Kemet

Kemet Deep Dive

What the Community Thinks About Kemet

BoardGameCo, unboxing the Kemet Big Box, called the rules overhead surprisingly easy to get into and remembered a time when Kemet, Cyclades, and Inis all sat together in their top 20 games of all time. They explained that Kemet has since slipped to their top 100 because Blood Rage arrived with a similar arc, asking players to build up an asymmetric faction through drafted or purchased powers, and pulled some of the spotlight away, though renewed interest in Kemet followed as its power tile sets multiplied through new expansions.

BoardGameBollocks took a far stronger stance, naming Kemet one of the best games ever made and saying it had sat in the channel's top ten of its top 100 board games since the channel began, then turning sharply on the Blood in the Sand second edition, which the hosts said muted the artwork into pastel colors, made the board look worse, and shrank the components. The Secret Cabal Gaming Podcast called Kemet a personal favorite and the game used to get comfortable with confrontational play, praising how completely it blends Euro-style resource management with a territory-control war game underneath.

Not every channel focused purely on praise. Tim Chuon, who placed Kemet fifth on a personal top list, described a love-hate relationship with the power tile market, since players routinely wait until their own turn to study the available tiles rather than planning ahead, slowing the table down, even while praising the customization those same tiles unlock. Board Game Critique, weighing Kemet against several other area-control designs, praised its pyramid-based action selection and near-infinite power tile combinations while noting that the action selection itself is not intuitive for new players.

Core Mechanics That Define Kemet

Pyramid Action Selection and the Power Tile Market

Board Game Critique described how Kemet splits resources into three pyramid colors: white for economy and prayer generation, red for combat and movement, and blue for defense and control. Each round, players place five action tokens across their pyramid to pray for points, recruit troops, move, raise a pyramid level, or buy a power tile, and turn order for the next round goes to whoever holds the fewest victory points. Tim Chuon added that raising a pyramid to its top level unlocks that color's strongest tiles and grants a victory point, but it also paints a target on that pyramid, since any player who seizes it locks the previous owner out of those abilities.

Card-Based Combat Without Dice

Board Game Critique emphasized that combat in Kemet has no dice: battles are resolved by playing battle cards face down and comparing the total of card value, troop strength, and power tile bonuses, which lets experienced players calculate best- and worst-case outcomes before attacking. Tim Chuon described an added layer on top of that exchange, where one card is revealed face up and another face down, and a mechanic called black blood guarantees a fixed number of troop losses on the losing side regardless of the math. The Secret Cabal Gaming Podcast noted that a side deck of cards can further adjust how a given fight plays out.

The Kemet Experience

Constant Low-Intensity Conflict

The Secret Cabal Gaming Podcast explained that permanent victory points come only from winning as the attacker, and because holding a temple requires keeping it for a full round, sessions tend to fill with small skirmishes punctuated by a handful of decisive battles, with the player who lays low while others fight often coming back late to claim the win once the table turns on whoever looks closest to victory. Board Game Critique agreed that the design mechanically pushes constant aggression, since defending never grants permanent points, and described experienced sessions wrapping up quickly once players know what they are doing.

An Egyptian Theme Brought to Life

BoardGameGeek was drawn to the way Kemet uses D4 dice as literal stand-ins for its pyramids, doing double duty as both a component and a piece of theme, and found the Egyptian setting visually appealing even before playing it. The Secret Cabal Gaming Podcast liked that Kemet plays like a fantasy mashup layered onto an ancient Egyptian setting, with each player representing a god who summons monsters and troops. Board Game Critique called the miniatures well sculpted and the board visually appealing, judging overall production quality high.

What Makes Kemet Stand Out

Deep Army Customization

Tim Chuon praised the sheer number of power tiles on offer and the way each color specializes in a different strength, so buying a mix of blue defensive tiles, red aggressive tiles, and tiles that add creatures like a cobra, a war elephant, or a scorpion lets an army take shape differently every game. Board Game Critique made a similar point, noting that no player can purchase the same power tile twice in a single game, so every player ends up building a genuinely unique engine session to session.

Multiple Paths to Victory

BoardGameGeek highlighted that Kemet offers multiple ways to earn victory points rather than a single obvious track. The Secret Cabal Gaming Podcast went further, pointing out that beyond winning battles as the attacker, players can score by controlling temples or by acquiring particular powers, and that some of those points are only temporary, which keeps everyone watching several routes to the win rather than one clear leader to gang up on.

Potential Drawbacks

A Learning Curve That Rewards Patience

Board Game Critique called Kemet's action selection non-intuitive for newcomers and recommended teaching with a simplified set of power tiles for a first game rather than the full spread. BoardGameCo agreed the base rules are manageable on their own, but said the interactions between individual power tiles carry enough nuance that groups often end up consulting an FAQ to sort them out.

Market Downtime and a Divisive Second Edition

Tim Chuon found that the market phase can drag whenever players wait until their own turn to plan a purchase instead of thinking ahead, leaving the table to sit through every color and level being weighed from scratch. BoardGameBollocks reserved its sharpest criticism for the Blood in the Sand second edition, arguing that the publisher muted the artwork into pastel colors, made the board look worse, shrank the components down, and left out expansion content that had shipped with the original edition.

If You Enjoy Kemet

• Blood Rage follows a similar arc to Kemet according to BoardGameCo, since both ask players to build up an asymmetric faction through the powers they acquire, whether that means drafted cards in Blood Rage or purchased power tiles in Kemet.
• Cyclades was called a prequel of sorts to Kemet by a viewer featured on Watch It Played, and BoardGameCo has long grouped the two together among the games ranked highest on the channel.
• Inis sits alongside Kemet and Cyclades in BoardGameCo's personal rankings, though the channel considers Inis the more unique of the group.
• Cichlides shares miniatures with Kemet through an official crossover shown on Watch It Played, where creature cards let Kemet's monsters appear in Cichlides and power tiles bring Cichlides creatures back into Kemet.