There’s a hallmark to a great Reiner Knizia game. When learning the thing, you say, “That’s it?” Five minutes into your first session, you go, “Oh, that’s it.” What initially seemed too simple is revealed as a bottomless puddle, a glassy mirror that belies the fathoms lurking below the surface.

Ichor is one of two Knizias forthcoming from Bitewing Games. It’s a reimagining of an earlier Knizia title, Clinch, which appeared in Spielbox Magazine in 1993 and was produced as the abstract game Tiku. In 2009 it received an upgrade in the form of Battle for Olympus. Ichor follows closely on the heels of that game, but with a series of adjustments and improvements that make it an absolute python on the battlefield. No, not the snake python. The dragon Python.

Storming Olympus.

We need to start with the rudiments, because even at its most basic there’s an assuredness to Ichor that manifests as a game you would swear you’ve played before. Like mancala or checkers, it feels like a game dredged from our primeval past, as though it should be played with cowrie shells on a grid drawn in the sand.

It works like this. There are two sides arrayed against each other on a six-by-six board. Each team’s pieces stand in a line on their second row — where the pawns would go in chess. Every piece’s move is identical: it can slide in any orthogonal direction as far as it likes until halted by the edge of the board or another piece. Unobstructed, a piece could glide from one side of the board to the other.

Here’s the big departure from checkers. Rather than capturing opposing pieces, moving a piece deposits counters along its path, one for each space it exits. Like the pieces themselves, these counters come in either your color or your opponent’s. You’re washing the board in your color one long slash at a time.

Naturally, your opponent is painting the same masterwork. Any time they move over one of your counters, they replace it with one of theirs. This is the game’s central conundrum. Both sides have the same sweeping maneuver at their fingertips. Both sides have fourteen counters. It’s a race to be the first to place them all on the board.

That alone is the basis of Clinch and Tiku. It’s sparse but undeniably clever. Within only a few opening moves, the board becomes a tangle of considered lanes, everyone’s position jammed not only by opposing pieces but also by the ongoing considerations of where new counters can be added or replaced. Moving along an empty row is tempting, letting you sow an entire furrow with your counters. Often, it’s more beneficial to maneuver tactically, subtracting a few opposing pieces to instead push your rival a little further from achieving their goal.

Each side fields a random assortment of gods or monsters.

What Battle for Olympus added — and which Ichor perfects — is a bunch of special powers for each side’s pieces. Rather than moving, you may activate one of these special abilities. To a one, these are all game-changers. The Hydra strips all tokens from every space around it. The Griffin leaps over a single figure as it moves, bypassing the enemy’s defenses. The Centaur slides diagonally. Artemis goes out in a blaze of glory, sacrificing herself to slay one of the monsters storming Olympus. Apollo dashes forward only to zip back to his starting space, defending his newly-seeded lane from retaliation. Heracles pushes an obstructing monster out of the way, gliding across the board in a dance of muscle and bone.

Of course, there is one major limitation to consider. Each of these abilities can only be used once. Upon being deployed, that god’s or monster’s ability card is flipped face-down. It will never appear again. Unless, that is, Medusa copies that ability on the next turn. Or Ares burns himself up to renew three of your powers.

Still. You get the idea. These bursts of power are singular. They alter the battlefield and then abate, leaving their user permanently diminished.

Which is a big deal given how often these powers function as potential game-enders. The Geryon, a monster with the power to stack two additional counters atop one it just placed, can potentially bring the game to a sudden conclusion even if it doesn’t move all that far. Hephaestus can pile a second layer of counters over those you’ve already placed, potentially doubling up an entire lane. The same goes for any number of other units. This transforms Ichor into a series of difficult choices. Each and every one of your divine creatures risks tipping the contest in your opponent’s favor by stripping themselves of some all-important ability three or ten turns down the road.

Along the way, Ichor becomes painfully thinky. At times, it’s almost too much. Every detail is laid bare. Your abilities are on full display. So are those of your opponent. Together, each turn risks unspooling into a tangle of hypothetical moves. Anyone who balks at long, speculative turns should stay away.

Gates are interesting, but may notch up the complexity too much.

Ichor rewards contemplation. There’s nothing quite like unleashing a unit’s power such that it catches not only your opponent by surprise, but also yourself. More than once, I’ve been left blinking down at the board, confounded that I didn’t see a particular move in advance. In those moments, Ichor inches closer to becoming a sport, something two warring superpowers would train their geniuses to play on neutral ground.

Like a sport, fairness is crucial to Ichor. A full session requires two matches, one as the monsters and one as the gods, with the sides flipped and mirrored. Your goal isn’t only to win, it’s to win with a bunch of counters still in your opponent’s hand. This establishes your score, a threshold your opponent now needs to overcome while occupying the same setup that favored you in the first match. This goes a long way toward offsetting any vagary of the randomized setup, any first- or second-player advantage, or any early unfamiliarity with the units. At its best, the second match now allows both players to preempt the moves that favored them the first time around. In one sense, you’re replaying the earlier contest, with the exact same roster your opponent fielded and with an intimate knowledge of their strengths and weak points.

That said, it can be exhausting. Ichor has a tendency to stick around for a while. This isn’t a long game, but two matches played back-to-back can feel like a lot to tackle. It’s the slightest flicker of how chess champions can slip into a stamina deficit in a tournament. More than once, I’ve stared down at the board’s mess of units and counters, my brain still fuzzed over from parsing through a dozen conflicting maneuvers, and said, “You know what? I think one match is enough for tonight.”

That’s only compounded by some of the game’s optional variants. There are four in all, and while I appreciate the addition of a few extra gods and monsters, and don’t mind playing on a slightly larger board with a higher counter pool, I care less for the victory units that unlock a new way to win. My problem with them isn’t so much that they permit new approaches — that’s fine — but that those approaches are so difficult that I’d frankly rather just field an ordinary unit and try to fill the board with counters. The same goes for the gates, little obstacles that prevent easy movement but can be moved through to trigger special advantages, such as stacking additional counters or transforming your monster into a new form. These don’t wreck the game, but they’re an unnecessary complicating factor, like insisting footballers also bypass sand traps on the pitch.

Cornering the Mother of Monsters.

To be clear, these are unnecessary because the core game is already as full as it needs to be. When it settles into a groove, Ichor is wonderfully competitive. Like a phalanx battle, it’s a shoving match, a contest of probing for weaknesses or weakening flanks.

Recent uses of the word have narrowed its meaning to something more squamous, but “ichor” was the vital fluid that coursed through the veins of the gods. Hence the word “petrichor,” the earth-essence that arises from soil drenched by rain. Reiner Knizia’s Ichor is indeed a divine thing, strenuous in its elevation, potentially out of reach for mere mortals such as myself, but also offering a gripping and fierce contest. I want to play it again right now.

Tomorrow, we’ll be looking at the second forthcoming Knizie game, Iliad. And here’s a taste for you: while I like Ichor a lot, I absolutely love Iliad.

Ichor will be on Kickstarter tomorrow.

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A prototype copy was temporarily provided.