Wednesday, September 3, 2014

Quick Review - Nexus Ops

Nexus Ops
Designer: Charlie Catino
Publisher: Avalon Hill 
Quick Review - Nexus Ops 
Over the weekend I met a few friends for games and we played quite a few.  Several of them were new games for me, so after a few busy days I'm finally starting to crank out my First Play Impressions of those games.

On Saturday among the games we played was Nexus Ops.  Nexus Ops is a light war game for up to four players.  Each player controls a set of creatures (humans and other fictional aliens) as they battle control for a central hex.  There are several different types of terrain and different creatures have different abilities depending on the terrain they are on or traveling to.  Players also have to mine resources by keeping lower level pieces on the mines.  These resources can be used to purchase more troops.

In addition to the pretty standard battle units there are Energize cards that give you special abilities and Secret Mission cards that give you bonus victory points.  Players earn victory points for both successfully attacking another player and completing the requirements on their secret mission cards (e.g. start a battle with at least 4 humans on your side).  Not all of the secret missions require you to win battles, but the higher valued cards do under certain conditions.

In all I wasn't all that impressed with the game.  The components were nice and the game played well, but I didn't feel like it was anything special.  I don't play all that many war games but this game didn't make me sit up and say "Wow, that was a cool war game".  It was pretty much what I expected from a war game - various units with various costs and various abilities.  The Secret Mission cards were a nice touch, but again, not all that unusual.  I found the game became pretty unbalanced pretty quickly and once things weren't going your way it was difficult to recover from.  For a war game it played fairly quickly (our game lasted about an hour) and I did have fun, but I don't think I'll feel bad if it doesn't get pulled out next time.  There are other fish in the sea and other similar games to try out.

Preliminary Rating: 5/10

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GJJG Game Reviews are independent, unpaid reviews of games I, George Jaros, have played with his family and friends. Some of these games I own, some are owned by friends, some are borrowed, and some are print and play versions of games. Where applicable I will indicate if games have been played with kids or adults or a mix (Family Play). I won't go into extensive detail about how to play the game (there are plenty of other sources for that information and I'll occasionally link to those other sources), but I will give my impressions of the game and how my friends and family reacted to the game. First Play Impression reviews will only get a single rating of 1-10 (low-high) based on my first impressions of the game during my first time playing. Hopefully I'll get more chances to play the game and will be able to give it a full review soon.

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