Aliens.
Nemesis. A thematic semi-cooperative/cooperative board game published by Awaken Realms and designed by Adam Kwapiński. It plays 90–180 mins for 1–5 players. Medium weight in terms of complexity.
THIS IS “ALIENS” THE BOARD GAME. The game experience plays akin to characters from the “Aliens” movie.
The game allows players to step into the shoes of the crews onboard the Space shuttle “Nemesis”. You woke up from your deep sleep to the sounds of the alarm blaring in the corridors. A corpse of a mangled crew member lie motionless on the floor of the Hibernatorium room, likely the one who woke you from your sleep. Your memory is a blur, owing to the effects of being interrupted from your deep sleep. Battling your hazy mind, you looked through the ship’s log on your personal communication device for a clue of what’s going on and found out that the ship has been overtaken by the “Intruders” (Aliens). A private message from yourself before the deep sleep reminds you of what you were supposed to do.
Time to move on with the mission.
THE GIST:
Player Phase
The players start on the Hibernatorium space on the Ship “Nemesis”. The whole layout of the ship is shown on the board, with all the various room tiles placed faced down. Except for the main rooms of “Nemesis”, (Cockpit, engine room, Hibernatorium) players have no idea where/what rooms are located on the board. Each player also has their own personal objectives to fulfill before the game ends.
There are a total of 6 different characters (each representing a type of crew member, i.e. Soldier, scientist, engineer, etc..) each with their own 10 cards deck with some similar, and some totally different actions tagged to them. Actions are performed by using the cards or discarding the cards. once you are done with your 2 actions or decide to pass from the player action rounds, the turn passes on to the next player that has not passed. This goes on until all players passed, which will result in the end of the player phase.
Event Phase
The event phase then occurs, in which the time track moves forward, moving the game 1 step towards a forced end. There are a limited number of rounds before the ship, “Nemesis” does a space jump, killing all humans on board that’s not in the Hibernatorium.
A random event card is drawn, signifying events that’s happening on the ship. it may include movement of intruders, rooms exploding into fire, rooms breaking down and malfunction, or downright instant death of characters with an intruder larvae in them.
Finally, an intruder token is drawn from the bag of intruder tokens, which will result in changes being made to the intruder bag, signifying growth of the intruders on “Nemesis”.
Gameplay continues till the time track reaches the end (default), or alternate end of game triggers are activated. The players then check if their characters have survived, reached Earth, fulfilled personal goals, and lastly if they die from an infection.
Physical Impressions:
Components:
Fairly good sculpts, especially for the Intruders. The 6 player characters could be improved further slightly, as the loss of details were more apparent.
Solid cardboard tokens with great art, translucent acrylic cubes, and custom acrylic tokens were used. All of them aesthetically pleasing.
A double-sided large playing board with great art made with thick cardboard. nothing outstanding for this, but on par with the current standards.
The inserts were well made for all the components. However, wells for the cards may not fit all kinds of sleeves if you were to sleeve your cards. Still, I appreciate the attempt to allocate space for sleeved cards.
All artwork used was excellent, nothing seems out of place. the Box itself is well built and the interior was also made black, instead of the usual greyboard.
Post game thoughts:
In the game, you will explore the ship, while looking for items that may help you survive or accomplish your mission. You might encounter intruders which you generally should not attempt to kill, as ammunition is limited. You might get hunted by the intruders, or they may ignore you completely and opt to hide from you. Fires and room malfunctions leading to the demise of “Nemesis” will occur. Lastly, players may also seem to be cooperating with each other as their personal goals may align along the way. But more often than not, the personal goals may result in players parting ways halfway or outright sabotaging others to win.
With so many moving parts, it’s no wonder that the game has a lot of minor rules. Personally, I did not find them much of an issue after 1–2 games, although some small player aids with regards to combat rolls and intruder bag development would greatly reduce the amount of time one has to flip through the rulebook. I credit that to the fact that the rules generally fall in line with the theme, resulting in better absorption of the rules. Having said that, I would highly recommend that the host of the gameplay through the game on solo to get a better understanding of the game, before hosting for other players.
The amount of randomness in the game might put off some players, but I feel that the game should be played akin to a simulation of the “Aliens” movie, rather than an efficiency puzzle game. Allow yourself to “be on the ship”, and you will have a great time.
To summarize, the game is one of the most enjoyable thematic games I have played so far. So long as one does not approach the game from a purely mechanical point of view, or playing it the min-maxing way (like an efficiency puzzle), the game’s theme will shine. All of the games I’ve played resulted in players second-guessing each other’s actions, resulting in hilarious bantering and memorable moments that last long after the game has ended.
I can’t wait for the next session of Nemesis.
Personal rating of 9/10.
