Blog Archives
She’s a Grisly Monster, I Assure You
You know the story. Buncha monsters storm Mount Olympus. The pantheon is in a scramble. Who’s this coming to save the day — Hercules? More like Hunk-ules.
Reiner Knizia’s Ichor isn’t Disney’s Hercules, and thank the gods for that, although Tyler Miles Lockett’s illustrations do somewhat resemble the Gerald Scarfe amphorae look of the animated feature. When I previewed the thing a year back, I liked it somewhat less than its sibling title Iliad. Now that they’re both finished and on my table, though, I’ve been giving Ichor a second look. And while it’s still the zanier and less measured of the pair, there’s so much to appreciate about Knizia’s portrayal of this divine brawl that I can’t help but be charmed.
Let Me Not Then Die Ingloriously
You know that moment in every ancient battle scene, whether in film or video games, where the lines have collapsed and now the burly infantry boys are fighting one on one, everybody mixed together and slashing wildly? Bonus points when two rival heroes spot each other in the fray and start murdering their way toward one another, hellbent on a personal duel where nobody will happen to spear them through the backside.
Sorry to disappoint, but those scenes are pure invention. There simply weren’t enough suicidal soldiers in the ancient world for such an engagement. Still, it looks hella cool, and it’s significantly easier to stage than an actual line of infantry trying to scare their opposite number into freaking out and running away.
One of my favorite things about Reiner Knizia’s Iliad, which I previewed last year, is the way it evokes those haphazard murder-thons, Greek boys in blue and red squaring off in a checkers-grid melee. Sure, the game is smart and all that, providing a thinky two-player match of wits that emphasizes clever investments over brute strength. But I’m really here for the chaos.
Intergalactic Knizia, Verse Three: Orbit
It is the future. The year 2,000. After enduring alien abductions in Silos and a testy diplomatic delegation in Ego, humanity has become just as insipid as ever. That’s the subject of Orbit, the third and final volume in Reiner Knizia’s intergalactic trilogy and the first title of the saga that doesn’t improve on one of the Good Doctor’s older games.
As reluctant as I am to say it, it shows.
Intergalactic Knizia, Verse Two: Ego
As luck would have it, getting abducted by cow-loving aliens isn’t the worst thing to ever happen to humanity. That’s right, Reiner Knizia’s Silos provides an unexpectedly happy ending. No longer prod-fodder for extraterrestrials, we now stand on the cusp of entering the intergalactic community.
Ego is the second volume in Reiner Knizia’s intergalactic trilogy. With a single vessel prepped for interstellar voyage, diplomats from every nation are ready to explore the farthest reaches of deep space. Their five-year mission: to make friends with strange new peoples; to swap technology to our mutual benefit; to hopefully not embarrass our species too badly. Don’t count on that last one.
Intergalactic Knizia, Verse One: Silos
By now you’ve heard that Bitewing’s ultra-secret Reiner Knizia production is not one game but three, loosely woven together into a saga about humanity’s transformation via extraterrestrial contact. I’ve been playing the entire trilogy over the past month, and I can confidently declare it two-thirds excellent.
In the first chapter, Silos, aliens walk among us — although we’re none the wiser, since their preferred abductees are cows.
Agon-izing
Yesterday we took a look at Ichor, the forthcoming Reiner Knizia abstract-adjacent game about warring gods and monsters. Today we’re investigating its companion piece, Iliad, a bustling melee that’s as much about picking your battles as it is about shoving pieces around a board. It’s also a novel title from Knizia rather than being a remaster of an earlier effort.
Godblood
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.
Three Little Kittens Awaiting Ignition
Apparently “mlem” is a meme designating the noise a cat makes when it licks its own nose… and that’s just about enough internet for today, thank you.
Fortunately, Reiner Knizia’s MLEM: Space Agency, despite making my face feel moist every time I hear it, is one of the good doctor’s better dice games.
Knizidito
Cascadito is a tiny version of Cascadero. That’s the easiest way to sum up the similarities between these twinned titles by Reiner Knizia. They’re both about placing grouped envoys next to cities in order to move up tracks. In some cases, they even award the same spills of bonus points.
But the differences between them are more interesting than their similarities — and more telling. Cascadito is a roll-and-write game. It also sheds much of what makes Cascadero so good.
Knizidero
Zoo Vadis, Bitewing Games’ reprint and update of Reiner Knizia’s long out-of-print classic Quo Vadis?, has only been available to the public for a few weeks. But the good Doctor has never excelled at resting on his laurels. Already he has two more games on the way: Cascadero and Cascadito.
If those titles strike your ear as sounding somewhat similar, you aren’t experiencing auditory hallucinations. Knizia is well known for riffing on his own designs, sometimes producing games redolent of previous productions. Now, apparently, he’s expediting that process. Cascadero and Cascadito are deeply similar, and not in name alone. Today we’re looking at the “original” of the two.
SPACE-BIFF! 