Nemesis: the board game - review

If you have watched "Alien" then "Nemesis" will be a very familiar setting for you. In this 1-5 player game, the characters wake up from their cryo-sleep as their ship "Nemesis" stops due to an emergency. One of the crew is dead, and the rest of you try to figure out what's going on. The engines sound weird, the interior in many rooms has been smashed, the auto-pilot has been messed with and strange sounds come from ventilation shafts. You need to fix the ship, make sure it is still heading for earth and hurry back into your cryo-pods before the ship settings initiate the next hyper jump.

You all work together to solve the problem. Well not really. Everyone have secret objectives, one of them is personal the other being orders from the corporation that employed you to this ship. As the game progresses all of you begin to realize what everyone else is up to. And it is not your survival they have in mind! Also, quite soon you will also turn a corner and stumble upon one of the intruders, (aliens), that killed your friend in the cryo-chamber.

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Nemesis is (mainly) a semi co-operative game where each player controls one unique crew member with a unique set of skills and starting gear. When I say mainly it's because the game comes with the option to play it both as a single player experience, and as a pure co-op variant, I will explain this a bit later. 

Every player also begins with two secret objectives which pretty much always collide with what everyone else want to achieve. So while it is useful to help each other out to some extent, you will reach a point where you will just initiate the self destruct sequence and get the hell of the ship in an escape pod by yourself. Co-operating is recommended as the ship needs extensive repairs, and in order to put out fires. Moving in pairs or small groups also limits the noise you generate navigating the dark corridors of the ship, to some extent.

The game comes with miniatures for representing the human crew and the intruders (aliens). The humans are each unique characters, such as a Pilot, a Soldiers, the Captain etc. The core game comes with 6 characters, a 7th optional add-on character (the Medic) will be available early next year. There is also a second crew of characters being added to the game with the expansion "Aftermath" which also adds a completely new set of aliens to replace the aliens from the core box. As only the core game and crew has been delivered by the Kickstarter so far, this review is solely based on the core game content.

Each character has 10 action cards, most of the actions are similar in between characters, but each character also has cards and abilities that are unique and that set them apart. Other than that, all characters work the same way, have the same amount of wounds and can do pretty much the same things.

Nemesis board game, crew characters painted up

I received my Kickstarter copy of Nemesis the board game a couple of days ago. Game looks great, and a full review will be posted as soon as we've played a couple of games. What surprised me the most was the quality of the playing cards. I had stocked up with sleeves, but that may not be necessary as the cards are of very sturdy and thick desig

I had some problems with damaged game box and a damaged game board, but customer service promised replacements within a few weeks, so that is comforting.


In the meantime I painted up the playable characters, the crew from the core box. I think they are 28mm, but much more realistic in terms of limb thickness etc so they appear small next to regular 28mm miniatures. They painted up rather quickly.


In order to not have to use the color coded rings for the bases, and to be able to quickly identify characters on the board, I painted them in distinct colors according to their player sheets. That means, blue for the captain, purple for the scout, yellow for the mechanic, green for the pilot, red for the soldier and grey for the scientist.

I had ordered the "Sundrop" pre-shaded version of the core box, so the aliens are already undercoated and washed in  blue/green tint. I will be adding some details to them later on and will most likely repaint the bases. But overall it was a good choice, much better than having grey plastic.

Blood Bowl Dark Elf team add-ons and full team picture

I purchased add-on miniatures for my Dwarf, Orc, Dark Elf and Skaven Blood Bowl teams a couple of weeks ago. With Lobotomy being all painted up I turned to painting up the extra miniatures and fillers for the existing teams that I have, starting with the extra 2 Blitzers and 4 Linemen for my Dark Elf team which I painted up yesterday.

Miniatures are all from Black Scorpion Miniatures and made out of resin. I like these more than the Games Workshop recent plastic release (where the teams are a bit of a hit and miss in terms of look depending on race imo).

Lobotomy - remaining miniatures painted up and finished!

Finished the last miniature for Lobotomy late last night, great feeling and a satisfying sense of achievement. It was a bit daunting at first but slowly the whole core box and a couple of add-on miniatures were all painted up.

These miniatures are the final monsters for the game, "Twins", "Nuns", "Frankensteins monster", "Witches" and "Baba Yaga".

The possessed nuns (just like the Slender man) were purchased as an extra add-on, the remaining monsters are all core box miniatures. The twins are a wonderfully creepy rendition of the urban legend of "Black eyed people". I really think that the whole painted uå collection will not only add gameplay value to Lobotomy, but the miniatures should also be useful for other games as well despite having clear bases.