Yesterday Jeff, Debbie and I got together to play some games!

Kemet was going to be one of those games, but it wasn’t guaranteed that Cry Havoc would make it in time. I knew it was in the postal system making its way to me, and it was due to arrive.

Luckily it arrived an hour before we were due to meet up and play some games. So as I was popping cardboard chits, I had the Watched It Play video on for the rules. 

We started our gaming off by playing Kemet.

I liked Kemet.

I started off with red and blue pyramids, with my red pyramid on level 2. I was going full on aggression with a hint of defence. 

Within two actions I had the red snake god/monster supporting my one of my troops. By the end of the turn I had also got the Delta temple, while Jeff had grabbed a temple, and Debbie had the Sanctuary of All Gods. 

I got the scarab beatle as my other god/monster, grabbed a second temple, and was allowed to keep the two temples unchallenged for about three days! I bought a tile that allowed me to have a troop size of seven instead of five.

Jeff did steal my level 4 red pyramid, that slowed me down a little as I tried unsuccessfully to get it back, and ended up recruiting seven units, and placing the scarab beetle on that space to win it back.

I liked the combat, the choosing a card to play and one to discard mechanism is hard. You don’t want to throw any of the cards away. But you have to make that decision. Then you have to decide if you are going to boost the attack with a divine intervention card or two. Assuming that is you have any you could play. 

I like the aggressive nature of the game. You can’t hide, the clock is ticking from the moment the game starts. 

I like that initial decision of what your starting pyramids will be, it determines the style of playing/tactic you will be using for the rest of the game. 

The pyramids level determining what level of power tile you can get is a great idea. And a nice way to slow down the arms race. Otherwise everyone would just jump in and buy uber powerful cards at the start. 

Having the three coloured power tiles focusing on the three tactical paths is nice. Naturally I was going for aggressive red tiles, and the odd blue defensive tile.

I like that taking a temple is like saying “come on if you think you’re hard enough!” As is taking a pyramid up to the max level of four. Naturally Jeff in our game did in deed think that about my red pyramid!

Yeah I’ll be playing this again.

Right next up, Cry Havoc.

Yes another aggressive area control game!! This one is one of the hottest games at the moment.

I have to admit when Portal Games announced this game nearly a year ago, it didn’t grab me. In fact I thought “nah” not interested. 

But then I saw the Watched It Played video of Rodney playing against his son “Lucky” Luke. “Wow that looks amazing and fun” I thought. The combat mechanism looked interesting and full of interesting decisions, along with being unique.

In our play of the game there were a couple of misplays. We missed how you got terrain cards into your hand. We thought you could only draw from your own draw deck with the draw card action. And we were puzzled how you got those cards into your deck. 

Then it wasn’t entirely clear what happened with scoring of prisoners, victories for the person taking on the role of the trogs in a battle. And I still need to clear that up by looking on the bgg forums.

We were no way playing to the strengths of our factions. But that comes with experience.

This didn’t seem as aggressive as Kemet. There wasn’t as much player vs player battles, but more taking on the local trogs. The player vs player happened more towards the last couple of rounds.

Jeff did run away with the points, and cut out a round. So instead of five rounds we had four. 

The asynchronous factions is nice. But you really need workout what your faction is good at before the game starts, and play to its strengths.

The manual could be clearer on the trogs in battle in a two/three player game. 

Being able to take prisoners is awesome. Then getting victory points for them before the owning faction gets a chance to buy them back. Genius. It’s like hostage taking and holding them for ransom. 

Multi use cards. What else can I say. It’s a mechanic I like. 

I like this, some nice decisions to make, a nice game that invites you to play again just to master the faction you are playing.

A nice “aggressive” afternoon of gaming. Saturdays should be spent like this.