Khet

[12055]

So yesterday, when I was visiting my girlfriend out at Grove City, and we were trying to find something to do before our evening plans began, we stopped into a game store. While we ended up purchasing an intelligently constructed travel version of scrabble which was on sale for $15.00 (neither of us had scrabble), my eyes landed on a weird looking game called Khet. It's basically a game where a series of mirrors are used  to target a central "king" like piece for elimination with a low power laser, while defending your own king piece, a-la chess. I also notices that it was a Mensa select award winner. The last one of those I played was Blockus, which was better than just about any recently developed board game I've played, in much the same way that The Empire Strikes Back is better than The Clone Wars. Anyhow, only the $45.00 price tag stopped me from purchasing the game immediately, but copies are available on ebay for <$20, so I wanted to know if anyone had played Khet, and what they thought. Fire away!

-Ross

[The Schaef]

I haven't, but like you, the idea of moving around pieces to do an elaborate laser attack appeals to me.  It's on the shelf at my boardgaming club and I keep eyeballing it but never get around to it.  If you want I can report back on my findings but the next meeting is not until the 19th.

It's ranked in the high 300s on Board Game Geek, which doesn't sound great at first, but that's out of like 5,000 ranked games and another 30,000+ unranked games.  It's flanked on the high side by Battleground, Diamant and Bang!, and on the low side by Poker, Star Wars: Epic Duels and Risk 2210, if that gives you any idea of how good 312th actually is.

The BGG entry on it can be found here, if you want more info.  At <$20, I don't think you can go wrong, even buying sight-unseen.  But if you're buying used, be careful that all the pieces are intact, lasers are working, and there aren't placement problems with the mirrors that screw up the deflection.

[TimMierz]

My family owns Khet, and I've played it a couple times. While the box art is misleading (you don't see a full laser beam through the board unless you happen to have a smoke machine handy), it is an interesting abstract game. Since most games don't rely on angles of incidence and such, it uses a different sort of spatial reasoning that works well in the chess-like framework. As long as you can find a partner, it's pretty good.

[12055]

Thanks for the information, those were some good tips! I know enough about physics to know that lasers aren't visible to the naked eye (cool as that would be), and I also know that a ranking system that places Agricola ahead of Go and Settlers probably has a significant margin of error. Either way, your insights were helpful. I'll have to look into it more.

-Ross

[The Schaef]

Well, Agricola is also brand new and therefore subject to The Hype (tm).  But yeah, take it with a grain of salt since the rankings are aggregates of a wide array of tastes.

[Alex-CB]

There was a computer game like this a long time ago.... but I don't remember what it was called. I thought it was tight as heck though.

[EmJayBee83]

There was a computer game like this a long time ago.... but I don't remember what it was called.

It was Laser Chess.  You can read a brief history and download a Java version from

http://free-game-downloads.mosw.com/abandonware/pc/strategy_games/games_j_l/laser_chess.html

[JSB23]

looks fun