LogFAQs > #898150396

14. Kemet
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/127023/kemet

Genre/mechanics: Area control, dudes on a map, player combat, expandable player powers, action selection
Rules complexity: 7/10
Game length: 90-150 minutes
Player count: 2-5
Experience: 4-5 games with 2, 4 players
First played: 2017

Kemet is an area control game set in Europe. You vie for victory points by controlling temples and pyramids, purchasing them, or (most commonly) winning offensive battles. Your action selection - marshalling troops, marching, gaining currency, increasing your pyramid levels, or purchasing technology to buff yourself - is done using a personal player mat, like a solo worker placement. You can only win by having the threshold number of VP at the end of the day, not during the day.

Enjoyment - I was at a game store for a different tournament, and they awarded me $50 in store credit. Unable to find another game worthy, I bought Kemet. I immediately played it a few times, let it lie for a while, and recently managed to bring it back to the table. Perhaps weirdly for a game like this, I don't have a lot of crazy war stories.

Design - There's so much I like about Kemet, and a lot of it starts with its simplicity. The rules wind up taking quite a while to explain, but they all make sense. So just hold tight while I run through a long list of the cool design features...

* The tiered action selection system is very clever - you can turtle for a round, but you'll still need to spend an action either moving troops or marshalling them. Similarly, you need to plan your marches - you're only getting two, tops.

* With its action selection system and its "tableau-building" to increase your powers, Kemet has some eurogame-esque qualities. But you don't need to push There's only one currency spent on troops, raising pyramids, or buying tech, and that's the prayer points (which night phases give you automatically, and which you can spend an action to recharge).

* A big part of what makes Kemet so enjoyable is its tech tree. There are forty-eight different tech tiles you can purchase using the prayer points - four per tier in each color - but you can only get them if your pyramid tree. White makes you more efficient with prayer points; Red makes you a more dangerous attacker; and Blue increases your troop capacity to make you a stouter defender. Also - you can get animals to join your troops, and their minis are fucking fantastic.

* Each player starts the game with six combat cards, which provide battle strength but also both deal and prevent casualties. You spend one per battle and burn one, so you cycle through them after three battles. It's a neat hand management mini-game, and it's entirely luck-independent (aside the appropriately named "Divine Intervention" cards).

* Speaking of which, the game is designed to encourage attacking, and impersonally, too. For your move action, you're not bound to where your troops are - you can pay two prayer points to teleport your troop into any territory with an obelisk symbol, including any temple. Controlling temples is worth victory points, so battles can happen there a lot. Meanwhile, while you can gain control of an opponent's pyramid, it's harder to access (without special tech) and easier for them to expel you from there (because they only need to marshal their troops back).

* Which gets kind of to the core of the matter - for a combat game where you can kill opponents' troops, Kemet is not particularly punishing. Attacking people is by far the best way to get VP, so you don't really take it personally if someone comes after you (even if there's politicking). Meanwhile, falling to last place in VPs at the end of a day at the very least allows you to dictate turn order - and playing last can be a really big advantage.
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yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness