‘Illiad’: Pure Strategy Game With Wooden Horse Not Included
Will you win the Trojan War with the favor of the gods or through sheer brute force? Only time will tell when you play Iliad.
The Trojan War has begun! For some reason, Achilles hasn’t just encased his foot in lead and the Trojans are still arguing over who has to sit in the butt of the horse. And while all that is going on, there is a war raging out on the fields of Anatolia. Both sides are vying for the favor of the gods, but they are a fickle sort. But there’s always Plan B: Beat the ambrosia out of each other so bad even the gods won’t save you.
Iliad Overview
Iliad is a two player competitive tile-laying strategy game. The goal of both players is to either earn the favor of the five gods. But if both players manage to do this, then the winner is whichever player earn the most points. Points are earned through battle!
As I said before, Iliad is a tile-laying game. Both players start with symmetrical pools of tiles. Each tile has strength from 1 to 5. Both players also have a Dolos tile, that mimcs the opponent’s adjacent tiles. In classical mythology, Dolos is basically Greek Loki. He’s the spirit of trickery and guile. He is also a master at cunning deception, craftiness, and treachery. Great guy to have working on your side, even if just for a little.
Players place tiles in a grid. Once a row or column is filled, the player with the highest total strength chooses one of two success tokens for themselves, and the other goes to their opponent. These tokens can be gain points, or cost points. Success tokens also earn the god’s favor.
At the end of the game, the player who has earned the favor of all five gods wins the Trojan War! But if both or neither player has earned the favor of all five gods, then victory goes to the player with the most points.
Because Iliad, allows two separate paths to victory, players can opt for different strategies throughout. Forcing your opponent to lose points through strong tile placement, or attempting to earn favor quickly, and deny your opponent the same chance.
PreOrder On Kickstarter
Iliad is the first game in the Mythos Collection from Bitewing Games. They plan to release more games in this collection, that will be a line of two-player titles. Presumably with this same mythological spin, but we’ll have to wait and see.
