Imhotep The Duel — Thames and Kosmos — Review

Publisher: Thames and Kosmos

Designer: Phil Walker-Harding

Artist: Miguel Coimbra, Michaela Kienle, Claus Stephan

Game Type: Set Collection Worker Placement Area Majority / Influence

Initial Year of Release: 2018

Age Range: 10+

Expected Playtime: 30 Mins

Number of Players: 2 Players

Theme and What is it?

“In this game, players take on the roles of Nefertiti and Akhenaten, one of Egypt’s most famous royal couples. Game pieces must be cleverly placed so that players can unload the most valuable tiles from the six boats. While this is happening, each player builds their own four monuments in order to gain as many fame points as possible.”

Imhotep the Duel at its core is a worker placement, set collecting game but with tactical elements… Lets break that down a little bit.

Gameplay Mechanics

This game honestly couldn’t be simpler. To set up the game you place the main board in between both players and align the ship tokens into the slots around the board. The shuffle and place all of the square tokens face down near the board. The randomly fill each of the boats with tokens and stack 3 random tokens in the reserve in the corner of the board.

Each player then takes the player boards and places them in a row in front of them as per the guidance in the rule book. There are two sides to the tiles and they are different and cant be mixed and matched.

Each player then takes their meeples and you are ready to start.

In turn order each player can take one of several actions. Placing a worker, emptying a boat (if there are at least 2 workers in the row facing the boat you wish to empty) and using special action tokens.

Through these action’s players are trying to accumulate tokens to go around their player board to accrue the most points by the end of the game.

It honestly couldn’t be simpler.

Initial Impressions

I first played this game at the UK Games Expo in 2018 and I would say I enjoyed it, but it didn’t blow my socks off. I don’t think I was in the right frame of mind for it at the time and I couldn’t see the value this game holds as a solid 2 player filler style game.

You’ll see my opinion has changed some what over the years.

Game Build Quality

The build quality is fairly standard. Decent card stock for all of the components. It’ll take a good amount of wear and tear which is important in a filler game that can be played several times in a sitting.

One comment that I would make is that I would have loved it to have come with a black bag of some kind for the tokens. Having them face down on the table is fine but even a small black fabric bag would have been extremely handy and would have added this easily into a travel game category too.

Artistic Direction

I am a massive of fan of Egyptian mythology and ancient culture so I will always be a fan of this genre. The art is fairly basic but its in keeping with the style of the game and there really isn’t a massive amount of need to push the boat out on a game of this size.

What I will say if the art conveys the theme enough to enjoy it.

Fun Factor

Like I said above, I wasn’t a massive fan of this when I first played it.

However, recently I was craving a few compact 2 player style filler games and this one came to mind. This has now hit the table several times and it’s gone down very well with everyone who’s played it. Its quick enough to hammer out a few games which is a huge plus when you just need to break up a heavier gaming session.

Age Range & Weight

It’s not often I disagree with the age ratings, but I honestly think the simplicity of this game lends itself to an even wider age range than the box states. I would push the age recommendation down to as far as 6–7. The lack of text heavy cards and complicated rules make it very accessible.

Conclusions

Imhotep the Duel is a fast past, easy to learn, easy to set up 2-player duel that easily sits in the fun packed filler section of any collection.

The core elements come together to make tactical experience with very little analysis paralysis or down time. The games fly by as each player tries to out maneuver the other pushing their luck to empty boats even when every worker slot isn’t filled just to ensure the other player misses out on that vital mask or section of pyramid. There a lot of those “BAH!!!” moments when you realize you just gave away a boat full of merch in the hope the other player would wait one more turn.

Also, not knowing the final score until the end also adds a level of suspense once the scores are tallied.

I know this will hit the table a lot moving forward and I would happily recommend this to anyone looking for a small duel game.