Ichor: When Greek Gods Battle Monsters on Your Table
Picture this: Zeus and his crew are defending Mount Olympus one last time. Coming at them? Every nightmare creature from Greek mythology you’ve ever heard of. That’s Ichor in a nutshell, and honestly, it’s way more fun than it sounds.
What You’re Getting Into
What Makes Ichor Different From Other Strategy Games
Reiner Knizia designed this one, and if you know his work, you know he doesn’t mess around with overcomplicated rules. Ichor is built for exactly two players—no more, no less. One of you plays the gods, the other gets the monsters. Simple enough, right?
The win condition couldn’t be clearer: get all your tokens on the board first. How you do that is where things get spicy.
The Actual Gameplay
How Ichor Gameplay Actually Works
Your turn works like this: pick one of your figures and slide it in a straight line. Could be one space, could be ten—your call. But here’s the catch: every single space you pass through, you drop one of your tokens. It’s like leaving breadcrumbs, except these breadcrumbs claim territory.
You can’t hop over other figures or land on them. But opponent tokens sitting on empty spaces? Fair game. Replace them with yours. This back-and-forth of claiming and reclaiming spaces is where most of the game happens.
Why Your Characters Matter
Why Character Abilities Define Ichor Strategy
Every figure has a one-time special ability. Use it wisely, because once it’s gone, it’s gone for the whole game. Some abilities let you break the normal movement rules. Others mess with your opponent’s plans. A few are just ridiculously powerful if you time them right.
Good players hold onto these abilities like poker cards, waiting for the exact right moment. Bad players burn through them early and regret it five minutes later.
There’s More If You Want It
Ichor Expansions: Gates and Reinforcements Add Depth
The base game already has plenty going on, but Knizia included something called the Reinforcements & Gates expansion. Gates are special tiles that change how certain board spaces work. They can be game-changers.
Between 24 different characters, 2 boards, and 8 gate tiles, the math nerds calculated about 50 million possible starting setups. Will you play them all? Of course not. But you’ll never feel like you’re playing the same game twice, and that’s the point.
What Separates Winners from Losers
Mastering Ichor: What Separates Winners from Losers
Learning Ichor takes maybe 10 minutes. Getting good at it? That’s different. You need to think a few moves ahead, kind of like chess but faster. Spatial reasoning helps a ton—being able to visualize where your tokens will land before you move.
The ability timing thing I mentioned earlier? That’s probably the hardest part. Pop your special power too early and you waste it. Wait too long and your opponent beats you to the punch. Finding that sweet spot is what makes Ichor addictive.
Also, blocking matters. Sometimes the best move isn’t advancing your own position—it’s stopping your opponent from making their big play.
The Mythos Collection Thing
The Mythos Collection: Where Ichor Fits In
Bitewing Games is building a whole line of two-player mythology games. Ichor is number two in that series. If you dig the theme and the head-to-head format, they’ve got more coming.
Who Should Play This?
Who Should Buy Ichor?
If you like abstract strategy games but think they’re too dry, Ichor adds just enough theme to keep things interesting. The god vs. monster angle isn’t just decoration—it actually makes the asymmetric gameplay feel natural.
Games run 20-30 minutes, which is perfect. Long enough to feel satisfying, short enough that “one more game” actually means one more, not three hours later when you finally drag yourself away.
Couples looking for competitive games should definitely check this out. Same goes for anyone tired of multiplayer games that drag on forever or fall apart when someone has to leave.
Bottom Line
Final Verdict: Is Ichor Worth Playing?
Ichor does what it sets out to do: deliver a tight, strategic, two-player experience without a bunch of filler. The asymmetric sides keep things fresh, the character abilities add just enough chaos to pure strategy, and the production quality holds up.
Not every game needs to be a four-hour epic with a thousand pieces. Sometimes you just want to sit down, throw some gods and monsters at each other for half an hour, and see who comes out on top. For that, Ichor nails it.
So yeah—if you’re into strategic duels with a mythological twist, this one’s worth your time.