are you going to put it? You know, three is such a cop out vote, either commit or don't. I'm going to give it a four. Nice. I'm not going to commit. It's a three for me. Winning out Charlie out. Best play that. So what's the best player account for this game? Obviously four. Yeah, right. I agree with that.

Well, and the reason why is because of the alliances, the game design encouraging you not to play your own red and blue farmers into your settlement with the black farmer. I'm sorry, the black king. If you have less than four players, there's far less opportunity to share settlements with each other. Yeah, and four player. It just makes the game makes the conflict happen that we start bumping into each other and start rubbing elbows.

A lot of people prefer it at three players, but I just don't see that. I like four player. I mean, the board is going to change so much by the time it comes back to you that it makes it more dynamic and more interesting. And then like Paul said, those emerging alliances where I can jump into a kingdom that you've been working on. That's just much more of that going on.

So like in three player, you can very maybe not easily, but you can if you're hurting in a color, just move to a corner space far away from everybody, build a monument, fortify it and just start cleaning up those points there. And there's nothing anybody can really do about it. Right. I agree. Four player is the best for this.

Although I tend to think that there is back when I was reading strategy articles about this game, when I first started getting into Euro games, it seemed like there were four recommended starting spots in a four player game. And in our recent games, we have yet to follow that map. And I feel like, well, I've suffered as a result. Now, obviously, I've got issues with my game play. I always end up being too close to somebody that didn't go where they were supposed to go.

So we're like bashing it out early while everyone else is able to at least get their leaders deployed and get some initial fortification. So when the contact happens, I'm already bloody. And like Dave said, kick them when they're down. Come on over. There's points to be had in Todd's kingdom at the moment. So I do feel like four players is the best.

But there's also I haven't figured out the tactics or the strategies of how to make a starting position that's very close to another player be successful. Well, the conflict, you get points from external conflict. So if I mean only if you win them, Dave. All right. So one of you is going to do well. Yeah. You know, that's fair. I mean, like like Dave talked about earlier, you can't invest in the place you start.

You just you pick up one of the treasures and then you look for opportunities elsewhere. Right. All right. So if four is the best, what's the worst player account? I mean, clearly it's two players. There's no possibility of alliance with two players, really. And there's no time pressure either. You know who's in the lead. Once you're at two players, it's no longer hidden trackable. It's just plain trackable and you know when you need to end the game and when you don't want it to end.

And it just becomes a luck fest, in my opinion, at two players. Well, in there, I have the first edition. But in the reprint, there's a two player, you know, you turn the board over and you've got a two player side of the board where it's a much tighter board to play on. But I never felt that my first edition was, you know, I never wanted to upgrade to that edition. I don't feel any need for that at all. I would just play any other game.

And if there's only two of us, I'm not even going to bother. Exactly for those reasons that Paul's talking about. It just doesn't sound like a fun game. Wow. It's funny that you guys say that because I feel like three players is the worst. Because in a three player game, two people are going to be closer to each other and the third player is building up and fortifying and then the stage will think where the person that stays out of the initial fray ends up coming in and playing cleanup.

I think you're still fixated on everybody owning their own kingdom when you say that. Yeah, I probably am. Yeah. Well, and also being isolated isn't good for you. Getting two points per turn is not going to win you the game. You have to get into conflict. What about four points per turn, Dave? Well, yeah, that's my goal. You have a monument. Yeah. Right. That's what I was going to come back with, Dave.

So if I've got a nice strong kingdom and I've got a monument and I've sealed it off, like you said, suddenly you two can slug it out and I'm just going to be getting three points in three colors, three or four colors. So three quarters of a full set or a full set on my turn while you two are trying to figure out how you're going to break in that to what's now a fortress. Yeah, it's been a while, but I vaguely recall when playing three players, winner would have like 18 points. It was ridiculous.

Yeah, that's true. So this is one of those only play at games. So you know how we've got our stable of only play at five games. Is this an only play at four game? I mean, when you have 200 plus board games, yeah, you can designate some to only be played special player accounts. I think so. I agree. OK, so what's the actual playing time? I think the box says it's a 90 minute game. I feel that's actually high, which is crazy, because most of the time those playing times are grossly understated.

Well, again, it comes down to how you play. Is everybody sectioning off their own kingdom to score points with monuments and end when they have close to 20 points? Then it can take 90 minutes. But if you got four players intermingling and doing politics and alliances and picking up treasures, then it can easily take less than an hour with a top score of four. Right. I played in person last week or whenever that was, and we won by getting all the treasures gone.

So we didn't even get through the tile bag. My winning score was four points. So that was a quick game. I think we were I mean, it would have been 45 minutes. I think we clocked in at 48 at 48 minutes. And that includes some because we hadn't played it for a while. Like, oh, yeah, we got to take the treasures from the outside first. And some of these kind of fiddly things, the rules that we had to remember, that slowed us down a little bit. You know, that game should have been 30 minutes. Right.

All right. So expansions. So there actually is an expansion to this game. What? I've never played it. Have either of you? It's called the ziggurat. No, no, there's a few variant. Which one is the ziggurat? You know, monuments are created when you put four tiles in a square, right? You get to build a monument and choose the colors for it.

The ziggurat was a promo that if you created a plus sign with five tiles, you could put these overlays to create the ziggurat and then it was essentially a monument that gave a wild color. So if you had any one of your leaders attached to it, you could collect a thing in that color. You could only get one of one cube from it. But if you needed blue, put your blue leader in the kingdom with the ziggurat and the ziggurat's going to create a blue cube for you.

And then later, if you needed green, put your green leader in there and it's going to generate a green cube for you. So it added a little bit of variety, but obviously wasn't, you know, disrupting the entire game. What's interesting is that while it wasn't included in the initial releases of the game when it got reprinted in 2009, that expansion was included as part of the base game, as well as the second side of the board that you mentioned, Dave. This is news to me.

On BGA, they call that the it's the wonder variant. OK. And I just I made notes on the various variants. And my note on that one is just why? What does this add to the game? Why do I need this in the game? And that's what it feels like a modern game. It's just more things. You got you got to have more chrome. Yeah, it's just more adding something to the game that doesn't add anything to the game. And it's the kind of thing that's going to reduce conflict.

Because I have another opportunity to get my points. Why do I need to bump elbows with other people? I just find these other ways to get points. And then it becomes the hallmark of modern games. You know, head down, just looking at what's in front of me and not what's out in the middle of the table. Right. Well, there's other variants, too. You want to talk about them? Let's go for it. Well, let's see if we think they're any good.

So there's an advanced board, which I don't know what it looks like, but it has 14 treasures instead of 10. And that's available on BGA. I don't know how you implement that in person because I haven't seen that. Right. There's the English war. And in the English war, this is another one I don't really. Well, I think it's just because people got upset. And so they use this way. But the English war variant is you can never commit more tiles to a conflict than it takes to win.

So I guess that really comes in place with the defensive player is that if you attack me and I only need one to win, I can only commit one tile to that conflict. I can't throw all five of the red tiles or whatever I have, which helps me cycle my hand. And I don't like that because throwing those tiles in. I mean, it's a hand management game that we haven't really talked about, but it is a hand management game.

And being able to dump those tiles in a conflict that I might create a conflict that I don't even really win just to mix things up. It's a key decision in the game. Yeah. I feel like that is there. I don't know why it's there. I think it's there just because people like to throw variants on the things. Yeah. And then the other one are the CIV buildings. And a CIV building, it's three in a row. When you put three tiles in a row, either horizontally or vertically, you can put a CIV building on it.

And it just that color generates two points instead of one. I think that also lessens the need for conflict, because if I'm finding other ways to get points where I don't have to fight you guys, then I would never call it a point salad. But it starts leaning in that direction where there's other ways to get points rather than the essence of what this game is about. This game is about fighting and getting hurt. Killing King is then destroying them.

Yeah. Well, I mean, we could have a separate conversation about how expansions are either lessening conflict or increasing action selections. You know, you didn't get your number one thing because someone else beat you to it, but you get something that's 80% is... Yeah, diluting the decisions. Yeah. So I'm usually not a fan of those kinds of expansions. All right. Here's a category I'm really looking forward to. Most recognizable comparison.

It's a game that you think that's ranked pretty highly. We'll use Board Game Geek as the litmus test here that is most like Tigris and Freyde's. I'll let Dave go first. Well, I was hoping you guys would go first. I really struggled with this, actually. And I listed a few games because there might be an element to it or a very small part of it. Like, for example, Through the Ages, but only in the sense of kind of cycling as time goes by.

The landscape changes as time goes by, your leader dies or, you know, things can be destroyed or built up. That's way out of the field. Wow. Exactly. Because that's how much I was struggling. So only in that case is that it abstracts that passage of time in that way. Also, I'm thinking maybe something like El Gran, because of the area control portion of it. But again, you don't have any direct conflict like that in El Gran. I mean, you just do one...

Brinksmanship. So I looked for how about a thematic Tigerson Euphrates. That's what I looked for. And I came up with Reef Encounter. That was the closest I could find. I thought, you know what? If I wanted to make Tigerson Euphrates into a non-abstract, I would make Reef Encounter. Oh, it's funny you say that because that's my answer to the next question. So for me, the most recognizable was another Knitio design that was ingenious.

So it's like he took the most of the least idea, the Knitio scoring, and broke it off into its own game and built a genuine abstract, Paul, around it. With randomness, though. Fair. And hidden information. That's true. Gosh. But again, the outcome of my tile placements is known. There's no randomness to what happens when I play it. Yeah, and you're setting up other people to score more points. Yeah, I definitely thought of ingenious as well.

And there are other games that use it, like Fields of Arleigh do something along the line. That's so clever, or Ganshan Clever does it. Heaven and Ale use a similar scoring. But ingenious is the one that, for me, was the most recognizable game. So let's move on to least recognizable game or a more obscure game. I don't want to say least recognizable, but an obscure comparison.

And you hit on mine, Paul. For me, it was Reef Encounter, because you're playing the different coral tiles of different colors. You're creating your reefs, creating your reefs out of the different coral types. It's also a stock game, because the value of the reefs are going to depend upon how you've eaten the polyps. And that creates the value of each color. So then your contiguous things, kingdoms, if you will, or your reefs will generate different points. But yeah, I agree.

I feel like Reef Encounter is a pretty comparable game. We've hinted at it, but we haven't said it explicitly. And I think there's a case to be made that Tigers and Euphrates is a stock game. You're collecting stock whenever you take a cube. You can think of it as a share of that color. But there's no dividends. It's not like I get anything because I have more blue stock than you have. I don't get anything later in the game because all of a sudden blue stock is paying dividends.

You can't sell it, at least not until yellow and Yangtze. But Tigers and Euphrates, it's a permanent thing. Yeah. Okay. Well, then along those lines, then, is it an auction game? Well, isn't everything? When we have a conflict, yeah, on some level, it all is. The great auction theory, the grand auction theory. Yeah. Everything is an auction. Yeah. And this one, it feels even more like it. When we have a conflict, I bid three black tiles. What do you bid? And then the winner takes it.

Yeah. So I went really far outfield for an obscure comparison. I thought about the way I used to play and the way Todd likes to play now where everybody tries to put their own lead, all four of their leaders in a single settlement, make a kingdom and then bash it out. And that reminded me of Battle Line, although I guess T&E is a whole two directions. So it would be more like a battle plane.

Basically, you're staging up your strength, you got some hidden cards to play, and then when the conflict finally happens, you see who wins. Just the word battle plane in reference to Battle Line kind of blows my mind. It's like 3D chess. Now I want to play battle plane. Well, and it's another Keneski design, right? Yeah. And originally was Shot and Totten, which is one of my all time favorite two player games. I mean, it's a great one. OK, so health rules.

Would you do anything to improve this game when you were sitting down? And the answer is no. But go ahead. So no, before I found out that Yellen Yangzi had this, I thought of the ability to trade in tiles or even excess cubes for something. So if I had too many cubes of one color, maybe trade them in to draw extra tiles. I thought that might be some kind of house rule you can make. It would definitely change the game though. Interesting.

OK. In general, house rules are for cowards, but if we have to have some house rules, it's for somebody who doesn't like the game because they're not accepting the game for what it is. But I do like open points. I do accept what you guys are saying, that it's just let's leave that out of the game. Don't try to think about what other people have. But I always feel like people have better memories than I do.

So I always feel like somebody's understanding what's happening in this game a little better than I do because I don't remember that you have a whole bunch of black points or whatever it is because I'm not paying attention. I've come on quite a journey in my 20 plus years of game playing and I no longer like to chase perfection in playing a game. I try to adhere to the motto, play fast, make mistakes. And I feel like open points would really slow us down. That's true.

Then that might introduce a little more AP. Yeah. The first thing that I objected to when I was first learning the game was the concepts of internal conflict versus external conflict. The very nature of them, neither one of them felt intuitive to me. And I would change what you call them, but that's actually already being done. If you look at Yellow and Young, they talk about revolt and war now. So now that makes more sense.

Even though you could say, well, gee, a revolt and internal conflict, I get it. And I played the game enough now that I've embraced it. But when I was learning it, it was difficult for me to try to parse those concepts, unpack them and understand what it meant within the theme of the game. I had the same problems when I was originally learning. And one thing I've noticed on BGA is that they've changed that terminology, just as you said, to revolt and war.

If you like, and fill in the blank here, then you'll like Tegris and Euphrates. So what does that mean? I'll give you an example. In my mind, if you like Civ builders, you might want to take a crack at T&E. It's one of the most streamlined versions. It doesn't have tech trees. It doesn't have a lot of the hallmarks of a 4X game that you normally would expect.

But I do believe that it has a theme that goes beyond just calling the leaders different names and watching how the board evolves and kingdoms crumble and rise from the ashes. I think if you like Civ builders, then you might want to take a shot at this. What do you guys think? I'm laughing because of my answer. So you sent this to me earlier and my fill in the blank was, if you like abstract games and conflict, then you will like this game.

Obviously, I agree that there's theme, but I don't feel like this doesn't feel like a Civ game to me. I don't feel like I'm building a civilization, which to me usually feels more like my Tableau is snowballing or I'm growing my civilization in that way. Because this one, there's so much ebb and flow to the game. I don't feel Civ builder with it at all. If you like samurai, Babylonia, something like that, if you like Go, I guess play through the desert.

But any sort of closer, even though I do think it's theme, but it's closer to abstract tile length. All right. So if you don't like fill in the blank, then you're not going to like T&E. How would you answer that one? Well, conflict is the obvious answer. But I said if you don't like being at the mercy of the bag of tile draw, then you won't like this game. To me, conflict aside, that's the hardest thing to get past is just tiles you might luck or unluck into.

Yeah. I think part of that idea of getting around the luck, I think it also affects the gameplay, the length of the game. If it turns out that luck is going to play a predominant role in the conflicts, but the game's over in 45 minutes, I don't care. Yeah. If it's going to be an overriding dynamic and the game's going to take three hours to play, shine on. I'll go play something else. I totally agree. No, thanks.

Spend all of that time only for you to like top deck some red tiles and win the game in the end. Right. Yeah. And Paul, I agree. I had conflict. This game has lots and lots of it. This is in your face, kick you when you're down. It's all that stuff. And like I said, I need to I need to regain some of my resistance to our ability to accept the blows. Dave, what did you have? Same thing. Conflict and chaos.

So something it's been a long time since I played, but like Cosmic Encounter, maybe where we're actually I'm attacking you directly or something like that. Then if you don't like that sort of thing, then you're not going to like this. Then go play Ingenious. Although in Cosmic Encounter, at least the initial person who's getting attacked is randomly determined. So it's kind of like, oh, I'm sorry, but I have to. This is just I am coming after you. I am taking your money. Yeah. Your milkshake.

All right. Rating one to ten, no decimals. What would you rate it? I currently have it rated as a seven. Good. Usually willing to play. I have it rated as a ten. It's an all time classic. You know, I'm always willing to play. Every time I play, I feel like I'm learning something new about the game. I don't feel like I'm just playing yet another iteration of it. I feel like it's, you know, it's going deeper and deeper and I'm learning.

I'm expanding my experience with the game and I don't think I'll ever play it out. I agree with that. I have it as an eight. I originally gave it an eight after my first play in 2006 when I was new to the hobby. And then as I delved more and more into this title, I bumped it up to a nine. It was really, really good. But now I feel anxious.

Even the thought of bringing it to the table fills me with, you know, gives me some anxiety because I know I'm just going to be rope adoping for the next 45 minutes. That's why I play games. Well, OK. That uncertainty. I haven't figured out how to win yet, so there's that. I'm not playing to win. I'm playing to survive. So for me, it's back down to an eight, but it could reassert itself. Honestly, I don't like to rate games highly unless I really love them.

And I do try to conform my ratings to a bit of a bell curve around six and seven being at the peak. And for Tyrus and Euphrates, I think personally, I really love playing games with some path dependency and long term strategy. And as good as this game is, that is lacking. And that's why I rated a seven. All right. Fair. Is this game replayable? I know it's the title of the podcast, but we can get to the end and say, you know what, there are other games I'd rather get to the table than this one.

Should people seek out either a copy or play someone else's or play it online? Is this a replayable game? I think the answer to that is clearly and very strongly, maybe. And I say that because and it's exactly what Paul said when we opened up your first 10 games. We're not really going to know what happened. So I think if you're going to play the game once, don't play it. Don't bother. If you're going to play it 20 times over the course of a few years, then yes, go for it.

It's absolutely it's either replayable or it's not worth playing at all. But this is not a modern game that you paid $150 off a Kickstarter. You got it to the table with all kinds of chrome and it looks so pretty and you play it once and then set it aside to move on to the next pretty game. This is either get into it, get under the surface and really get to know the game or don't waste your time. It's like skiing. Either go skiing once a week or don't bother trying skiing at all. It's no fun.

That's so true. Put to 600 feet and fall down a hill. That's my version. Yeah. I think you hit on something very important there, Dave. And that's that a lot of modern games cater to people who want to solve a puzzle. They want to figure the game out and then they consider it solved and they can sell it to the next person and move on. But Tigers and Euprates is the opposite of that. It's a game where you have to play it again and again and again to really get the enjoyment out of it.

Yeah. All right. Any other parting thoughts you guys want to add or? Yeah. Unreplayable too. The first part is the layers of learning that I really like, but also the board is so dynamic. Every time you play, the board's different.

There are some things that will start to feel the same, but the way it grows and falls and grows again, that, I mean, I'm constantly in a position where I need to solve this puzzle, or I need more of this cube, but this game is totally different than my last five games because of the way the board set up, where my leaders are and where you are and the tiles that I drew. So that puzzle is the same, but completely different every time I play. Totally agree.

Paul, any parting thoughts or have you set it off? I have shared as much as I can about this game. Yeah, it's great. And I'm glad we have a group that's willing to play it because a lot of gaming groups that I've been in do not like conflict and do not do well playing this game. Being sadists and masochists and enjoying conflict is definitely not a shortcoming in our group. Well, I think that's a gamer personality though too, that we all have.

In the thousands of games we've played together, the thousands of times each of you have attacked me in some way in a game, I have never taken it personal. That's the fun. I don't mind direct conflict. I don't mind you getting kicked when I'm down. I might huff a little bit when I'm sitting at the table, but I don't think it's because you guys don't like me. And I think some people get that when they play games, is when you attack me, it's because you're a mean person and you don't like me.

And that takes a game to a whole different level and it just makes it not fun. But since you guys are consummate gamers, I love getting into these kinds of games and you just can't do that like Paul said with any group. There was that one time with John Company. I enjoyed it. I can tell you right now, we're never going to do John Company on this podcast. I think it's our white whale. Yeah, I mean, we would have to. Exactly. I think we should. All right, guys.

Well, hey, thank you so much for participating today and for all of your insights and thoughts. Our next episode is going to be another favorite of ours. Actually, I would say a current favorite of ours. We just played it last night. So I'm looking forward to that discussion as well. Have a good day. Thanks, guys. Thank you for listening to Replayable. Support for our podcast comes from listeners like you. Thank you for your support.

You can find us online at Replayable.fm, on Twitter as Replayable FM, and on Instagram as Replayable FM. We're all new to this. We're only going to get better with your help and your feedback. You can get in touch with us via email at Todd at Replayable.fm.