LogFAQs > #966440212

34. Kemet

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/20551/shogun

Category: Player vs player
Key mechanics: Area control, player combat, troops on a map, tableau-building
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 5
Game length: 120-180 minutes
First played: 2017
Experience: 8-12 plays with 2-5 players

Kemet is an Egyptian-themed combat game. You raise your pyramids, marshal troops, leverage your pyramids to buy technology cards to improve your combat or economy, and then go try to win battles. Play alternates between a night cleanup phase and a day phase, where each player takes five actions, only two of which can be marching orders. Temporary VP can be awarded for controlling temples or high-level pyramids; permanent VP are awarded for successful attacking or holding multiple temples at the end of the day phase. The game ends if someone has eight or ten VP at the end of a day phase.

Probably the best part about Kemet is that it's a combat game where sure, it's good to hold territory, but you are really incentivized to get out there and fight, as opposed to solely turtling up - essentially, you're going to lose territory, so you might as well score some permanent VP while doing it, and then get that territory back! Ties go to the attacker in the simultaneous-card-reveal system combat system.

The tricky thing of course is that it isn't that trivial to win those VP - your troop size plus card value still needs to tie or exceed the total value of your opponent's troop size plus card value - but critically, your troops need to survive the battle. Your tech tiles and combat cards have blood and shield symbols, which will kill opposing units or save your own, respectively. If you win a battle but your troop has been annihilated and no one remains to claim the territory, no VP for you. This leads into a push/pull relationship between how much you should commit to making sure you win the combat, versus how much you need to shield your troop from retaliation of bleeding.

Kemet's tech tree, to which I've alluded, feels more eurogame-y and pretty clever. While each player starts off symmetrically in terms of powers, the pyramids you choose to upgrade will give you access to buying power tiles in the open market. Every tile is available from the outset of the game, and there are three pyramid types roughly corresponding to three different types of skills - white for economy, blue for defense, and red for offense. Some of the tiles have printed VP, and some of them have extra actions, and the coolest of them have monsters that you can add to buff one of your troops. Each player's set of actions will thus vary, creating asymmetry in who is more dangerous to attack and who is more dangerous when attacking.

One area where Kemet could be optimized (and indeed, in the 1.5 rerelease, is) is its turn order mechanism. I love decoupling turn order from seating order; however, the player in last place gets to determine the entire order. The updated, superior version has players choose in order of fewest VP where they specifically want to go, but not where everyone else goes in the turn order.

My biggest issue with my plays of Kemet is that I'm always teaching it, and people never seem to internalize the rules, and thus it takes forever. The game should actually zip along, and it does when there's no combat or people aren't trying to buy power tiles. But when that does happen, there's often a lot of hemming and hawing and trying to remember what the tiles do or how combat works. The issue with the tiles is somewhat inherent to the game, but the issue with combat rules is more group-dependent. But I'm still taking it into account and dropping the game a tad for that.

I don't play a ton of direct combat games, and certainly don't rank them too highly. But this is unique and fun and not too turtle-y and I really appreciate that.