GIPF (Don & Co. NV; about $30)

   As designed by Kris Burm (whose Batik was featured last issue), GIPF is a low complexity, two player abstract game that illustrates how to get the maximum out of a minimum - a mounted board "play area" consisting of a series of lines characterized by two dots (which serve as the starting spaces to bring pieces onto the board) and "spots" (intersections where the lines meet), a set of black and white checkers and a rulebook...

   The basic game begins with each player having 15 pieces: three positioned on the board to form an "inner perimeter", the rest in reserve. Each turn, a player MUST bring a piece onto the board by first, moving a piece onto a dot (somewhere on the outside perimeter) and then moving it into the play area...Whenever four pieces of the same color are lined up next to each other (regardless of which player caused this to happen!), these pieces must be removed from the board along with all pieces that form a direct extension of those four pieces! The player whose color makes the line of four gets his pieces returned to his reserve; captured enemy pieces are removed from play!

FROM "K-BAN'S KORNER":

EUPHRAT & TIGRIS (Hans im Gluck; about $50)

   Reiner Knizia has been one of Germany's most prolific game designers for the past decade...Euphrat & Tigris... is a radical departure ... E&T is a 90 to 120 "gamers game" of developing balanced civilizations. It is a tile laying game (for three to four players) with different colored tiles representing settlements, temples, farming/agriculture and markets...

    A player's turn consists of taking any two actions from among the four choices: 1) Position a leader, 2) Place a civilization tile and receive a Victory Point (VP), 3) Place a catastrophe tile, 4) Swap up to six tiles. A player may choose two different actions or perform the same action twice. As with most Knizia games, you'd like to do just a bit more, creating strategic tension in the choice process...

   Since only one leader of a given color can peacefully co-exist in each kingdom, a conflict occurs when a second leader of the same color is added or when kingdoms merge....The winner is the player with the greatest number of VPs in his WEAKEST sphere of influence... E&T is relatively easy to teach by example but difficult to learn from scratch...The game does flow nicely once all the concepts have been fully absorbed...Highly recommended. -------- Steve Kurzban