Who Wants a Fragrant Clock? – Inventors of the South Tigris Review

Necessity is the mother of invention, but is it the mother of a game about inventing things?

Things to ponder.

That’s what I am always thinking when I play Inventors of the South Tigris, the latest (and last) of the South Tigris trilogy of games from Garphill Games.

(Ok, not really, as that’s much too philosophical for me)

Inventors of the South Tigris (it’s just “Inventors” from now on, ok?) was designed by Shem Phillips and S J MacDonald, with art by the Mico (Mihajlo Dimitrievski). It was published in 2024 by Garphill Games and Renegade Game Studios.

After having played it the necessary three times for review, I have to say that I think Inventors is probably the heaviest game of any of the trilogies, and even more so than Ezra & Nehemiah (which I thought was probably the heaviest before this).

There are a lot of mechanisms that you’re pulling, and needing to pull in the right order to do well.

But as with most Garphill games, there are multiple paths to victory if you concentrate on one or two things.

What do I mean?

Let’s look under the hood and see if they’ve actually managed to invent the car as well.

When you boil things down to the basics (did they invent a radio-controlled pot for boiling?), players are inventors trying to invent things (duh), build them, publish information about them, and test them.

You’re also trying to spread the word about them all up and down the Tigris, which really only happens when you test things.

I guess people perk up and take notice when they hear about the Automated Beaker that blew up when it was being tested.

It’s all part of a process that you will be taking actions to do (along with other things, of course).

Inventions actually start out as an invention board with a descriptor on it. Invention cards are placed on them by players who come up with these inventions.

Don’t worry. You don’t have to actually come up with them. You have cards for that.

Once you’ve taken the action to invent, you now have a fully-functional…Water-Powered Drum.

Or at least the concept of one.

But somebody has to build it in order to bring it to life!

That doesn’t have to be you, though. Sure, you thought of it, but if somebody is willing to take your idea and put it out there, why shouldn’t you both benefit?

See the Heated Flask above where the red player invented it (the tile at the top of the card is red) but blue actually built it (just off to the left, you can see half of a blue marker).

Of course, who cares if it’s been built if nobody knows about it?

That’s why you can take another action to publish the invention.

It can be anybody’s invention! One person could come up with the concept, another person build it, and a third person publish it.

As long as the third person pays the original inventor for the idea.

This is the whole basic process of the game, from inventing to publishing, but how does this all work?

It’s a South Tigris game, so you know it involves dice, right?

Yep, it involves dice.

This time, only a set number of dice, though!

While you will gain dice throughout the game, they will always replace other dice, so you will always have the same amount (though there are two instances that happen once each where you will gain a new dice each time without replacing).

And there are some coloured dice too for various things.

Each player will have a number of “camel” actions, which are the actions that allow you to do all of the stuff above (and also test the inventions, which I’ll get to).

The numbers on the dice are required for all of the actions, both camel as well as workshops (the tiles underneath the camels) and these numbers will vary.

Some inventions require higher numbers to come up with than others. The same with building them.

Publishing them always requires an eight or higher, though.

But the workshops require various numbers to do their actions too.

The dice system in Inventors is quite intricate and I found it really interesting.

Dice can be Exhausted (bottom), Ready (next level), Determined (next level) and Inspired (top).

Coloured dice can also be in the Study (the column next to the dice track).

The idea of “brightening” dice so that they move up a level (either on the track or in the study) is quite clever, indicating that the dice are some of your basic workers.

The other really innovative concept in the game are the craftspeople you have to pay to do things.

These individual craftspeople start at a certain level of knowledge and every time you pay them for their abilities, they move up a level.

They learned something!

But they do become exhausted and you have to refresh them before you can use them again.

Some actions with your individual meeples require you to pay craftspeople too, but most of the time you’re paying them for their expertise in building, or publishing, inventions.

Inventing things is easy and doesn’t require any craftspeople.

That Horse-Powered Fountain is just in your head!

But then, to build it, you need craftspeople.

In this case, it will require the services of your Carpenter, Chandler and Weaver in order to build it.

To publish, you will always need your Scribe and then one other craftsperson of your choice (maybe they’re used to just go get extra parchment?)

The craftsperson mechanic is actually one of the backbones of the game, as it’s often a dance of getting the money to pay them (money can be quite tight, and as craftspeople get more experienced, they start demanding more money for some reason) and also making sure their active and able to be used.

Thankfully there are many ways to flip a craftsperson from exhausted to useable again.

They’ll also get you a good chunk of points no matter what other method you are using for scoring.

The Craft Tower (hey, I invented that!) is also a very cool mechanism.

There are five double-sided tower tiles.

When the bottom one is empty of craftspeople, you do the effect on the bottom right of the tile (in this case, the green symbol means gain a Royalty), flip the tile (or if it’s already been flipped, remove it from the game) and move the tower downward (putting the newly flipped tile at the top if you had to flip it).

Thus, you have a cascading tower which means the craftspeople there become more expensive but you also get a bunch more income each round.

And they become worth more points!

Each level from 5-10 will get each craftsperson an additional point, meaning that if you have all six of them on level 7, they’ll each be worth 3 points.

That’s 18 points!

Other actions you can take involve the two (and later three) meeple workers that you can place out on the board to do actions.

These spaces will often involve spending guild influence (and something else) to do something.

Yes, there are guilds in Inventors, just like the other South Tigris games, and once again you can get points for majorities at the end of the game.

In this game, though, you will be spending that influence a lot.

These will get you various benefits, maybe a coloured die, some invention cards, or maybe bumping up some craftspeople in the Craft Tower ™.

Which actually brings me to the final thing you can do on your turn, which is all linked together.

Three of the worker spaces will allow you to research, which involves bringing out research tiles onto empty spaces in the river.

The Tigris river is where your boat is moving along to spread word about this marvelous…um…Heated Grab far and wide to residents all along the river.

Researching will get you some benefit and points as well. The benefits could be ongoing throughout the game, an effect when you Tent (more on that in a minute) or a powerful instant effect.

But how did these spaces on the river become empty?

That’s where testing these inventions and moving your ship comes in.

The final camel action you can do, with a coloured die, is to test one of the inventions that has been built (or built and published).

The coloured die goes into the proper coloured space on the invention, possibly giving you guild influence of that colour, and will move you along the river one, two, or three spaces.

For example, using an orange die to test the…um…Trick Beacon will give you two ship movement and an orange guild influence.

As your ship moves, it will come to spaces with Workshop tiles (which is how you get more of those).

You take the top one, and that might empty the space!

Where the research tile will go when you Research.

Yes, yes it is.

Finally, when you just want to stop doing things for the round (with some caveats), you can do a Tent action.

This involves putting this round’s tent into one of the available tent spaces and getting that bonus (and any Tent effects from Research tiles).

Some of these will involve getting extra guild influence at the end of the game, or maybe an extra Camel action next round, or maybe an extra worker!

The bonuses are randomized so the same tent space may not have the same benefit next game (except the guild influence, of course).

How about something I really love about this game?

Once you’ve tented, that doesn’t mean you’re out of the round!

As long as other players are taking turns, you can use a workshop if you have dice left.

Or you can refresh a craftsperson, or brighten a die, or even pay a craftsperson to move dice off of a workshop so you can use it again!

You’re never going to be bored in this game because you’re never out of the round.

That being said, there can be downtime if you’re playing with people who can’t deal with the huge number of choices in this game.

So maybe you’ll get a little bored.

This doesn’t have the same number of choices as Civolution, but the decision space is still quite broad.

What you need to do and what order to do it is actually quite involved. I’ve seen that first turn move very slowly as people aren’t even sure where to start.

There are already two neutral inventions built and one neutral one actually invented, so your first action could be to build or publish. You’re not limited to just inventing something.

I’m still not sure what the best route to take is.

While there are many mechanisms I love in Inventors, my overall impression when playing the game is that there’s just a bit too much. Too many mechanisms, and while they do make sense together, they don’t necessarily feel as smooth as I would normally like.

It’s also a very fiddly game, with invention boards moving, invention tiles flipping, cards being placed on the board.

This doesn’t even address the final scoring, which can be very convoluted.

I understand it if I take it slow, but it was really hard to explain to people at times.

Some of it is easy. Where you are on the Royalty track, how many researches you’ve done and whether you were first. Guild majorities. Workshop tiles.

But then you get into the scoring of the inventions and it all explodes.

There is a diagram right above where the invention boards go, but it’s still hard to grasp sometimes.

If you built an invention but it was never published, you get 1 point for each testing die on the invention.

If you built it but somebody else published it, you get 3 points.

If somebody built it and you published it, you get 1 point per testing die.

If you did both, then you get 1 point plus 1 point per testing die.

Then, it gets intersting.

Each invention has a condition. The Fragrant Clock (above, bottom right) is looking for complete sets of three different coloured dice.

See the green and blue ribbons?

Each is a number, meaning that’s how many of that condition you need to satisfy it.

So for the Fragrant Clock, if you have one set of three coloured dice, you meet the green condition (2 points). If you have three sets (the blue condition), then you will get 4 points.

And (if that’s not enough), this applies to both the builder and the publisher.

If you’re both, you get them twice!

Does your head hurt yet?

All of that being said, I’m not sure if it’s just us and how we play or whether it’s some kind of flaw or just weird thing, but we didn’t end up getting a lot of points from inventions.

You may wonder “what about the inventor? Do they get points?”

That’s on the player boards.

Duplicate picture alert!

Below the workshops are your invention tiles. If you clear tiles on both sides of the VP marker, you get those points.

That’s easy!

So yeah, endgame scoring for the inventions themselves can get quite intricate and messy and fiddly.

And unless you are laser-focused on making sure only to build or publish things with conditions that you will find easy, you may not score a lot!

Honestly, a great number of your points will come from your craftspeople. I earned 19 of my 50 points on Sunday from craftspeople advancement. And another 10 for my Royalty track!

Maybe I’m just not getting this game as far as scoring efficiently goes.

I don’t know.

I just find the huge mix of mechanisms not quite as interesting as previous South Tigris games.

I’m not saying I dislike the game. There are a large number of things I like about it.

The ability to do things after (essentially) passing.

How the workshops work. The tenting actions that can either put you in good on the guilds or just get you a better position next round.

The funny inventions.

The craftspeople in the Craft Tower ™ are the best part!

Though I hate paying them. Yes, I am Scrooge.

It all clicks together well. It’s just not as gripping as it could be.

I don’t really like this game at 4 players, and definitely not if you play the extended game.

It flows fairly well at 3 players with the shorter game, but even that game took us over 2.5 hours.

It may shorten with more plays, of course.

This could still end up in my Top 50, but it certainly won’t get into my Top 10, at least without more plays to maybe change my mind.

I still recommend giving it a try. It may even appeal to gamers of the more heavy variety (I’d love to see this on Heavy Cardboard).

It will definitely stay in my collection.

Just not quite as snugly as the other ones.

(This review was written after 3 plays)