Imhotep, designed by Phil Walker-Harding, of Barenpark and Archaeology fame, puts you into the role of rival master-builders competing for the favour of the pharaoh in ancient Egypt. One of the key factors in Imhotep is the cards, and they are sometimes over looked, we have already talked about how a player can quickly get a number of statue cards, but there are the blue market cards that generally allow you to make special moves that over come some of the strategic cost of having only one action per turn. Then there are the market cards, which give you either an in-game advantage or bonuses at the end of play for meeting particular criteria. There are four different colors of stones and each player selects a color and takes all of the stones and the sled of the appropriate color into their possession. All of the information is public, so it’s easy to see what your opponents are doing and how their scoring is going.

There is rarely a run-away winner in Imhotep and it is very amusing to leap over your opponent on the tracker when you have fulfilled the criteria on a card purchased at the market.Gain prestige by adapting to the preferences of your fickle admirers, and of course, by adding your own artistic flair while completing your glass masterpiece in Sagrada. Then the boat tiles are arranged by size and placed close by along with the boat cards which are shuffled and placed facedown on the table. Building further on the mechanics that made the original game so fast-paced and competitive, Imhotep: The Duel focuses the rivalry down to two opponents leading to a tight, ruthless head-to-head game for both players. You can move a ship to a site of your choosing, provided that the ship has at least the minimum number of required stones aboard (indicated on the bow of the ship token). Designed by Phil Walker-Harding who you might know from the very popular game Sushi Go (that I still really enjoy).

The duel game feels a bit more streamlined, as you’d expect from the benefit of a few years of seeing the critical and audience reception of Imhotep. Related Posted in review Tagged card game, card games, competitive, competitive game, competitive games, imhotep, kosmos, modular game, stacking games, tabletop, tabletop game, tabletop games, take that, thames and kosmos Bookmark the permalink. On the B side, as soon as a player places 3 stones of their color on the board, they create a small obelisk that scores points.If you love the original Imhotep, but are looking for a better two player option, check out Imhotep: The Duel; a version of the game designed just for two players! The game has a delightful balance of strategic planning of where to place your own cubes mixed with some delightful tension on when to move ships (sometimes/oftentimes ships that don’t even have your own cube on them! Jonathan Franklin (1 play): I played one game on the all A sides, so feel it is a bit unfair to judge the game. This game is exactly what I look for in a dedicated 2-player title: quick setup/teardown, high replay value, “thinky filler” status, and a playtime that clocks in at around 30-40 minutes which enables multiple plays in one evening if desired.

If you can’t, well, it’s still 4 points per group, it’s just that the groups are becoming rapidly less valuable on a per-tile basis. A player can gain up to three new stones from the quarry and place them on his sled, he can never have more than five stones on the sled. Suddenly what you used as a strategy in the first game might be a suboptimal approach in the second game because it scores very differently now. It’s not going to feel quite as hateful as, say, 7 Wonders: Duel, but it’s definitely not going to feel awesome all the time. These, though, I think just open up some variable plays; they don’t add too many new strategic options.At end of game score based on player count and relative height of obelisks - but an obelisk of height 0 always scores 0. Follow the greatest architect from Ancient Egypt, Imhotep, the engineer responsible for the first pyramid of Ancient Egypt. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Starting with the figure closest to the boat, take the token furthest from the board (at the end of the boat) and give it to the player who owns that figure. A fair number of those are negative points (or, at least, the Pyramids are; it makes sense, since Egypt is really not where you would want to skimp on pyramids).