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

£13.495£26.99Clearance
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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. Partial build pyramids are placed in 2 districts of your city. The pyramid tops must match the power tiles used in the game. Any pyramid on the board must have a coloured top, the tip pointing down. So, choose wisely. 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. Since the Kemet: Blood and Sand board game is a game with troops on the board, everyone wants to know what those troops are like! Let me put your mind at ease; this game has really great table presence with its miniatures. Despite the small size of the normal units, there is a surprising amount of detail in the sculpts that would allow them to take well to those miniature paints that you’ve been sitting on.

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. Let the battles begin. Planning is essential. Ensure your chances of winning increases with divine cards, power tiles and creatures. Selecting a battle card is not easy but giving up a second card is a downer giving less choice in the next battle. Even worse you could win but lose all your troops and the area you want to control. At Night Your Troops Can Rest…

What More You Could Want

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

The areas on the mainboard are clearly defined and look okay. The temple and city areas are easily identifiable. Any iconography on the board clearly shows your reward or option when controlled. 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. 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. 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?

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.

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. I like the look of that power tile.” Put your token on the ‘Buy A Power Tile’ space. You can buy a power tile up to the level of that coloured to Pyramid but it will cost you. 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.

Have We Kemet Before?

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.

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. Combat is triggered by moving troops into a region that contains opponent pieces. Fighting is mandatory and tense. Strength is determined by the number of soldiers each player has in the region, any applicable power tiles, any applicable Divine Intervention cards—little bonus cards that for the most part can be played during your turn or during combat—and each player’s chosen battle card. The Move action is one of the most important, because that is the action that can trigger battles with your opponents. Troops belonging to separate players cannot exist in the same Zone; if they ever do, a Battle takes place. Kemet: Blood and Sand doesn’t have any combat dice. Instead, players will play Battle a Battle Card and augment it with Divine Intervention Cards.

Wrap Up (Cos, like, mummies, they’re wrapped up. It’s a joke.)

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! The most attention-grabbing powerups are the various creatures, which add a mythical beast—or, you know, an elephant—to your army. These are represented on the map by big, chunky minifigures. From a sculpting point of view, the scorpion is the best one. We can all agree. That’s why it’s on the box art. They knew. They knew. 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 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:

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