My Kickstarted copy of Nemesis arrived yesterday, complete with a couple of expansions.
I have a final pathology exam coming up and am very short of time, so naturally I couldn’t really actually play it, but I didn’t see the harm in seeing if both expansions would fit in the main box.
They do.
And then… well, I’m a fully subscribed member to the Sunk Cost Society (I keep meaning to quit my subscription, but I’ve been a member for ten years and I don’t want the money to have been wasted) and… well, I figured that I’d already spent an hour doing that, so I might as well spend a bit more time just seeing how the game looks set up.
And then… well, it was set up now. The
true waste of time would have been putting it away again, wouldn’t it?
There’s a solo variant, but I decided to play the full game because I wanted to get a feel of how the hidden agendas worked, and try to roleplay them. I picked the Solider, Mechanic and Captain after the draft - partially because the Captain can look at other people’s agenda’s at points, making the roleplaying easier. As it turns out, everyone wanted the same thing, to get back to Earth. The only quirk was that the Mechanic, being admirably OCD, wouldn’t rest until he had explored every room on the Nemesis.
It was a quirk that would doom the entire crew.
Things started off smoothly enough - the crew set about checking the engines and making sure the ship was pointed in the right direction, although it soon became clear the Mechanic was splitting off from the rest of the group on his one-man exploratory mission.
When the mysterious and terrifying xenomorphs started to appear, they were rapidly dispatched by the well-armed crew.
With the engines repaired, the distress signal sent and the ship definitely heading to Earth, all that remained was for the crew to return to the Hibernatorium to sleep out the rest of the trip. Except… except that the Mechanic couldn’t resist his urge to just check every room was safe and clear.
(Spoiler: they weren’t).
Terrifed upon meeting the biggest, scariest creature he’d ever seen in his life, the Mechanic scurried into the maintenance tunnels, finally emerging into another unexplored chamber - the Intruder’s Nest, complete with (due to a -very- unlucky bag draw)…
The Queen, who imediately took the top slot in the Mechanic’s ‘Biggest Scariest Creatures I have Ever Seen’ mental competition.
Meanwhile, as the weary Soldier and Captain finally battled their way back to the Hibernatorium, a problem occurred. The Hibernatorium had caught fire a few turns ago. The Captain and Solider were not great at putting out fires, and were a long way from Fire Control. The Mechanic, who -was- good at putting out fires, had abandoned his fire-fighting duties and was currently otherwise engaged demonstrating the finer points of internal human anatomy to the Intruder Queen. However, after checking the rulebook a few times, I couldn’t see that the room actually being on fire stopped the characters getting in to the sleep pods (that would require a malfunction). I’m not sure I’d feel too comfortable popping into cryso suspension with the smell of burning electrics, but maybe I’m overly safety-fixated. Regardless, this was the problem:
The now very-seriously wounded Mechanic scrambled into the final unexplored room, sealing the door behind him, whereupon a dormant turret activated, shot and killed him.
The lights flickered on the ship as the tortured electrics started to relent to the inferno’s onslaught. The injured, exhausted and dispirited remaining crew heard movement all around them.
It was probably merciful at this point that a final Event card intensified the fire, finally rupturing the hull of the ageing Nemesis.
I play games for stories more than anything else. Nemesis is very, very good at telling stories. I’m really looking forward to playing this with friends in person.
I also have a lot to learn about strategy. I really like the cards and find the thematic integration very appealing. I played Paul Atreides again and won because of holding all four alliance markers.
