Nemesis

Who are you running from: The Aliens or your Shipmates?

• Runtime: 1.5-3 hr
• Players: 1-5
• Mechanics: semi-cooperative, campaign driven, modular board, player elimination, variable player powers, light-deck building

Nemesis is a semi-cooperative game with bluffing, backstabbing, and plenty of science-fiction survival horror adventure. The Goal: Find the failure, fix the situation, and return back to Earth all while surviving the Alien onslaught and completing your secret objective. Multiple players can win and sometimes what it takes to win is making sure another player loses.

For a game with a LOT happening the gameplay is pretty straight-forward.

• Set up – Each player drafts one of 6 characters and receives their secret objective.
• Two Phases:
  • Player phase- Take 2 actions, such as: Move, Trade, Craft, Attack, etc…, Each action spends cards (similar to Gloomhaven) but the cards themselves also have special actions or abilities you can use instead. Items you acquire can have special actions, and certain rooms also have actions associated with them.  As players move around the board they create noise which can trigger encounter or an alien being spawned. Players can also reveal secret rooms which allow them to look at or change the ships destination or engine status, which may be important to their secret objective.
  • Event phase– the environment will change, and enemies will attack and move.
• The game is played over 15 turns, after which the ship automatically jumps to hyperspace and all non-hibernating characters on board die. There is also a self destruct sequence that, if activated and allowed to complete, will cause the ship to explode and end the game. 
• The player(s) who survive AND complete their secret objective win.

What’s Great about Nemesis:

• The character abilities were well balanced and fit the spaceship, sci-fi alien theme well.
• The gameplay was immersive. We really felt like we were on the ship, battling intruding aliens, struggling to complete our objectives. 

• The gameplay was smooth and seemed to flow without taking much time between turns. In our experience, some player phases can take a lot of time, but that wasn’t the case here. We believe it was because there were just the right amount of actions, items, and special rooms. 
• The map randomness was great! We can play this game a bunch of times and each experience will be unique and fun. We think the long shelf life of this game is especially important if you want to invest at this price point. (It’s over $100 to pre-order right now…)
• The miniatures make the game shine! When you see a giant Alien Queen attacking a little character miniature, it really brings the fight to life.  If you’re into miniatures, the expansions to this game would be great too (not to mention adding to the map randomness and events of the game).

• We know there’s so much miniature talk about this game, but we really felt that ALL of the components were high quality, including the box. Having a sweet insert to store all of the beautiful components is always a plus for us.

What was lacking

• The Rules are a bit hard to follow and you have to jump around the rulebook a lot.  We think a simple reference for encounters and bag development would have made it a lot easier. While many reference elements are included on the player boards and game board, there are a few things that get used almost every turn and you HAVE to consult the rulebook to remember what happens.
• The semi co-op experience wasn’t really cooperative at all. It seemed like we were all just playing a solo mission alongside each other. The full co-op mode, on the other hand, was very cooperative, and a ton of fun!
• The contamination cards are a bit clunky. When scanning, you have to be very diligent to make sure you are reading them correctly. Not quite sure what the solution is, but there has to be a better way to execute this.

Final Thoughts

The game was great, and we can’t wait for the 2nd wave to play the expansions. We really want to see how the campaign and its TRUE co-op modes play out. We will for sure bring this to the table again in the near future. We’ll have to remember to photocopy or make a rules reference sheet for next time!

This game gets an XYZ Game Labs BGBC 8 out of 10.