Episode 229: Nemesis

Nemesis is designed by Adam Kwapinkski and published by Awaken Realms. Nemesis is a 1-5 player semi-cooperative game where you and your crewmates must survive on a ship infested with hostile intruders. To win the game, you will have to complete one of the two objectives dealt to you at the start of the game, (many of which are not in the best interests of the others and get back to Earth in one piece. Sounds easy right?! Well there are numerous game end triggers…that could mean different things depending on the player’s state at the end of the game. Including either the Time Track or Self-Destruct Time Track reaching their final red space, too many Fire or Malfunction markers being placed on the board, or no more characters being available to do anything because they are dead, hibernating, or have fled the ship in an escape pod.

Players will select one of the six characters in the game (captain, pilot, scientist, scout, soldier and mechanic) all having variable player powers.

Each round is split into two consecutive Phases, each phase consisting of a number of steps:

Phase one is the Player Phase in which players draw action cards and play out two actions which can consist of moving, completing their objectives, engaging in combat, upgrading weapons and tools or checking on the status of the ships systems. Actions require a cost, players will discard cards out of their hand to pay the cost depicted on the action they are wanting to take. Actions can come from cards, item cards or from room tiles. There are so many specific details of each different kind of action that a player can take. Just know that exploring the ship is necessary to completing objectives, but is also the main way intruders will be populated to the board. When a player enters a room without making a careful movement or without others in the room they must roll the noise die. This will determine how much noise is created and could cause an intruder to enter that space. When intruders enter spaces it triggers a chain reaction of steps to take, way more than we have time to discuss here. Moving on.

Phase two is the event phase in which the time tracks are advanced, intruders attack and move, an event card is resolved and then the intruder bag development happens. Intruders will automatically attack any player they are in a room with and has the potential of doing either light damage or serious damage When a Character with 3 Serious Wounds suffers any additional Wound (Light or Serious), they are instantly killed and are removed from game play. Rinse and repeat these phases until the game end triggers occur.

To consider a player a winner, they must meet 2 conditions: 1) Fulfill their objective 2) Survive – Meaning one of these options: 1) Hibernate their Character in the Hibernatorium with the ship (and most of its engines) still functioning and jumping to Earth OR 2) Use one of the Escape Pods to evacuate the ship. Regardless of the option used, survival also requires the Character to pass a Contamination check.

If the ship survived you do a victory check by revealing all the engine tokens (2 of the 3 engines must be working). Then check the coordinates to ensure that the ship is heading back to earth. THEN each surviving character up to this point does a contamination check by scanning all of their contamination cards in their deck. There is a possibility that players may still lose by being “infected” at the end of the game regardless of completing their objectives.