Iliad – A Legendary (Tile) Battle

Thankfully, in the game Iliad by Reiner Knizia, you run no risk of death. Instead, you’ll battle over influence, as both Hector and Achilles seek the favor of the gods to gain an edge.

Iliad is a tile-placement game for two players, ages 10+, that takes about 30 minutes to play. It’s published by Bitewing Games as the first entry in their Mythos collection.

How to Play

Set aside five “success tokens”, which should all have non-negative values. (Shuffle negatives back in to the bag of tokens.) Then lay out the cloth board, and draw tokens one by one to place on every space along the border.

One player takes the blue (Hector of Troy) tiles, and the other takes the red (Achilles of the Greeks). Shuffle your tiles and place them face-down in a stack (or two). Then draw two and place them in the central spaces of the board, matching your chosen color. Finally, draw two more tiles as your starting hand.

On your turn, place a tile from your hand face-up onto the board. Carry out its effect (if any), then check to see if any lines have scored. Draw another tile into your hand. Then it’s the other player’s turn. Continue until all the tiles have been used and all the spaces on the board are filled.

Place a Tile

Players must place a tile orthogonally adjacent to at least one other tile. Tiles numbered 1-4 picture an effect. You may optionally carry out this effect but must do it immediately.

• 1. Reposition one of the opponent’s accessible* tiles. (move it to another valid space on the board. This can result in a tile arrangement that would otherwise be illegal).
• 2. Reposition one of your own accessible* tiles (same rules as 1).
• 3. Swap one of your success tokens with any one of the five tokens in the market displayed next to the board.
• 4. Turn this tile face down, then turn one of the neighboring tiles of your opponent face down also (this does not have to be an accessible* tile).
• 5. No special ability.
• Dolos tiles have a target symbol instead of a number. When scoring a row or column, Dolos tiles have the power of the two neighboring tiles summed together in that row or column. Adjacent Dolos tiles do not get any value from each other.

* Tiles are accessible if they are not surrounded on all four sides by other tiles or the edge of the board.

Completing a Row or Column

Whenever a row or column is filled with six tiles it’s time to battle it out and score that row. Sum the powers of Achilles and of Hector. Whichever sum is higher, wins. The active player wins in a tie.

Whoever wins the battle gets first choice of the success tokens on either end of that row or column. The other player receives the other token.

End Game

By the end of a game of Iliad the two players will have completely covered the cloth battle grid. Now it’s time to find out who won the war.

First, make sure each player has at least one success token for each of the five gods. In our example below, Achilles only has success tokens for four of the gods, while Hector has one for each of the five gods. Even though Achilles’s tokens sum to a higher value, Hector wins the battle!

Hector was able to gather both of the marriage tokens as part of his play, which counted as a wild success token and filled the gap for the missing blue token.

If both (or neither!) players have managed to collect success tokens for each of the five gods, sum the highest value success token they have for each god. Add the special weapon success tokens and subtract the negative troop impact tokens from each total. Marriage tokens have no value. Whoever has the higher value has won the war!

Impressions

Bitewing’s goal with The Mythos Collection is to bring the worlds best two-player game creators together to make the best two-player game series possible. They’ve opened the gates with Iliad from legendary designer Reiner Knizia. This is a strong offering to be sure. Iliad features tight strategy and limited decisions that impact the broader game as it unfolds.

Like a classic Knizia, the early turns of Iliad go quickly. There’s plenty of space available on the board and no one row or column close to scoring. But it doesn’t take long before turns start to take a little longer, the friendly chatter between opponents slows, and careful math is being computed and projected out.

The game always takes exactly 16 turns, and a turn is as simple as choosing between one of the two tiles in your hand and figuring out the best place to put it.

Of course, the varying abilities impact the final resting place of each of the tiles, ratcheting up the strategy immediately. This does mean the age range of 10+ really is the absolute minimum here, as there are second-order effects of the tile abilities.

The genius of adding a drop-dead win condition of the five different success tokens forces players to think at multiple levels. Although a high value success token might be available, a lower value token for a different god might be a better play. This also provides for novel opportunities to shut opponents out. If they can’t draft certain success tokens, you are nearly guaranteed a win.

Marriage tokens offer a release valve to this tension. They provide an alternate goal that isn’t quite as difficult as a “shoot the moon” play. It’s just one that requires an additional win in a row or column to seal the deal.

Multiple times in our plays, one of us thought the other was certain to win, only to discover the negative success tokens weighed down final scores. Once, I discovered (to my dismay) that I missed one of the success token varieties! The game was an immediate loss.

Iliad makes an for an excellent, quick, relatively small table presence game. It’s perfect for a restaurant table, which means, yes, we love Iliad as a date game. The graphic design from Brigette Indelicato is clear and the art from Harry Conway is absolutely gorgeous. We love it when waitstaff comment on how great the games we’re playing look – and that happened here for sure!

Are you ready to embark on your own epic adventure? If so, pick up a copy of Iliad from distributor Allplay or ask for it at your local game store.

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The Family Gamers received a copy of Iliad from Bitewing Games for this review.