Matagot SARL | Kemet - Blood and Sand | Board Game | Ages 12+ | 2 to 5 Players | 90 to 120 Minutes Playing Time

Product Information

During the night, the temples are a safe haven and could gain you fame. The price to pay is sacrificing your troops. Gain prayer points, divine cards and resurrecting troops to aid you the next day but there is always a cost. Spend your veteran tokens wisely or you will lose them. The ruby power tiles are geared towards troop battles and their movement. Sapphire is about recruiting troops and defence. The diamond set is for prayer points, divine intervention cards and pyramids. Finally, onyx is a mixture and variation of the other power tile sets. Locate the creatures, divine fame point tokens and special battle cards. Place them with their power tile. I Am A God, What Do I Need?

A foul creature is beside you, increasing the odds of victory. You can see the enemy in the distance. Will your God leave you here to guard the city's pyramids? Maybe teleport you across the land to one of the distant temples? Make you march to the nearest city and take control? The Battle Starts… Maybe that’s forgivable if the gameplay is premium. Kemet: Blood and Sand is a very tightly designed game, and definitely one that promotes interaction and combat. I love how winning a battle is distinct from winning or losing troops, and the bluffing of the card-battle system always led to deliciously difficult decisions. For new players, revealing the 48 power tiles right from the start is overwhelming, but most are not immediately accessible, and several are repeated. By the end of the first game, we had those down without a problem. It always felt like you had several things you wanted to do and not enough time to be doing them, in a good way – decisions need to have tension to be interesting. All of these changes are for the best, and two are worth looking into at length. Count ‘Em Up The score board at the end of a game.

Count ‘Em Up

The first thing you notice is the miniatures. The creatures are outstanding, beautifully designed and detailed. I wish I had the time and the patience to paint them. I am running out of prayer points.” Move your token to the prayer symbols and gain 2 prayer points. Divine intervention cards and power tiles with a day symbol are benefits for that phase in the game. Overall, the aesthetics of the Kemet: Blood and Sand board game work really well and evoke that ancient Egyptian feeling that you’d expect. The Battle cards have a very clean and clear look with their iconography. The Divine Intervention cards are the same way, although those almost feel a little too basic for my tastes.

The publisher of Kemet and Kemet: Blood and Sand is Matagot, which has previously released titles such as co-op board game Captain Sonar, as well as the spiritual prequel and sequel to Kemet, Cyclades and Inis. Together, the three individual games form an unofficial ‘legendary’ trilogy. Victory points were scored by winning battles, claiming pyramids and temples, performing sacrifices, and gaining access to certain magical powers. Once a player gathered between eight to ten victory points - depending on the total number of people playing - they were declared the winner.

Have We Kemet Before?

Kemet was designed by Jacques Bariot - co-creator of party board game Give Me Five - and Guillaume Montiage. The two also worked together on the similarly Egyptian-themed game Nefertiti, which has players finding beautiful gifts to honour the queen and pharaoh’s wedding anniversary. This is kind of game the EOG loves: great production, relatively easy rules but lots of options for strategy, and a fantastic theme just dripping with atmosphere. One thing I find slightly annoying, however, is the resolutely multilingual nature of the game. While I realise Matagot is saving considerable money by creating one game in six languages and without a word of text on any of the cards or tiles, it can also be a bit frustrating when there is such a variety of powers and special effects on offer. Also the English rules translation could be better. Hopefully this rules summary (which includes information from the FAQ) and reference fixes those small problems and makes the game faster and easier to play. Also, if you’re into the Egyptian theme or wargames, you’ll find a lot to like here. That goes for anybody who enjoys games like Risk or Smallworld, but who want a some more crunchiness to sink their teeth into. The game itself is mildly complex due to all of the options that you have, and the action lists seem quite lengthy. I’d also say that in today’s age of playing many board games once and putting them up on the shelf, you’d want to play this one a few times to really get the feel of its breadth. Mood

Once Night hits, players go through an extensive series of ‘cleanup’ steps, in which they can gain additional Fame Points (FP), Divine Intervention cards, Prayer Points, and more. The combat system is wonderful. Each player starts the game with the same set of eight battle cards, choosing one to use and one to set aside at the beginning of each fight. The cards, which are the same for all players, include some amount of a strength bonus, a damage modifier, a self-damage modifier, and a defense modifier. Strength wins you the fight, damage removes enemy troops, self-damage removes your own troops, and defense protects your troops from enemy damage. Your battle cards.Troops don’t automatically get removed from the board in Kemet combat. It may just be that they retreat. One of the strategic nuances in Kemet, as both aggressor and defender, is figuring out your goal. Do you want to prioritize winning the fight and taking/holding the territory, or are you more interested in keeping your troops around to fight for the same scrap of land again? Are you trying to win or are you trying to thin out the opponent’s ranks, regardless of outcome? Do you want to have the space when the dust settles, or do you just want the other player not to? Different cards serve different goals. Of course, there are a lot more details to each of the actions and phases of the game, but in a nutshell this is a very tight wargame that rewards risk-taking. There are going to be a lot of battles going on! Staking OurC.L.A.I.M. on Kemet: Blood and Sand! Components A foul creature is beside you, increasing the odds of victory. You can see the enemy in the distance. Will your God leave you here to guard the city’s pyramids? Maybe teleport you across the land to one of the distant temples? Make you march to the nearest city and take control? The Battle Starts… One action is taken each turn by the players, but there are restrictions. You must take a least 1 action on each of the 3 levels during the day phase. How Can I Be A Famous God With So Few Points? On top of the adjustments to gameplay, several changes have been made to update Kemet’s appearance, adding a new tile colour - onyx - alongside new illustrations and miniatures for each tribe and creature. Cities have been given a new coat of paint to reflect the god with which they’re associated.

The cities available on the mainboard are determined by the number of players. For 2 to 3 players, only use the area on the east side of the Nile. Sandstorms cover the uninhabitable cities. A God will need their player board and matching-coloured pieces. The actions tokens and prayer markers are placed on their board. Find an empty city and place your statue token at the entrance. Defend your city with 10 troops and keep your 8 battle cards close to you, they will be needed soon. So brush up on your hieroglyphics because it’s time to dive into Kemet: Blood and Sand! Kemet: Blood and Sand Gameplay Kemet: Blood and Sand is played over a series of Rounds, each of which consist of a Day and Night Phase. During the Day, players are taking a total of 5 actions that can consist of the following: On each turn—early game rounds include five turns for each player, though that can change—you choose and execute one (1) of several actions on your player board. These include moving, praying, recruiting, purchasing power up tiles, and constructing a stage of your pyramid. That’s it. Like I said, it’s much more approachable than it looks. A player board.

Veteran Tokens

Once you internalize a few small pieces of rule grit, though, it’s pretty straightforward. I’d even say it’s dumb. Gloriously dumb. A tribute to the possibilities of Dumb. Kemet: Blood and Sand has tension in droves! The map is only so large and all of it feels decently accessible at any point in the game. So the threat of warfare is immediate and constant. There’s no escaping it! Kemet is a game about Egyptian gods battling each other using human troops and mythical monsters, so players who are averse to other religions should stay away. There is one Power Tile with an underdressed female, and several pieces of art show shirtless men. Of course, the game is also depicting violence on a grand scale. Review