Kemet: Blood and Sand and the Power Trays That Sold Me on a Rebuy

Never touched the original Kemet, so I came at Blood and Sand with no baggage and no nostalgia riding on it either way, just a big Egyptian-themed war game with a reputation to live up to. Verdict is it mostly does, this is dudes-on-a-map area control with actual teeth, an asymmetric power tree per faction, and combat that makes you feel dangerously exposed the second you commit troops somewhere you can’t back up.

The dim sum style power tile trays are the detail that stuck with me most, little wooden trays that hold your power cards face up so you can see everything you’ve bought without shuffling through a hand, and I know that sounds minor but it changed how I actually play, way less fiddling and way more looking at the board. Box itself is genuinely too big for what’s inside though, more than one person online has said the same thing, trays and all the storage inserts are excellent once packed but getting there took some real Tetris the first time.

Minis are good, not incredible, but different molds per faction and the monster miniatures especially are a nice step up in scale from the base troops. I ended up giving the core troop minis a quick wash and painting the monsters properly one weekend, first time I’d bothered painting anything in this hobby in a while, which tells you something about how much the components pulled me in. Rulebook is the weak point across the board it seems, mine included, combat resolution took a couple of rounds to fully click even after a careful first read.

If you’ve played the original Kemet you’ll know most of what to expect here, streamlined rules and a fourth power color added in. Coming in blind like I did, it’s just a genuinely great, genuinely mean strategy game that rewards aggression more than patience.