Outline for teaching Tigris rules

Based on "The Finer Points of Teaching Rules" by Mario T. Lanza http://www.thegamesjournal.com/articles/TeachingRules.shtml

1. Set up the board

2. One-liner: (by Mario Lanza) "Each of us will be building civilizations by placing our leaders and our tiles to the board. Inevitably conflicts will arise between our leaders. Both adding tiles to grow your civilizations and winning conflicts involving your leaders will earn you victory points."

3. Overview

3a. Mechanics

• Move leader, add tile (point)
• 4 tiles => monument => point every turn
• Two leaders with same colour => war => points
  

3b. Scoring

• number of points in your weakest colour. Example.
  

3c. Chronology

• 2 actions per player
• replenish hand
  
• continue in a circle
  

3d. Game end

• out of tiles in the bag
  
• almost out of treasures on the board
  

4. Details

• Move leader: onto board, or within board; beside red tile
• Add tile: blue goes on the river; red, black, and green go on the land
  
• Two kinds of war: civil and international. Defeated leaders are removed. Scoring. Ties go to the defender.
• When several pairs of leader are at war: order chosen by active player. After the first pair fights and tiles are removed, the remaining leaders may not be connected and fighting stops.
  
• Attacker is the active player (or clockwise)
  
• Colours' special behaviour: red, green, blue, black
• Catastrophe tile: no leader or tile may be placed here. Can force leader off board.
  
• Swapping tiles
• Monument points - receive at end of turn
• Game end: 2 or fewer treasures are left on the board, or the bag runs out of tiles
  

5. Exceptions

• Can't put leader on river
• Can't join nations with leader (note that a leaderless land-mass is not considered to be a nation)
  
• Can't put catastrophe tile on treasure, monument, or leader
  
• No point awarded for the tile that joins nations
• Can't start war between more than two nations

6. Tips - from Chris Farrell http://homepage.mac.com/c_farrell/Analysis/eandt.html

• Consider carefully whether you want to start an international war. Lots of points will be awarded, and you don't want them to go to your opponents.
• The disadvantage of monuments - you lose 4 supporters.
• If one of your colours is quite weak, a low-risk way to earn points is to place two tiles.
• Keep your leaders on the board; otherwise you can't score.
• Try to get those treasures!
  

Fiddly things:

• Can create a monument with a treasure-bearing tile
• Player may choose not to build a monument
• Monument building is put on pause if adding the tile creates an international war
• After international war, don't discard tiles with treasures, and don't discard red tiles beside leaders