Ichor
Gameplay Overview
Ichor is a two-player duel where every move leaves a mark you can't take back. One player controls a lineup of gods, the other a lineup of monsters, six characters each, drawn at random from a larger pool so no two games start with the same roster. On your turn you slide one character in a straight line, as far as you want, until something blocks you. Every space you leave behind gets a token in your color, and if your path crosses a space already holding your opponent's token, you swap it over to your own side as you pass.
The race is simple to state and brutal to execute: be the first to get every one of your tokens onto the board. Movement is identical for every character, so the real game lives in the one special ability each of them carries, usable exactly once for the whole match. Some let you leap through a blockade, some let you wipe out a cluster of enemy tokens in one shot, some let you remove a piece from the board entirely. Knowing you're holding a single detonator in your pocket, and knowing your opponent is holding six of their own, is where the real tension sits. When the first match ends, you don't stop there. You swap sides and play again, so the strategies you just spent an entire game learning to counter become the strategies you now have to wield yourself.
Published
2025
Status
owned
Players
2 Players
Our thoughts
After Pillars of Fate, Madeline picked this one up specifically to keep building out Ollie's taste profile, since it was becoming clear he genuinely loves a head-to-head format. Ichor delivers exactly that, and the swap-sides structure turned out to be a really clever balancing move. You spend the first match figuring out your opponent's tendencies, and then you're handed the exact toolkit you just learned to fear and asked to use it yourself.
This is another one that rewards knowing your specific opponent over time rather than walking in and immediately finding an optimal strategy, and the high player interaction is obvious from the first move. There's a real risk of the game becoming memorizable once you've played enough to know every character's ability by heart, but the randomized draft at setup keeps that mostly in check.
For Madeline, this style of game is a bit less experientially impactful than it is for Ollie. Head-to-head, combative games are more his speed than hers, and Ichor isn't what she'd reach for if a more aggressive game were on the table for the night. That said, she thought the god-and-monster swap was a genuinely smart piece of design, and it's easy to imagine one faction clicking with a given player far more comfortably than the other.
Try this if you like...
Games that reward getting to know your opponent
Your first few plays are about learning what the pieces can do; the real skill shows up once you start anticipating how your specific opponent likes to use them.
A slow-burn improvement curve over an immediate solved strategy
This isn't a game you crack on session one. It rewards patience and repeated play more than a quick read.
High player interaction in a small package
Every move you make directly threatens or reshapes what your opponent can do next.
Built-in fairness through randomized setup
Since your six characters are drawn at random each game, no one is stuck memorizing a single fixed opening strategy.
A structure that makes you play both sides of the conflict
Switching from gods to monsters (or the reverse) partway through means you can't just get comfortable as one faction.
Follow the same spark
What to play after Ichor
Not just games that look alike—these are the specific connections we felt at the table.
Onitama
2014 · 2 Players
Our thoughts coming soonWhy it connects
The clearest kin. Both are lean, chess-adjacent duels where a shared movement system gets bent by a small set of individual character powers.
Pillars of Fate
2025 · 2 Players
Our thoughts coming soonWhy it connects
The game that sent us looking for more of this kind of head-to-head duel in the first place. Different mechanics, but the same appetite for a tight, two-player standoff.
