Cyclades: Legendary Edition v Kemet: Blood and Sand
Pete was incensed. “You’re saying that ‘The Mummy (Brendan Fraser)’ is better than ‘The Oddyssey’ (Christopher Nolan)? Pete’s a Drama grad. and a budding scriptwriter but, we all agree don’t we, he’s wrong. You might think ‘The Oddyssey’ is a worthy treatment of the epic Homeric poem but, admit it, when it comes to rewatching it, your internal moderator says “some other time” every time. And then Pete upped the ante. “That’s like saying Kemet is better than Cyclades”.
Whoahhhh? This sh*t just got real. There is only one way to resolve this- gum shields, gloves, and an octagon.
Laydeees and gentlemennn, please take your seats for this most anticipated of middleweight championship contests between…
in the blue corner, needing no introduction, from the Matagot publishing house, authored by French designers Jacques Bariot and Guillaume Montiage, published in 2012, weighing in at around £65 on Zatu, with a Board Games Quest winners belt and an estimated 25,000 copies sold, KemehhhhhhhhT
And in the red corner, now from publishers Open Sesame Games, authored by Frenchmen Ludovic Maublanc and multiple award winning designer Bruno Cathala, published in 2009, weighing in at around £55, with around 40,000 copies sold, winner of UK Games Expo Awards Best Board Game (Strategic) 2025 and a host of award nominations worldwide, the ‘Old Man of the Sea’, Cycladeeeeeees.
Ding, ding round 1: Box and storage.
Oh-my-(Egyptian) Gods- Kemet: Blood and Sand (hereafter referred to as Kemet) explodes out of its ‘Rise of the Gods’ gold inflected, black sarcophagus, a beautifully absurd testament to modern board game over-production. Boxes inside boxes, no doubt designed by the architects of the ancient pyramids themselves, reveal a dizzying labyrinth of more sturdy containers, plastic trays and inserts, all created to store the base game, its existing expansions and future content.
Meanwhile, Cyclades Ultimate Edition box lumbers into combat. It does what it is intended to do- hold all the content for the miniatures iteration of the Legendary Edition. The dynamic, vibrant, colourful and cartoony heroes and monsters artwork captures the spirit of the game within and invites you to get excited. But it just can’t compete with the Kemet container, which is box porn at its finest.
Both the base game boxes are decent. The Cyclades insert promises more but expects you to constantly lift the canopy to access the components as you need them, which is a bit irritating. And you paid extra for this!
The judges score round 1 to Kemet.
Ding, ding round 2: artwork and components.
Allow me to share an anecdotal memory. Games in the 80’s and 90’s were rather utilitarian affairs. Primarily for economic reasons, artwork, graphic design and component quality played second fiddle to game design. Matagot was one of the first publishers to pump up the volume on production values and immersion and we loved it. We played Kemet at our monthly meetings for three years straight. The new iterations build on this precedent.
Base game Kemet and Cyclades are both ‘mother-hogging’ table louts. Kemet boasts 10 sizeable and well sculpted miniature monsters, five plastic armies, superbly illustrated recessed player boards to hold markers in place, stackable 3D plastic pyramids and chunky power tiles. The ‘Rise of the Gods’ expansion God minis bring the ‘wow’ factor, but at a cost. However, Kemet loses its footing here, and takes an elbow to the chops. The artwork on the divine intervention cards is the definition of ‘meh’ and the colour palate used for the game board is a bit too ‘muddy’ for my liking.
The artwork on the Cyclades cards and components is consistent with the box art, clean and vibrant. Swirling waves leap off modular map tiles, offering the promise of an epic adventure into uncharted waters and undiscovered lands. The cards boast a robust linen finish. The graphic design, especially the iconography overhaul, immeasurably improves playability from v1. The base game comes in two flavours, meeples and standees for armies, monsters and heroes, which function adequately or sizeable, well sculpted plastic miniatures which look great. All in all, a satisfying production.
Cyclades takes round 2.
Ding, ding round 3: rules set and ease of learning.
Buoyed up by its second round victory, Cyclades charges out to take control of the centre of the octagon, brandishing a rulebook which garners cheers and boos in equal measure. There is a community of curmudgeonly geeks who appear to be incensed about the poorly written, badly translated and incomplete rules. To be fair, there are some fiddly rules that are easily missed and a lack of clarity in some instances.
However, for a game of medium complexity, the beautifully illustrated rule book is decent, delivering a sound explanation of the core game, structured on the sequence of play, enabling a ‘learn as you go’ teach. Many of my gaming pals are teachers and, no contest, when it comes to learning they are the most easily distracted, argumentative, obnoxious bunch of wastrels you’ll ever have the displeasure of explaining a game to (yes, I’m pointing at you, Rick) and we managed to get going in about 20 minutes, without any mouths being smacked.
Anyway, there’s always Google AI to deliver a verdict on those tempestuous, table flipping rules disputes, while tracking your whereabouts and recording your darkest thoughts. And what no-one disagrees with is that this rule set is a titanic (snigger) improvement on Cyclades First Edition,
There is a more pernicious problem with the Kemet rule book- rules bloat. The Kemet rules set is a victim of its past. In an effort to balance gameplay the designers have included rules and patches from various defunct expansions to the core rule set and in doing so have added a splash of undue complexity. This case in point is Kemet’s biggest sin - not being able to settle on a win condition. The current iteration simply substitutes one problem for a worse problem. The original win conditions were decisive and produced timely endings. But a noisy minority of players were unhappy because the last player in the round won more often than not. True. But to put yourself in this position required strategic and tactical nouse. Now, sometimes, the end game can turn into a grinding, ‘bash the leader’, battle of attrition. But hey, don't forget, you buy the game, you choose the rules.
And finally, the columns of small text, illustrated by squint inducing thumbnail images, do not enhance the experience. Rather, I get the distinct impression that the publishers decided to save money by cramming a rhino into a shoe cupboard.
The judges score round three to Cyclades. Kemet has to come out kicking to have any chance in the championship rounds.
Ding, ding round 4: the mechanics and gameplay.
By the release of the Monuments expansion in 2016, Cyclades version 1 had become a lumbering, rickety old junk heap, labouring under the weight of a series of makeshift add-ons and rules patch-ups that ultimately failed to create a sufficiently energetic game experience. But rather than leaving it to rust in peace, Bruno and Ludovic grabbed a big bag of spanners, gave it a ‘Chitty Chitty Bang Bang’ style overhaul and delivered the leanest and meanest version of Cyclades yet.
Cyclades is now all that it was meant to be. Easy to play but challenging to master. The tuned up competitive outbid- displacement auction system (à la Phillipe Keyaerts’ EVO) at the heart of the Cyclades experience, encourages a soupçon of´take that’ and a smidgen of unseemly banter, the outcomes of which play out on the map. The end game mechanics are clear and the economic and battle resolution systems are uncomplicated, leaving players to focus on what’s important- how to best lever the resources available to reach the 3 metropolies win condition.
Yet, despite its limitations, Kemet punches harder. As with Cyclades, It’s relatively easy to play- on your turn, choose an action, do a thing. But there are a lot of cogs in this machine and ‘grokking’ it will require trial, error and time. And if you are a sheep amongst wolves you are likely to find yourself in the Egyptian underworld (Duat, if you want to know) from the word go, where Osiris will force you to watch endless re-runs of Tom Cruise’s ‘The Mummy’ as punishment. I don’t think this is a big problem. Well, the endless ‘Mummy’ re-runs would be, but what I mean is, you wouldn’t argue Chess was a crap game because more experienced players are likely to ‘floor’ you first time out. Just dust yourself off and do better next time.
Kemet’s one-two punch is irresistible. There are an incalculable number of ways to win (and lose) Kemet. The tile market is incredibly diverse (with expansions there are 7 tile sets with more on the way) and finding those victory grabbing combos will engage both your logical and creative faculties. And the victory conditions compel players to attack each other repeatedly, ensuring a highly dynamic, somewhat chaotic gaming experience. Like life, embrace the chaos!
Kemet takes round 4
Ding ding round 5: the fun factor.
Tied coming in to the final round, both games now face their toughest challenge- the ‘fun’ test. Fun is the least we expect when we gather to play and, in this regard, neither game disappoints.
For me, theme is a strong contributor to the fun quotient. And thematically speaking, Cyclades is truly outstanding. For around three hours participants are gently steeped in Ancient Greece, sailing among the eternal islands of the Aegean Sea, bidding for the favours of the Greek Gods, fighting alongside a panoply of familiar (and unfamiliar) heroes of legend and conjuring up infamous mythical monsters to do your bidding. Yet Kemet is no slouch when it comes to marrying theme with sound game mechanics. For a similar amount of time the Egyptian deities will grant you powers to conjure a wide variety of magical, undead creatures from the dark, fertile soil of the Nile, to lead your armies into battle.
The Cyclades bidding phase and the competition for the best power tiles in Kemet means that the knives are out from the beginning. As armies (and navies in Cyclades) become more powerful and begin to manoeuvre around the maps the competition intensifies and nerves begin to shred. By the mid to end games the neighbours are banging on the door as whoops, cheers and rowdy behaviour emanating from my house trouble the Richter scale. This is my kind of fun. More so where Kemet is concerned because bloody carnage is king.
And for my money, this is the fine margin that separates Kemet from Cyclades. Both are 10s-but Kemet just slightly more.
Kemet steals round 5.
Laydeees and gentlemennn, after 5 glorious rounds of make-believe violence, and by the narrowest of margins, I give you the new middleweight champion of … well, my kitchen: KemehhhhhhhhT.
Aside: some of you might think that this should be a three way bout to include Inis but Kemet kicked that Irish pretender in the metaphorical nuts years ago and despite making a noisy comeback recently with a Legendary Edition, it ended up with two black eyes and a dicky knee. Sound familiar?
