Nexus Ops has all the trappings of a science fiction franchise distilled into a board game. There are a variety of weird aliens, all lead by human mercenaries, hunting rubium through strange landscapes and engaging other merc companies in battle over the precious and limited resources.
The Pieces
I know I have often crowed about how cool the pieces are for a particular game, but Nexus Ops has to have the absolute best playing pieces I have seen in a game. Forget the board and the cards – the little plastic soldiers in Nexus Ops could be turned into a whole line of miniatures. In fact, if anyone at Avalon Hill happens to read this, I would pay good money for a bunch of pre-painted plastic Nexus Ops figures in 25-30mm scale.
Even cooler than the great sculpts and very cool alien designs on these figures is the plastic from which these pieces are molded. Each player has pieces in a different neon color, but all the pieces are semi-translucent soft plastic. The soldiers in Nexus Ops are so cool that they deserve their own miniatures game – and I would buy a ton of them.
The board for Nexus Ops attempts to achieve the same greatness as the army figures, with very cool art depicting lava pools, crystal forests and strange swamps, but the individual hex pieces that make up the board are too small by far. Sure, they can hold three or four figures without breaking a sweat, but when a player is amassing an army for an assault on an opposing rubium mine, that army will be a jumbled mass of colored plastic spilling over into adjacent spaces.
The mission and energize cards do not contain art, exactly, just a very minimalist, futuristic design that goes perfectly with the game. They are utilitarian, but they are so well designed that they help the science-fiction theme of the game almost as well as the figures. In fact, if someone in Hollywood happens to make a Nexus Ops game, I can only hope that they follow the design on the cards for the look of the film.
Rubium counters and exploration cards are punched from heavy, high-quality stock, and continue to present an excellent sci-fi sensibility. They are quite durable, and like everything else in the game, look fantastic.
The Game
Nexus Ops is not played on a traditional board. Instead, the board is built from individual hexes that are arranged randomly to make the entire playing area. A small cardboard monolith construction forms the core of the board, granting bonus energize cards to those who can hold it.
Play takes place in six phases. Each player takes all six phases before play passes on. The turn order is simple enough, on the surface – purchase new units, deploy, explore, battle, gain rubium, and draw cards. The difficulty occurs when these steps quit being simple.
When purchasing units, players may play any start-of-turn energize cards. If a player forgets to play the card, he must wait until next turn. Any of the units can be purchased as soon as a player can afford them. The units are humans, fungoids, crystallines, rock striders, lava leapers and plasma dragons, in order from weakest to strongest. Each unit has multiple advantages and disadvantages, and simply deciding what to buy can become overwhelming.
For instance, humans cannot enter magma pools or the monolith, they battle last and they rarely hit when they fight. However, they are quite cheap and are needed to mine rubium, something some other races cannot do. Fungoids cannot enter the monolith, they also fight poorly, and they can run mines as well. In addition, fungoids fight better in fungus forests and worse in crystal spires, while crystallines fight poorly in fungus forests and better in crystal spires. Rock striders can move faster if they cross rock plains, and lava leapers can choose their opponent’s casualty on an attack roll of 5 or better. Plasma dragons almost always hit, they fight first, they are tremendously expensive, and they can shoot plasma into adjacent spaces to destroy enemy units.
The previous paragraph does not even cover all the abilities you must remember while you purchase and move your figures. There are other terrain considerations, movement abilities, and restrictions. Simply remembering which figure to use in a particular scenario is complicated enough, and we haven’t even discussed cards yet.
Exploring happens when a unit enters a space that has not yet been explored. An exploration tile is flipped over to show what is found – either a mine, an alien recruit, or both. This is just about the only straight-forward part of the game.
Battles occur in order from plasma dragons to humans – unless they don’t because of an energize card effect. Dragons hit on a 2 or better – unless they don’t because of a card. Only one round of battle occurs – unless more occur because of a card. Some figures don’t even have the same attack ability all the time, because of terrain or cards. Battles should come with checklists, to make sure you don’t miss anything.
Gaining rubium would be easy, except that you can only earn from mines with miners attached, and even then only when no enemy unit competes for the space. And only three units are miners, so if you have an army of plasma dragons and lava leapers, you can’t take out rubium. Those pesky aliens are too dumb to pull rocks out of the ground.
Finally, the turn ends and you draw a secret mission card. If you hold the monolith uncontested, you draw two energize cards. Of course, if you play anything like I do, by this time you are overwhelmed and, at least half the time, forget to draw the cards you are supposed to have. We got tired of trying to remember if we had drawn the right cards, and just instituted a ‘hell, I don’t know, just draw already’ policy.
Victory points are accrued for completing various tasks during your turn, most of which are the result of winning a battle. In fact, if you win a battle, you can automatically gain at least one point, and we had one battle where the winner got eight points through a clever use of secret mission cards. Not bad, since you only need twelve to win. Even with all the forgetting we did and how confused we got, the games managed to end within an hour every time.
Conclusions
The ideas behind Nexus Ops are sound – strategically manage a diverse task force and seize critical resources while attempting to accomplish hidden goals before your foes can accomplish their own. Unfortunately, an enormous amount of minutia drags the game down, as players continually attempt to remember if they drew their cards, whether the fungoid was accidentally left on a crystal spire, and how many spaces the dragon can move this turn. What is initially a very good game is hampered by the accounting tasks required to keep up with the game play and the over-ambitious differences between different unit types.
While the game play may be average and the hex tiles are far too small, the little plastic aliens are so cool that they’re almost worth buying the game just for the figures. If you play 15mm science fiction games, Nexus Ops should be a no-brainer. If you play a game for the game, and nice pieces are little more than gravy, this one is almost forgettable. On the other hand, if you’re making a movie, or even a cartoon, you should run right out and buy this game, because the theme is too cool to be ignored.
Style: 4 – Excellent army units and sleek visual design seem like a sure thing, but the hexes are just too small.
Substance: 3 – What begins as an interesting game of strategic decisions and battlefield strategy becomes basically average when you factor in an overabundance of minutia.
