Scarab Sands is a highly competitive, fast paced, area control game with almost no down time. Players compete as dead souls inside a pyramid, sending their scarab troops to fight for control over sacred rooms. Only the one with the lightest heart will make it to the Afterlife.

Each round starts with determining movement for scarab troops. This happens simultaneously for all players, by using command arrows on player mats hidden by screens. Movement is resolved in turn for 1) basic units,2) flying units and 3) armored units; Therefore, moving basic units happens almost blindly, guessing the moves of the opponents, while armored troops move when most of the stage is set. After movement, combat is resolved through dice rolls in every room where two or more players’ troops are present, until a single player (or none) controls it. Each room offers rewards for controlling it, such as upgrading troops or getting an obelisk die.

Player starts with 7 heart tokens, and the first one to free all of them, wins the game. There are multiple ways to free a heart, such as (1) controlling the pharaoh room, (2) simultaneously owning the three obelisk dice or (3) spending Ma’at influence points (mostly gained when losing a battle).

Whenever a scarab dies in combat, heart tokens are flipped to their “larvae” side. These tokens are flipped back to hearts in the last chamber of the pyramid, spawning one basic unit for each larvae flipped. Therefore the closer a player is to victory, the less basic units they are going to be able to spawn.

Disclaimer: The publisher provided the prototype copy of Scarab Sands. The opinions expressed in the review are completely my own.

Review:
 

Setting up the game is fairly easy and quick, with each player getting their own miniatures (there might also be a token version in upcoming crowdfunder), a player screen and board, and a starting ‘movement’ counter.

The rules as at time of writing this (02/04/26), were easy to follow, with some nice illustrations & pictures and clear explanations of the symbols used in the game and of the actions & outcomes from those actions, including and primarily the combat.

Set in an Egyptian pyramid, the theme of the game is that you control an array of scarabs, be that standard, flying, and armorer   ones. You will then start to place these onto the board via different means, including generating 7 standard scarabs at the start and getting more generated when they die, and 2 more for each flyer or armored  scarab that dies. You then use tokens to move these around the board going from one numbered room to another based on what rooms are available for you to move to depending on what other rooms are connected to that starting room, be it sideways, up or down from your current room number. Once you see the board and play a turn or two this becomes super clear and you soon get into how the turns work and what you can do with the models and movement tokens at your disposal, including sacrificing them for the greater good.

The rooms are numbered from 1 to 14, and control of rooms 1 to 12 give you an immediate benefit as each room is resolved in order from 1 to 13, as room 14 is the spawning point for new standard scarabs. Room 13 has no immediate reward / benefit attached to controlling it, but then gives you access next turn to ALL the other rooms, except room 2.

Combat can take place in any of the rooms numbered 1 to 13 if there are minis of more than one player in at when it is its turn to be resolved and combat continues until only one player has presence in that room, and they then gain any benefit the room confers, be it more tokens, extra models, the ability to exchange a single standard scarab for either a flying or armored  scarab depending on the room symbol, or you could get another movement token, giving you more flexibility to move more scarabs of any type during this step in the round sequence.

If any player loses combat, i.e. all the scarabs they have in a particular room are destroyed, then you move your marker up on the MA’AT track which you can then spend for additional benefits both during and at the end of the turn.

For each standard scarab you lose you also turn over one of your heart jars, and two are turned if either a flying or armored  scarab are lost in combat, and for each of these turned jars you generate a new standard scarab in the spawning room (14) at the beginning of the next turn.

The winner is the first person to get rid of all 7 of their heart jars, but losing these also means you generate fewer new scarabs each turn as you are turning over fewer and fewer jars as scarabs of any type die, and when you are getting low how you lose them becomes more vital.

There are also 3 special obelisk dice in the game, and if you control all 3 of these at the end of a turn you also get to destroy one of your heart jars, but once you have them other players will be fighting you for control of one or more to stop you doing this. They have special symbols which give additional benefits depending on the roll and symbol that is shown and as with all the dice in the game, some of the faces are blank and do nothing.

The artwork is extremely good and very vibrant, especially the gameboard which really does make for a striking presence in the centre of the table.

As for the miniatures in this prototype they appeared to be 3D printed and if the actual minis are supplied to backers like this then no-one will be disappointed as they are very detailed and look very good on the board.

The dice are good and again the symbols are lovely and clear, and make perfect sense when you see them after rolling.

For me, it is easy enough to teach to non-gamers, as well as having enough to ensnare seasoned players from the very first game.

If the end-produced version is of the same calibre as the prototype (or better) then everyone will be more than happy with what they have backed / purchased in my opinion.

The rules are tight and well thought out, and although the dice rolls do determine a lot of the game, the choices of what scarabs you use and where play a more than vital part of the game strategy and you can win by sacrificing scarabs in small numbers towards the end of the game in order to exchange those losses into destroying heart jars via the MA’AT track.

For me the only issues were that as a color -blind gamer I had difficulty in seeing the difference in two of the chosen colors  of minis, but this is an easy fix by making one set of these either black or white.

The only other thing I’d do is make the player screen sides a bit longer to fully cover the bottom rows of the player board, as each player’s selections on where their scarabs will be placed each turn is done secretly behind their player screen.

For me the theme is an instant win, as I really do love the Ancient Egyptian period and one of my favourite games in my collection is KEMET, another set in the same historical period. 

Whilst SCARAB SANDS is not of the same length or complexity as KEMET it would easily make it into my collection as a new favorite  to play, and because you can play it in a short time, you will get more games in per session than you would of that of a game like KEMET and sometimes this can be equally or even more rewarding, as players get repeated chances to do better than the previous game they literally just played, as it was in our review session as we had two separate winners.

In conclusion SCARAB SANDS is definitely one to look out for when it comes to Gamefound in early 2026, and if you do purchase a copy then I’m sure you will be pleased you decided to ‘shell’ out for it, and one you’ll look to ‘dig’ out to play again and again.

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