Kemet: Blood and Sand

Next frontier: Egyptian enlightenment. The original Kemet had only brushed past me; in Crete I had watched half a game, once, and it had not moved me much. With all the glowing talk about Blood & Sand and so many positive reviews, I bought it to serve to the group instead of another round of Ankh, which had already gone down well. Great idea. Almost poetic, if you ignore the result.

In my first encounter with it, the game seemed decided by the setup. Very early on, white magic gave the impression that it was handing out spoon sweets to everyone else, while we simply sat around waiting for official confirmation. I did not feel that our decisions meaningfully changed the direction of the contest; we were more or less watching a foretold outcome unfold.

And that is the kind of interaction that tires me out: not hard conflict in itself, but the suspicion that balance is supposed to emerge because “the table” will fix it. We played for another hour or two, with everyone else trying to stand up to whatever white magic was producing, and I never felt any appetite for a comeback or a second exploration emerge. Just the feeling that the game was asking the group to patch something I would rather it had handled itself.

Obviously, one game is not conclusive proof that Kemet: Blood and Sand is broken. It is, however, more than enough to trigger my personal “Danny Glover effect”: I am too old for this shit. I no longer have either the appetite or the patience for games that leave balance as a group assignment. Hard pass. Lang God, take the football club.