Kemet

This is the 2012 original, not the Blood and Sand remaster everyone points newer players toward now, and I want to be upfront about that because a fair number of the opinions floating around this game are actually about the improved version. I bought mine secondhand before I knew there was a difference worth caring about.

It’s a euro-ameritrash hybrid, tech trees and action points and victory point scoring sitting right next to a pile of plastic miniatures and direct confrontation. You’re teleporting armies across the map to your temples rather than marching them, which speeds the game up but also strips out almost all of the tactical movement decisions a “dudes on a map” game usually hangs its hat on. People call it fight in a phone booth for a reason, there isn’t much room to maneuver once you’re actually swinging at someone, it’s mostly a straight-in commitment once the battle’s declared. I found that frustrating the first couple plays. It grew on me once I stopped expecting it to be a positional wargame and started treating it as a tighter, faster combat puzzle instead.

Where the teaching gets easier is the tech tree, it gives new players a clear track to follow even before they understand the map, which I’ve leaned on more than once introducing this to someone new to the genre. Player count matters a lot though. I’ve had a flat two player game that felt like it was missing something, and the same box come alive at four or five with real triangulated pressure and alliances shifting turn to turn. If you’ve only got two regular players, this probably isn’t the one, and I wouldn’t have kept my copy if that was my only table.

Decent game, showing its age. I’d steer a friend toward the newer edition before I’d steer them here.