Ichor

^{review by Kaleb}

If you read my previous month’s review on or played Iliad, it’s no surprise that Ichor would interest you as well. Ichor is another Reiner Knizia game for two players, in the Mythos Collection from Bitewing Games.

Oddly, when I was playing Ichor, I found myself recalling the classic game Othello, but there’s Greek gods and monsters with powers to best your opponent. Ichor is an asymmetric strategy battle game. In the base version of the game, there are 8 Greek gods, such as Hermes, Aphrodite, and Artemis, and there are 8 Greek monsters, including Cyclops, Medusa, and the terrifying Hydra. The board to play on is a two-sided cloth mat, with one side having a 6x6 square grid, and the other a 7x7 square grid. In the easier/quicker version of the game, players use the 6x6 side, flip over 6 of their 8 cards in their respective decks, and place the appropriate matching god or monster standee on the cloth board in front of the flipped cards. In Ichor, players are trying to have all of their tokens on the board before their opponent (14 tokens for the 6x6 grid, and 19 tokens for the 7x7 grid).

Players place their tokens onto the board by moving their standee figures around the board, only either vertically or horizontally. When a figure leaves a space, a token is placed there. When a god figure moves over spaces with monster tokens, those tokens are replaced by god tokens and the monster tokens are returned to the player with the monsters. Figures cannot be placed onto spaces that already have either a figure or a token, and cannot move through a space that contains a figure though there are some special abilities that may override the general rules. While playing, a player can do one of two actions during their turn: movement (moving a figure) or activate a special ability. For example, Artemis can end her movement on a space that has a monster on it, and then both Artemis and the monster are removed from the board and the Centaur’s special ability is to do movement diagonally on the board, much like a chess bishop. The catch is that special abilities can only be used once per game, so you must time them and use them carefully! Once a special ability is used, the player flips over that god or monster card in front of them so that indicates the power has been used.

Overall, I really enjoyed playing Ichor. The box play time says 40 minutes, but I probably played 6 games of Ichor over 2 hours, including punching out the cardboard pieces and reading the rules. Anytime we finished a game, we immediately set it up to play again. The gameplay can go much quicker than what the box indicates. There’s also an expansion that adds more board challenges and 4 more gods and monsters. So far, I’ve really enjoyed both Iliad and Ichor from the Mythos Collection. This year, 2 more games are expected to be added to this collection: Azure (Chinese Mythology) and Moytura (Irish Mythology), and I definitely plan to check out these titles as well.

Ichor is available now from our webstore.