Kemet

This game was on my wishlist for almost a year, now that I finally bought it I have to say that I was surprised.Its awesome! It's something between a worker placement and a war game... yet it's nothing like a worker placement game nor a war game.You control one of five different armies, each represented by unique minis, that try to get 8 or 10 Victory Points before any other player. You can get this game by:a) Direct Conflict with other players. When you go to "war" you don't roll dice, instead you pick one of six different cards to play in the conflict resolution phase, whoever has the most strength wins. Simple right?, well.... not really. One can purchase different favors to aid your armies by shielding the damage or inflicting more damage or you can also invoke powerful mythical creatures like a Phoenix or a Sphinx to aid you in combat. The tricky part is that you only get points if you attack and win... if you defend and win you don't get anything! You'll try to inflict as much damage to the attacking army so you can decimate the troops and counter attack later with strength! Also... there are some little powerful cards that are called Divine Intervention... you get one at random every turn that helps you in combat!b) Controlling temples. You can move one of your armies to to a temple and gain a temporary VP, the only big problem is that every other greedy armie will try to take that VP from your hand.c) Purchasing different tiles that give you permanent VP. There are very few so this is not a really amazing way of winning, yet they can help you win in the last turn!d) Leveling up your pyramids. Yes, you level up some cool looking piramides (they are D4s). You have three of them so you can get 3 Temporary VP... if you hold them. The enemy can attack your starting city and take your pyramids.This seems kinda cliche, fight, fight and fight to win, and that's right, you cannot be a passive player in this game but neither a clumsy attacker. Need some strategie and tactical thinking because you need some resources named Prayer Points. You need them almost for everything, purchasing favor tiles, hiring new dudes to fight for you, leveling your pyramids, teletransporting your armies (yes and it's not a broken ability) or using your DI...Lots of stuff to do!It seems kinda complex but it plays like a breeze... unless you take your time to think every move.On the other hand the player minis are... well... ok, they are unique and well designed... yet they are really small. The creatures on the other hand... WOW! amazing production, the bad thing is that there are only 7: Sphinx, Mummy, Giant Scorpion, Royal Scarab, Deep Desert Snake, Ancestral Elephant and the Phoenix.Amazing game! Love it!

If you are a fan of Risk like gameplay, this game has tremendous strengths. It lasts around an hour and has a lot of replayability.Your goal is to collect victory points, which are achieved by having troops on temples or being a successful attacker. This prevents people from sitting around and trying to build up.You generate 'prayer points' that you use to buy troops or special powers and creatures. There are 3 colors and 16 powers in each color that you can purchase with your points you generate. This gives you both flexibility and futureCombat is no dice, just use cards to boost your ability of your troop and any creatures you've been able to recruit .The components are great. If I had to go with a negative, it's that the divine interaction cards and power tiles are all icon/picture driven that you need the included cheat sheet . But the game is top notch. If you like games like Risk and Small World, this one is top notch.

Kemet is a lot of fun, the action economy is interesting and it plays really quickly. My only complaint is that the rulebook is pretty poorly written. Definitely takes rereading a few sections to finally understand what it's saying --- and certain rules are not where you'd think they'd be.

I greatly enjoy this board game. It is an abstraction, perhaps an outright "Euro" style boardgame which invents mechanisms and then pastes on the theme. Yet, your little Egyptian troops teleporting into an opponent controlled temple could only be properly enjoyed as a wargame. And I think Kemet has outright solved many of the issues people have with wargames, with its inclusion of teleportation standing out. There are no choke points. You either spend valuable turns marching your army to the critical points that award VPs, or you spend a small fee to just teleport it, which greatly encourages attacking.The game also comes with a technology system of sorts. There are 36 power tiles in the base game. Each tile can be bought by any player, but once purchased no one else can. This means the game is not just a scrum to hold onto temples, but grab the power tiles most conducive to your strategy. Some power tiles combine to form very potent combinations.There is very little randomness in the game, but when resolving a battle players choose a card that will deal some combination of strength (actually winning the battle), damage (which removes troops from play), and shields (which prevent the aforementioned damage). A common strategy when in a losing battle is to pick the card that does almost no strength but a great deal of damage. Sure, you will lose the battle, but you were going to lose anyways and no you did some damage to your opponent. However, your opponent may guess you will do this and play a card that helps protect his troops, but knows if his opponent goes all in, he may actually snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. FYI, both cards are chosen and then revealed simultaneously.Kemet will take a while to learn, and expect the first play through to go long. However, for those who like to ponder different strategies and don't like wargams that get bogged down, give Kemet a try.

It took a couple hours to understand all the rules, which there is a good amount. After understanding the rules, gameplay is pretty straightforward as each player only has one action per round. There is a lot of player interaction in this game which was what I was looking for! Set up can take 5-10 minutes as there is a lot of pieces in the game. Overall, a very fun game where you can destroy your friends in battle.