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Nemesis
The game Nemesis proves that paranoia is best experienced in 4 hour increments with your closest friends. lf you thought Quacks of Quedlinburg was okay, but wondered if it could be improved by adding copyright-infringing acidic face-f*ck*rs to your bag, then Nemesis is, indeed, the game you are looking for. It is an exploration romp that is louder than Happy Salmon, bigger than Gloomhaven, and may trigger outbursts with more 4 letter words than a Sergeant Apone speech once a player “accidently” drags an alien into the engine room. Done it before, and I will do it again! The phrase “Are you f*ck*ng serious?!” gets used so much during this epic hellish-ride it might as well be stamped on to the box cover’s shiny alien head.
Speaking of shiny-heads, the game TOTALLY plagerizes 20th Century Fox’s franchise ‘Alien,’ but, like, in a cool way. The game begins with all players waking up, foggy-headed, on a spaceship they can’t quite remember surrounded by a trustworthy crew of strangers they can’t trust. Like, seriously, another player’s personal mission may be to watch your little human head pop from an alien skull-tongue attack. Tough to tell these days. Keep your enemies closer, and your friends six feet under I always say.
Now, the game is famously divisive. There are some people who do not like the combat in Nemesis (Wimps!), and there are some who don’t like the randomness of rolling dice (Losers!), and then there are those who do not like to be betrayed 4 times in 4 hours … Okay, so that last reason is pretty legit. But you will find none of these issues covered here. I am only writing this to praise, promote, and PROMISE that Nemesis is 100% worth your time.
Gameplay
Nemesis is a semi-co-op, survival game about exploring a ship and completing a single personal objective. The game begins with each player waking up from cryo–sleep – all have a form of amnesia that prevents them from remembering the rooms of the ship. During set-up, more than a dozen room tiles are placed upside down in a random configuration. A random event token is then paired up with each room – the tiles and tokens will only be revealed if a player ventures into them. As players move through the rooms, they create noise; if they make too much noise, intruders may spawn (Intruders = aliens). Whether one spawns or not is controlled by drawing from a bag that represents the intruders hidden around the ship.
Multiple players can win as long as each completes their hidden objective and survives. Some objective examples are:
- “Player 2 cannot survive.” You will spend the game making sure this player dies to either game effects or intruders.
- “Send the signal and make sure the ship is headed to Mars.” With this one, you will search for a room that allows you to perform the “send the signal” action, and you must make sure the coordinates in the control room are going to Mars … not Earth.
- “Make sure the ship is headed to Earth.” Probably the most basic objective, but it will be hard to pull off if others have chosen more violent objectives.
On a player’s turn, they will take two actions, such as moving and searching for items. Entering a face-down room will reveal that room and each room has a special power that can be utilized. In order to win, you must complete your goal and reach one of two areas at the end of a turn. You can wait for the moment the escape pods open (and fly away in one to safety) OR you can return to cryo-sleep if the ship is functioning and heading to Earth. Both options risk the chance of spawning a deadly intruder.
Gameplay revolves around your own personal 10 card deck, based on your character, that you cycle through multiple times. Cards are used for everything – moving, searching, attacking, and some have abilities unique to your character. Combat is rather complicated, but is actually quite thematic.
- When a player attacks an alien, they spend ammo and roll dice for damage. When an intruder attacks, a card is revealed from the intruder deck. Some cards do damage, or add infection cards to your deck (which muddy-up your deck), or just miss.
- Intruder hit points are unknown. When you damage an alien, a card is flipped that reveals either a number between 2 and 5 OR the word ‘escape.’ This keeps the intruder’s hp hidden, adding to the terror you feel when fighting them. If an ‘escape’ is flipped, the intruder is removed from the board as it runs back into the vents. This moment gives you the high of feeling like a b*d*ss.
- Players can take a total of ten damage. Every 3rd damage gives you a wound card that hinders you. There are rooms and items that can heal damage points as well as remove wound cards.
Players do not draw new cards until the round is over. If a player does not perform an action (Maybe they are saving cards or have run out of cards), they pass. Once all players pass, a multi-step intruder phase occurs – the intruders attack those in their room, bag progression (which represents the intruders growing within the ship), and an intruder event card will be resolved before the players begin the next round. The game ends when all players have either escaped, entered cryo-sleep … or died.
The Hook
Is Anyone my Friend?
Let’s start off by squashing a well-known and overblown complaint. Haunting the internet are tales of Nemesis games where a player gets wiped out 20 minutes in because they randomly spawned the gigantic queen intruder before anyone has had a chance to find a f*ck*ng weapon. Well I’m here to tell you that, yes, spawning the queen in the first discovered room can happen, but the ones who die from her right off the bat are the players dumb enough to sit around and take a swing at her. If she pops out of the floors while you’re diddling around the control room, then LEAVE THE CONTROL ROOM. Yes, she will get one swing on you for running away, but it’s better than melting like a snowman.
ANYWAYS! The Hook of Nemesis strikes when someone other than you literally makes ANY decision. Paranoia grows like bamboo on this spaceship. If a player follows you, are they trying to kill you? If they head to the front of the ship, are they going to send it to Mars? If they find banagaes, ARE THEY PLANNING ON STRANGLING YOU WITH THEM?! You get the picture. The way a round progresses might sound slow (Move, search – done. Move, use item – done), but this is not the case. Every action every player takes – whether they load their gun or eat a snack – looks suspicious. The two-actions-a-turn system causes the game to play out like a horror movie, scene by scene. Two characters merge and trade; are they in cahoots or are both trying to get the upperhand? One character moves twice and spawns an intruder; did they mean for that to happen or were they willing to take a chance to reach the engines? A character moves into the engine room and “Fixes the engine.” Did they just sabotage the ship?
Right from the beginning, Nemesis’s two strongest features shine bright. The exhilarating feeling of revealing a room tile and the laughter of players sucked into a thematic game full of consequences. How can you not laugh at being so paranoid during a board game? It’s a game that spawns memories you won’t soon forget.
The Turn
Adrenaline Kicks In
The Turn swings in when your fear of the intruders shrinks under the weight of determination. By now you’ve either encountered an intruder, or you’ve watched others fight them … or flee. You’ve sat on the edge of your chair as players unload their guns at one, and you sit just as far when one is pulled from the bag. At least one player has drawn an infected card, but they are still managing. Everyone is still kicking. This phase of the game assures you that your goal is possible; let the adrenaline take over and fear no die roll or card draw. Yes, an alien’s attack can be a pain in the *ss. And yes, they can even infect you. But the ship is now partially mapped out (As the rooms are discovered) so you have a pretty good idea of where to go to complete your objective. And if you do get wounded, the healing rooms have either been revealed or their location and can be deduced. Your goal is now much easier to achieve than when you first woke from cryo-sleep.
But this is the same for the other players. Those who have been hiding an evil objective now have less of a reason to keep it a secret – the end is in sight. All players have now witnessed each decision. You know who is willing to repair rooms, put out fires, as well as you can tell who will leave you for dead. This phase is the meat of Nemesis. The “semi” of semi-co-op starts to unravel with rather comedic moments. The soldier with the big-*ss gun may leave the mechanic to fight alone. Two players have gone into the same engine room, both claiming to “fix” it. Someone enters the self-destruct room and, well, activates the self-destruct. Seriously, that’s actually a room and an option.
This is all because a player’s patience is highest at the game’s beginning, when we are all safe and needed to learn the rooms. With each room discovered, and with each intruder spawned, that patience lies dying in the rearview mirror. My favorite personal story of Nemesis’s middle game was when I watched two players travel from room to room, defending each other from intruders and discussing which rooms they needed to find. Suddenly, a new intruder spawned in a nearby room. One of these players, without giving any reason, used their taser item ON THE OTHER PLAYER and stole all of his items. All at the table erupted into laughter … all except the tasered fool.
The Bite
Get Out
The ending of Nemesis is like going through the five stages of grief while your therapist is trying to kill you and the loved one you were grieving is now undead and also trying to kill you. It is highly chaotic, even in a session where each player chose a peaceful goal. All it takes is two or three questionable decisions by a player to convince EVERYONE they are sabotaging the ship. The way they accidently spawned an intruder, or the way someone behaved in the cockpit, causes a little finger-pointing to spiral into full blown conspiracy theories.
The bite of Nemesis strikes once paranoia fully blooms and every player is running around as though the queen’s nursery commands the ship. Being in a room with another player feels like you have a gun to your head while being in a room with an intruder feels like a prison. And any room with both feels like a roaring woodchipper. You may have had an ally earlier, but why risk their betrayal? Turn on them first! There is no more moving silently; players are running around like it’s the end of Alien 3. Why? Because you are mere moments from either completing your mission or dying! Standing around is no longer an option and showing the other players a little decency is an immoral mistake.
I can go on and on about how every moment, from beginning to end, feels like a bad plan unraveling at the seams. The game is fun because it is hard, because it is impossible to believe any plan will work. But you still plan, you still converse, and you usually make it to the end. You were wrong to doubt so much because paranoia convinced you that no other player wanted what you wanted. By the end, you can map out every wrong guess you made, every moment another player inadvertently helped you, and each miraculous die roll that kept you alive. In Nemesis, it never ever feels like daylight is coming until you are blinded by dawn as the escape pods open up and you make that fateful noise roll to enter one.
And that is the end of my rant. My dissertation is finished … but … I just want to make one thing VERY clear, as it seems very few reviews do not cover the main reason to play Nemesis. And that is the laughter. A three to four hour game with five people needs to entertain you when others are taking their turns. It should be so fun that you forget your cell phone exists. And this game has it in spades. Watching others suffer analysis paralysis in Nemesis is so f*ck*ng fun. The quotes from this game get me rolling just thinking about them. I still quote them to my friends to this day –
“If you shut the door I’m blowing it up!” “I’d rather you die alone.”
“I would prefer the alien live.”
“I’m pretty sure you’re trying to steal this corpse from me.”
“Why do you all keep stealing the queen’s eggs!”
“I’m going to launch you into space if you leave me.” “I will never believe you for the rest of the game”
“You are so lucky I can’t shoot you”
“Do as I say or I’m throwing a grenade at you!”
This game simply triggers some of the best interactions you will ever see in a board game.
