![]() ![]() Will you sneak around like Newt? Or charge up and down the corridors like a colonial marine? Either way, bear in mind that weapon ammo is scarce – like weapons themselves – while melee attacks are a really bad idea. The former generates more noise, vastly increasing the chance of an alien attack (those vent-lurking nasties love a “Fool of a Took” bang or clatter) the latter requires discarding more cards. This tension is also reflected in the simple choice between movement and careful movement. Every turn is an internal tussle between reaching for your goals and venturing conservatively. If you encounter a Night Stalker during the Event Phase, it is less likely to launch a surprise attack on you if you have cards remaining in your hand. Burning through your hand, however, is inadvisable. The original’s excellent action card system is thankfully present and intact each turn you take one or two actions, determined in part by your character’s own small deck of cards, with the variable cost of an action paid for by the discarding of other cards. And those lights will be out a lot, unless you want to use up loads of your precious actions keeping them on. The Intruders of Nemesis have been replaced by Night Stalkers (it’s unclear whether they’re a mutation or just a whole new species), which are more deadly when the lights are out. ![]() In Nemesis: Lockdown, even when you win, you can lose.ĭarkness and power (electrical rather than political) are also important new factors. Otherwise, you might finish the game thinking you’ve triumphed by surviving and completing your hidden objective – benevolent or otherwise – only to find the revealed contingency requires your immediate execution. So instead of needing to secretly programme the ship’s computer to set your destination, for example, you’ll have to try and discern, through the process of elimination, what the evil corporation’s base-flushing contingency plan is. Thematically, it moves players from combating a deadly alien threat on a spaceship (like in Alien) to dealing with a slightly different deadly alien threat in a subterranean Martian base (similar to Aliens). So even if you’re familiar with the first game, there’s still plenty here to send you scurrying back to that eye-straining, patience-testing rule book. ![]() It is less a refinement than a sequel which maintains some of the original’s complexities, and relocates others. It would be too much of a stretch to describe Lockdown as an improvement upon Nemesis. Quite how publishers Awaken Realm didn’t get a memo from Nemesis players that AN INDEX WOULD BE REALLY NICE is beyond us. What an eliminated player can do is help out with all the rules references that are required, because Nemesis: Lockdown is an ultra-crunchy title where barely a turn will pass without someone having to reach for, and squint at, the dense, small-white-text-on-black rule book, flipping backwards and forwards through the pages until they find the very specific clarification they’re seeking. Although, we’ll insert a big, slime-drenched caveat: this is a player-elimination affair which gives any ejected player nothing to do, other than spectate. As Kwapinski notes in the rule book, Lockdown is designed to evoke a series of exciting, cinematic moments which are intended to reward players through the drama of its narrative, even if that involves them losing the game.įor the most part, Nemesis: Lockdown delivers on this – just as Nemesis did four years ago. More likely, there will be no winners at all make no mistake, this is a brutally harsh game. But you might not be the only winner it is feasible, though unlikely, that everyone could win – even though this isn’t strictly a co-op game (unless you play the full co-op variant). Winning as an individual in this game is, of course, possible. What board-gaming is really all about is the creation of that story.įew games exemplify this philosophy better than Adam Kwapinski’s Nemesis: Lockdown, and its 2018 survival-horror-sci-fi predecessor Nemesis. Winning is just one of the potentially satisfying ways that the story of a game will conclude. Any ‘serious’ board-gamer will assert (correctly) that the joy of playing isn’t about winning. ![]()
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