Tigris and the Euphrates - Tips & Strategies

One of the most difficult things for many players to grasp when being taught Tigris and Euphrates is how the final scoring works. In Knizia fashion, a player’s final score is not just a count of cubes collected. Instead, scoring requires finding which of the colors of cubes you have the least of, and the person with the highest value of their least accumulated color wins.

Showing that last sentence to a person new to the game will return blank expressions and possibly requests to play another game. Scoring explanations do not have to be this convoluted, they can be stated in a different way that keeps the gameplay, and final scoring, exactly the same.

When looking for final score, have players make sets of cubes, where one cube of each color is required to make a set. Whoever has the most completed sets wins.

It’s that easy. As an added benefit, thinking about scoring in this way during the game may lead experienced players to play differently (though not necessarily more optimally) which may breathe new life into a game that has long ago been pushed aside.