Intro to Inventors of The South Tigris

Any time a new Garphill Games title comes, you know you are in for a good time. 🥰 The latest arrival is ⚙️Inventors of the South Tigris, the 3rd and final entry into the South Tigris saga. This game continues the theme of the series 👉 both in its thematic setting of 850AD Baghdad 🕌, and also in its core gameplay mechanics. 🧐 There is a big focus on managing your pool of dice 🎲 and using them in dice worker placement, while you can also use meeple workers 👤 for some tasks - yet Inventors manages to feel distinctly different from Wayfarers and Scholars! 😉

Fitting to the game’s title, the game revolves around inventions. ⚗️ The 4 main actions players will do are inventing, buildings, testing and publishing new wondrous devices. There is some player interaction here, as not necessarily the same person will do all these steps for a device. My favorite little thematic touch are the adjectives on device boards and nouns on device cards that combine into the names of inventions: some funny examples we had are the “Fragrant Sail” or “Self-Regulating Chair”. 😅

There are different costs and rewards for doing these main actions, but they have one thing in common: you’ll need to use one of your - very limited - Camel 🐪 dice slots. Players also have Workshops 🔨 that are activated with dice - these workshops will be expanded as players’ ships ⛵ move down the river collecting new tiles, which in turn free up slots to place out research tiles for even more engine building. Players also have worker meeples 👤 that can be used on special worker spots to do a bunch of different things. The 3 differently colored Guilds come into play this time again as you can gather and spend influence in different ways.

💬 I think Scholars felt more complex than Wayfarers, and now Inventors feels more complex than Scholars did, so there is definitely a ramp up in complexity - I believe that is the same with the West Kingdom and South Sea series as well. This also means that play time is pretty long ⌛ as there is a lot to think about. However we really enjoy the game so far and will definitely talk more about it after more sessions! 🙂