Nemesis Board Game - Sci-Fi Horror Adventure! Detailed Miniatures, Cooperative & Strategy Gameplay, Space Survival Challenge, Ages 14+, 1-5 Players, 1-2 Hour Playtime, Made by Rebel Studio

My 5 star review will come in 3 sections: pros, cons, and explanation. My list of pros about this game is much longer than the cons, but I want to touch on both. And then anyone interested who is still on the fence about getting the game can read my brief explanation of how the game is played.Pros:- The game creates an intense and foreboding atmosphere throughout. I’d recommend playing this with some ambient sci-fi horror sounds/music in the background for a maximally intense atmosphere.- The rulebook is complex and the game seems difficult at first, but it becomes very simple quickly. Once you get the hang of it, the game flows very well.- All of the game’s components are very high quality and well detailed. This only helps contribute to the atmosphere. Additionally, the box is very well organized and keeps each component and card deck very secure. I’d recommend taking pictures of each layer of what’s in the box when you first take things out because there are a lot of pieces.- The end of your games are usually incredibly tense and create very cinematic moments. You could literally write an Alien franchise movie script with how many of your games will turn out.- The game is difficult to win in all 3 modes. It recreates the struggles you’d expect isolated on a space ship infested with aliens you’re trying to avoid. This, however, can also be seen as a con and I’ll touch on that.Cons:- The game is expensive.- I feel that the rulebook needs an additional section with a brief overview. The video tutorial on how to play is, in my opinion, the best way to learn.- The game is difficult. I actually enjoy its difficulty, but the difficulty comes in two forms: inherent obstacles and luck. If you like euro-style games where luck plays no role, this game may not be for you. This game is inherently unfair and it’s not entirely uncommon to lose in a sudden, unexpected way even if you play well.Overall, I give this game 5 stars. I’ve played probably over 20 times in the 4 or so months I’ve had this game. I’ve enjoyed every single playthrough. Each game takes between 1 to 3 hours, with your first game probably being longer simply because you have to learn the rules. I love the atmosphere it creates, flow of the game, and even its difficulty and luck factor. Even the games where luck doesn’t go my way and I die a horrible death are very enjoyable. All my friends who I’ve played with have loved it as well. This game is pricey, but in my opinion, is completely worth it.If that part of my review was enough to convince you to buy the game, then do it. If you want an explanation of how the game works, then read on. If you’re still not convinced, I hope my explanation can help you.The game has three modes: semi co-op, co-op, and solo. Co-op and solo are the exact same, except in solo you’re obviously the only player. The setup is nearly identical for all three modes.Each game of nemesis will take 1 to 3 hours to play, with your first game possibly being even longer because you have to learn the rules. The game supports 1 to 5 players, and I’ve even played with 6 and made a slight modification to the semi co-op objectives to support the sixth character. There are six playable characters to choose from, and each is very unique. There are 18 semi co-op objectives, with 9 being corporate and 9 being personal, and there are 8 or 9 (I can’t remember) solo/co-op objectives. Aliens can come in five types (in order of difficulty to defeat): larva, creeper, adult, breeder, and queen. As you progress through the game, you will explore the ship, fight off aliens, interact with items and rooms, and try not to make too much noise while fulfilling your objective and survive.The game board consists of 14 unexplored rooms, with 9 of them always being on the ship (these are related to your objectives) and 5 additional rooms that can provide life-saving utility, but are mostly unrelated to objectives. You’ve just awoken from cryo-sleep in the hibernatorium only to find that your crewmate is dead with some brutal injuries. Cryo-sleep brings amnesia; you don’t know which rooms are where, you may not know what your surviving crewmates objectives truly are, and you hear noises coming from the ventilation system and realize that you’re not alone, and that whatever is making those noises probably mangled your dead crewmate. You know that the cockpit is at the front of the ship; to find out where the ship is headed, you’ve got to make your way over there. You also know that the ship’s 3 engines are at the back, but you have no idea if they’re working or damaged. Lastly, your company-provided equipment has sent you an objective, but you’ve also got your own personal agenda. At some point into the game (usually early on), you’ll pick either your corporate or personal objective to fulfill.The six characters in the game are: soldier, captain, pilot, scout, mechanic, and scientist. The soldier is the most resilient in combat, the captain is good in combat but can also order crewmates around, the pilot can use knowledge of the ship and cockpit to their advantage, the scout is most adept at making the least noise, the mechanic can easily fix things and maneuver the ship through the ventilation system, and the scientist is best at using the computer systems on the ship and researching alien weaknesses. I have also listed these in rough order of their ability to perform in combat with aliens. The characters all feel extremely unique to one another, and are all viable in one way or another. Items can additionally be found throughout the game that will help in combat. These include weapons, grenades, medkits, fire extinguishers, and many others.In semi co-op, you’ll be working together with your crewmates, all the while being wary of their true intentions. But make no mistake, even another player’s secret objective is for you to die, they will absolutely have to work with you for some time if they want to make it themselves. Your company-provided headset prevents you from harming your crewmates outright, so if your objective is nefarious, you must sabotage them in other ways (and there are many). In co-op and solo, you and your crewmates share objectives, and no goals are nefarious.The game consists of up to 15 rounds, with each round being split up into two phases: player phase and event phase. The player phase consists of each player, in clockwise order, taking up to two actions. Once all players have taken their actions, the game moves to the event phase. The event phase consists of aliens attacking, taking damage, events, and the intruder bag development.The actions done in the player phase include basic actions (moving, fighting, interacting with objects), card actions (the cards in your player deck where some are unique and some are shared that include searching rooms for items, fixing things, breaking things, etc.), and room actions (using a room – e.g. using the laboratory to analyze an object and discover an intruder weakness).In order to win a semi co-op game, you must fulfill your objective and survive. In full co-op and solo, your team must fulfill all objectives and at least one person must survive. In order to survive, you must either make it off the ship in an escape pod, or you can go to cryo-sleep in the hibernatorium provided that the ship is headed towards earth and at least two of the three engines are working.The noise mechanic is one that is particularly unique about nemesis. As you move through the ship you will create noise in the numerous corridors that connect the rooms (as well as the ventilation system, called the technical corridor). The more noise you make, the more likely the aliens are to hear you. The noise in these corridors is represented by a yellow token. Any time a second yellow token would be placed on one corridor, that triggers an encounter. For any encounter, you’d reach into the intruder bag, pull out a token, and place that corresponding alien into the room with you. Based on the number of cards left in your hand, the alien may even surprise attack you. Thus, you really want to make as little noise as possible.Combat is particularly brutal in this game, where it’s reliant on dice rolls, and the health of most aliens changes on a per-turn basis. While that sounds like a strange concept, I think it adds to the unknown nature of the aliens. All aliens’ health and attacks (with the exception of the larva, which has 1 health and attacks by infecting you – think of a facehugger laying an egg in your stomach) is determined by intruder attack cards. So you may get lucky and kill an alien with a low health number on a card, or you could get unlucky and when you flip the card after shooting the alien, find that the card has a high health number. The same goes for attacks, where sometimes when an intruder goes to attack you, the alien marker of the one doing so is not on the card, and nothing happens. However, some attack cards are particularly deadly, and if you’re unlucky enough to draw one when in combat with a breeder or queen, you’re in serious trouble. If you die in semi co-op, you have the option to play as the intruders, which changes the flow of the game which is described in detail in the rulebook.Another unique mechanic is the contamination system. Certain effects will cause your character to possibly get infected through contamination cards. These have the same back as player action decks because when you get one it is put directly into your discard pile, which will later get re-used. In order to find out if a contamination card actually means you’re infected, you’ll have to play special cards and/or use rooms on the ship to find out. In the event that you’re infected, you’ll have to make your way to surgery to remove it. If you end the game in cryo-sleep or on an escape pod and you’re infected, you die.Almost every game I’ve played has come down to the wire, where one or more people are making a mad dash for either the evacuation sections to get into the escape pod, or the hibernatorium to try to get into the cryo-sleep chambers. They’re usually epic and provide for some really intense and often funny moments when someone alerts a powerful alien to their location during their attempts to get off the ship.When you first play the game I’d recommend watching the video tutorial on how the game works; it’s on YouTube and is easy to find. I’d also recommend playing co-op the first time. My first few games were semi co-op, and while that’s my preferred game mode, co-op is also a blast and is the best way to learn that working together is the only way to survive in this game. Even if you play semi co-op and your objective is nefarious, it is imperative that you all work together.Here are some tips for beginners (keep in mind that I’ve played over a dozen semi co-op games and won only two):- Make as little noise as possible. Careful movement is absolutely worth the two card cost. Noise rolls don’t often go the way you want them to.- The items are separated into three categories: offensive (red), healing (green), and utility (yellow). If you are playing as the scientist, mechanic, scout, or pilot, I highly recommend going for red items early. You’ll often find additional weapons which are of immense help in combat.- I first thought the scientist was a terrible character, but his holo-computer quest item can win games on its own. I first made use of this during a fully co-op game and it was the only reason the team was able to win.- Getting slimed is actually a pretty bad thing to happen despite it not seeming that bad. Find clothing (yellow or green item) or the showers room tile to remove it.- If your objective is to kill the queen, your best bet is to ensure the ship’s destruction. You can do this by either initiating the self-destruct sequence in the generator room, or making sure that at least two engines are damaged before the ship takes off for hyperspace flight. The queen is extremely powerful; only fight her as a last resort.- It’s extremely important to remember that the rooms with a “1” on them are crucial to completing objectives. The “2” rooms are auxiliary and provide utilities that will help you along the way.- Reloading your weapon is pretty difficult if you haven’t picked up an item to do so for you (an energy charge for example). It’s easy to spend all your ammo in suppressive fire while running away, but you may find yourself needing to fight but with little to no ammo left.That’s all I’ve got. This is a pretty lengthy review but I hope it helps you decide whether or not to get this game. I listed some cons but it’s still a 5 star purchase in my book. I plan on continuing to play this game on a pretty regular basis even with my board game collection steadily growing.

Nemesis is a fantastic game. Very well thought out and the box holds everything. Very well organized. The gameplay is so damn fun. Semi cooperative but your partner can turn on you at a moment's notice. Mini figures are very detailed. Fast shipping. I highly recommend this product and the vendor. Well done.

I absolutely love this game, can't get enough of it. Every game that I've played has been just as much fun as the first. The way the gameplay and mechanics works out to tell a story is eerie in a good way. It's basically a board game version of the '80s Alien movie. And it's classified as a semi co-op game. Each game takes from 90m-2h and it's from 1-5 players.Amazing game! 5 stars doesn't do it justice.

Absolutely.This is one of the best board games I have ever played.It is expensive yes, but the production value, the size, the sheer quality AND quantity warrants the price.In terms of learning curve, if you are moving straight from Monopoly, this will astonish and overwhelm, but for folks who have learned the crunch of DnD, Path Finder, or more complex board games like Pandemic Legacy, Dune, etc. it is par for the course. It comes with the territory, 4-5 hours will be spent just setting up the game, reading rules, fumbling your way through a game, watching videos etc. but after the 2nd and 3rd game, you’ll have it down.And it will be worth it. The game has so many layers, rules, that encourage these cinematic moments you’ll be laughing about and talking about and thinking about months if not years later!I’ll never forget the look on my wife’s face when I abandoned her on the ship and took the last life pod!

Enviado y empaquetado 5/5

This represents an update to my previous review. I will leave a few parts of the original review in and will highlight some things that made me change this from 3 stars to 4 stars. And note that I might indeed change this to 5 stars in the future; I think the game is growing on us.The first thing that made me change my review is that we revisited the rule book and some parts of the game play were clarified upon further inspection. Namely, the way turns work. We had misunderstood how the turn sequence works. Let me explain: We were playing that everyone gets 2 actions, then once everyone has taken their 2 actions the game passes to the event phase; then repeat. As it turns out in the rules, we had misunderstood that; in actuality, all players get their 2 actions, and then, once everyone has had a turn, everyone gets ANOTHER round of turns (for 2 more actions), and so on until all players have exhausted their ability to take actions or have instead chosen to pass; then the event phase comes. This was a huge game changer and mitigated my primary concern with the game, namely that I didn't feel the player had enough time on their turn to do anything before the event phase. As it turns out, each player essentially gets 2-3 turns before the event phase, making it much more manageable.So, if you understood the rules correctly the first time you read them, this is a non-issue. We didn't. Our fault. We're happy to find out the game isn't as unmanageable as we thought!This brings me nicely to a part of my original review: the rule book! The rule book is long (28 large pages). It took a long time to read through it and grasp how the game is played. (And as you saw above, we had to stop playing and sit down to read the whole thing again before we could continue play!) There are so many contingencies that you just can't learn them all having read the rule book once: you'll be glued to an open rule book when you first play (and for multiple plays afterwards), thumbing through it throughout the game. If that doesn't sound fun, you're not going to like this game. It's a very steep learning curve. I think the payoff will be worth it though.Let's talk about how awesome this box is and the game components. Wow! A+! I opened the box and was blown away by it. It is good quality. The figurines are intricate. The board and cards feel good. The artwork is great. The many pieces look nice. All in all this game looks like it cost as much as it did. It is a real jaw-dropper. Just be sure you have a huge playing space for it, because it is by no means a small footprint. We use the entire surface of a 6 foot table.There are a couple minor things we don't like and are working through, but there are two major things that have required us to create house rules for to fix:1. The combat is unfulfilling. Obviously this is a horror game, you're supposed to feel powerless against the Intruders, and combat is not supposed to be the primary focus of the game. Escaping and surviving is. Still, the combat is unsatisfying and leaves something to be desired.2. The noise markers. This is one of those real world details that I don't like transferred into a game. There needs to be some way to remove them. We can put out fires, fix malfunctions, mend and heal wounds, reload weapons, repair engines, take showers, change clothes, close/open doors--but a noise we made at the beginning of the game doesn't go away. It doesn't make sense. Just like moving into a room that's occupied doesn't make noise, but "careful movement" does make noise.All in all, we're at the point now that we can recommend Nemesis, but with a disclaimer. You might love this game straight out of the box. For us, some tweaks were required to enjoy it. If you're open to changing rules, then I think you can make this engaging like we're going to try. But to be blunt, there are other games available that are cheaper and, perhaps, better. Some of our favorites (for reference) include: Pandemic, Harry Potter Hogwarts Battle, Splendor, and Magic the Gathering. We also really like the board game Alien.Hopefully this helps someone make a decision about Nemesis. Stick around, I may come back and bump this to 5 stars after playing it more. However, I think I will probably stand by my 4 star rating when reviewing the game as-is, and not with our house rules.