Inventors of the South Tigris

Introduction

Inventors of the South Tigris is the third game of the third trilogy from Garphill Games. First, we had the North Sea trilogy, then the West Kingdom trilogy and now the South Tigris trilogy. This trilogy began with Wayfarers of the South Tigris, followed by Scholars and rounded out by Inventors.

Like all of the other eight titles, the artwork is from Mihajlo Dimitrievski, also known as The Mico, so the box, the boards and the cards are all in his distinctive style.

Gameplay

Inventors of the South Tigris is a worker placement game, with wooden figure workers and dice workers, although the main event is really the dice workers. On the main board there is a track for royalties and a track representing the Tigris river. Your ship token will move along the river and provide the opportunity to upgrade your player board with a workshop tile.

On your player board you have dice in your study and the dunes and sky beyond and you also have a tower staircase with craftspeople. It’s tempting to think of the craftspeople tokens as a third kind of worker, but in reality they’re a sort of resource that is expended, refreshed and upgraded. The tower has ten steps in total, that the craftspeople climb, representing their journey from green apprentice to seasoned master. The ten steps are formed from five dual-sided tiles such that when the lowest tile is empty of craftspeople it gets flipped over and added to the top of the staircase. This gives the impression of a never-ending progression upward. As the craftspeople advance, they become more expensive to pay due, but the upper reaches of the tower generate better income and bonuses.

There is competitive collaboration in this game, of the kind seen in titles like “Inventions: Evolution of Ideas” and “CO2: Second Chance”. The inventions in this game go through several stages – first invent, then build, then test and finally publish – and the inventor doesn’t need to be the same player as the publisher or the builder or the tester.

To invent, you place one or two dice on a camel space on your player board. There are two camel spaces to start with, a third can be unlocked during the game and it is also possible to hire a temporary extra camel each round. Pay the costs to invent and place a device card onto a free device board in the left-most column – the costs may be to discard up to two more device cards, depending on the device board chosen. The dice should have a total value that meets the requirement of the device board. One of the important choices at this stage is matching up influence icons on the left hand side of the device card with those on the device board beneath it. For each match, you get to place your influence (cog shaped pieces) into the guild / minaret on the main board of the corresponding colour (blue, yellow, or black). You also take an invention tile from your player board and there are choices to be made here – vertical pairs of invention tiles reveal immediate bonuses when removed, whereas horizontal pairs reveal a victory point bonus.

To build an invention, again place one or two dice on a camel space and then pay your craftspeople as indicated on the device card. Building is more expensive in terms of total dice value than inventing. It also requires the services of three craftspeople, which means they will need to be refreshed before they can be used again. The device board and card move to the second column below the main board, which is for built devices.

After an invention is built the next step is for it to be published, but it can also be tested both before and after publication. Testing increases the victory points for the builder and the publisher of an invention.

To test an invention, you use an available camel space, but the die is a fresh white one from the supply, not one of your own dice. You do use one of your dice on the device itself – a die of the correct colour, since each device board has blue, yellow and black spaces for testing. Thus, you have given up a more valuable coloured die to the testing space and in return received a less valuable white die to your camel space. The number of dice you have during the game stays pretty constant between 11 and 13 – there are only a couple of spots that award extra dice, most of the time you gain a coloured die and give back a white die.

Publishing an invention moves the device board and card and all markers on it to the third column for published devices. Publishing requires dice of sufficient strength committed to a camel space and also your scribe and one other craftsperson have to be paid (and thus exhausted).

Both inventing and publishing get you an advance on the royalties track on the main board. This “invent – build – test – publish – test” path is the main action rhythm of the game, but there are also some peripheral mechanics that assist in this. Firstly, the dice come in three colours (plus uncoloured, white dice) – yellow, blue, and black – and matching a colour to an action can generate a bonus. The dice are kept in your study and landscape spaces on the left-hand side of your player board.

Dice are “brightened” by moving them up from the bottom of the study or landscape or going left from the study to the landscape at the same level. Staying in the study generates bonuses, but the die cannot be used until it is moved out to the landscape with another brighten action. The lowest landscape level is “exhausted” – dice here cannot be used until they are brightened. Next comes “ready”, then “determined” and finally “inspired”. When entering these top three spaces from the study or from exhausted, the die is rolled. Determined dice are boosted by one when used and inspired dice are boosted by up to five – so they become sixes whatever their value.

The right-hand side of the player board has three workshops, which provide further locations to assign dice to and which can be upgraded with tiles gained from the ship movement action. Workshops allow you to brighten dice, refresh artisans, gain influence, and gain coins and cards. Assigning dice to an upgraded workshop may activate all of the tiles in that workshop, depending on the colours and pips of the dice used.

At the end of the round each player will place a tent on the main board. You have four tents, therefore there will be four rounds in the game. Placing a tent gains you a bonus and also determines player order for the next round. In a quite familiar type of balancing mechanism, the better bonuses are further to the right and therefore go later in turn order.

There are also the (non-dice) workers which can be places on certain spaces on the main board to generate effects such as hiring a camel, refreshing craftspeople, gaining a research tile and more. Some actions may cost coins, cards, craftspeople or influence.

The ship movement is along the Tigris river across the centre of the main board and where the ship stops may allow you to gain a workshop tile, upgrading your workshop abilities or to gain a research tile from the pile at the beginning of that section of river. Research tiles score end game points and provide ongoing benefits, end of round benefits or immediate benefits depending on the section.

There are a lot of ways to score in this game – devices that you have either built or published or both with extra points if they have been tested! I mean, it makes sense that you should score more highly for some weird device that has actually been shown to work. Invention tiles from player boards that were removed when doing the “invent” action may have revealed victory points. The influence markers in the guilds or minarets are totalled and the first and second most in each guild gain victory points as printed. The royalties track awards victory points after the 4th space. Research tiles and workshop tiles award victory points also. Finally, the craftspeople each score victory points according to how high up the tower they have climbed.

Artwork

As already mentioned, the Illustrator for this game is The Mico, so the artwork will be instantly recognisable to anyone who has played any of the other games he has illustrated. I am a big fan of The Mico, and I really like the look of all the components in this game. The iconography is very distinctive and has the same look and feel as the other eight games in the trilogy of trilogies (I believe the plan is for a quadrilogy of trilogies…) I would give it a 5/5 for artwork.

Complexity

The core gameplay involves placing dice as workers to take actions and this is quite straightforward, but there are many actions to choose from and the main objective is to invent devices. It’s quite easy to specialise in one part of the invention process and unless your opponents collaborate by filling in the other parts, you may find you hit a wall. Therefore, it seems to me that you need to do a bit of everything. The points are scored from the inventions, but also from an area majority with tents and a separate area majority with influence markers. There are a lot of things to consider and balance, so I would rate this 5/5 for complexity.

Replayability

I’m still learning the strategy here, so I think there is great potential for a lot of replayability simply because there are so many levers to pull. It also doesn’t need an enormous Ark Nova style deck to create variety, because there’s enough variability in the combinations of the core elements of the game. I think I would like to give Inventors of the South Tigris a 5/5 for replayability.

Player Interaction

There’s a lot of potential for player interaction, such as the aforementioned collaboration on inventing devices – I build, you publish. There is fierce competition for tent spaces, river spaces for workshop and research tiles and in the guilds for influence majority. Beyond that, though, most of the action takes place on the player board. I think, because of that, it’s probably fair to give this a 4/5 for player interaction.

Component quality

The components are wooden tokens for workers, influence and so on in player colours, wooden silk-screened craftspeople tokens and plastic dice. Then there are cardboard tiles of various kinds and cardboard silver coins. It is possible to get metal coins for all of the South Tigris games and these replace the cardboard ones. I would say that the components are nicely made with good consistent artwork on the cardboard tiles, but they’re not outstanding. They work well in the game and are appropriate for the price. Considering all this, I would give it a 4/5 for component quality.

Likes and dislikes

I love the complexity. This is a real brain-burner with so many things to watch and so many different ways to upgrade your abilities. There’s also a solo mode and a shorter three round game mode for multiplayer. The dice and craftspeople are resources to be managed and upgraded. There are a lot of crunchy decisions to make throughout the game that have a real effect on the final scoring. I like all the Garphill games that I’ve played, but I think Inventors of the South Tigris is a finish with a flourish to the third trilogy. It’s probably my favourite now.

Having said all that, on first opening the box the complexity and learning curve can be a bit daunting, so that was really my only dislike – that it’s not an easy game to learn or teach although this is mitigated by the excellent icons everywhere.

Conclusion

My overall score for Inventors of the South Tigris is 90%. I think it’s excellent and I think if you like the other South Tigris games or the West Kingdom and North Sea trilogies, also from Garphill, then you’re going to enjoy this one. If you’ve played CO2: Second Chance or Inventions: Evolution of Ideas then I would also suggest giving this a go.

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