Nemesis: Retaliation review: "This might be one of the best horror board games ever made, and I can't get enough of it"

I've yet to win a game of Nemesis: Retaliation, and now that I think about it, I've died in almost every game of the original Nemesis that I've played as well. The universe telling me I don't have "main character energy," perhaps, but it's also a glowing testament that Nemesis is still my favorite game (and arguably amongst the best board games) of all time. And I'm happy to report that this action-packed sequel is just as good as its forebear.

If Nemesis is "Alien," with all the registered trademarks sanded off, then Nemesis: Retaliation is "Aliens" in all but name, too. While the original saw a hapless crew of space truckers fending off alien invaders with makeshift weapons and harsh language, we're not messing about in the sequel, as here we take on the role of a squad of highly-trained and heavily-armed marines.

This vastly changes the power dynamic, as your marines are packing state-of-the-badass-art firepower that can mow down entire swarms of bugs in a single burst. But, make no mistake; this is still Nemesis, and you'll be lucky to make it out alive.

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Nemesis: Retaliation features & design

• Action-horror for 1-5 players
• Games last for around 3 hours
• Expensive, but worth every penny

Nemesis: Retaliation is a 1-5 player semi-co-op sci-fi horror game, and actually the third title in the Nemesis series, after Nemesis and Nemesis: Lockdown. Whilst Lockdown introduced some new mechanics, it was still fundamentally the same game as the original; aliens are here looking for the buffet cart, and you're the buffet.

In Retaliation, you and your fellow players are a team of marines, here to kick ass, get tactical, stay frosty, and all the other military cliches that Aliens made famous. Your team arrives at the landing pad outside a secret research facility with a mission to complete.Just one problem: Mission Command didn't give you the layout of the facility, which means you'll need to procedurally generate it using a system of exploration cards, corridors, and tiles.

As fans of the series might expect, Nemesis: Retaliation is a big game. Inside the hefty box you'll find 50+ plastic miniatures, 350+ cards, 5 double-layered character boards, 60+ cardboard tiles, the rulebook plus 2 help sheets, and 200+ other components including dice, cardboard tokens, and acrylic cubes.

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Amongst the awesome miniatures you'll find the five included player characters (Heavy Gun Operator, Combat Engineer, Officer, Recon, and Contractor), each of which matches their beautiful card artwork, and a hive full of alien beasties including larva, adults, drones, and the fearsome Queen. The hordes of lesser monsters come in a variety of dynamic poses to avoid repetition, and they all look suitably nasty.

If I had one criticism of the models, it would be the needlessly buxom Queen. The rest of the intruders could have come straight out of H. R. Giger's mind, yet for some reason the Queen has Chun-Li thighs and a big ol' pair of jumblies. I know there's lots of sexual symbolism in Giger's designs, but this feels a bit gratuitous (so much so that Kickstarter backers had the option to pay for an alternative model).

Gameplay

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• Secret objectives build tension in this "co-operative" game
• Hordes of aliens present unique challenges
• It's still brutally difficult

Once everyone has picked their character, picked some starting equipment, and been assigned their objectives, the game can begin. The box claims it takes about 60 minutes per player, and I've found that to be pretty accurate, so if you are bringing a full team of five along, be ready for a full day of gaming.

A turn of Nemesis: Retaliation looks a lot like a turn of Nemesis. Each player takes two actions, discarding cards from their hand as currency for their moves. You can use these actions to move, interact with rooms, use items, or perform the character-specific actions on your cards. Oh, and shoot… You can — and will — be using a lot of these actions to shoot.

When everyone is out of cards and passes, you draw an event card (these do bad things, or sometimes really bad things), and then the aliens get a chance to move, attack, and generally cause problems. This is also very bad for you. And then you draw a new hand, advance the time track, and go again. It's deceptively simple at its core.

Each player has two objectives they can pursue, and unlike in Nemesis, you aren't forced to choose one of them once the bugs turn up. Instead, you can choose to lock in your objective at anytime and gain a number of bonus actions that turn, potentially giving you a burst of extra moves to escape a hairy situation, or to perform some dastardly deed once everyone else is out of moves and powerless to stop you.

Most of the time, one of those objectives will just be to complete the mission, whilst the other one will often (but not always) ask something more selfish of you. Perhaps they need a certain player to die, or for the mission itself to fail? As a result, Nemesis: Retaliation can best be described as co-op… ish. You're broadly working together to complete the mission, but you'll never know if your teammates are working towards their own ends. What usually happens is that everyone works together until it hits the fan, at which point it's every man for themselves.

It's so beautifully Machiavellian, and it's a non-stop moment-generating machine. The emergent narrative that forms from the team's discoveries, successes, failures, and inevitable betrayals is a thing of beauty. You end up building your own Aliens movie, cheering on the plucky survivors and jeering the cowardly traitors, begging the dice gods to deliver their comeuppance.

It might be my imagination, but betrayals seem more common here than in the original game. Perhaps because the co-operative missions are so tough, but also because of the sheer speed at which things can go from fine to FUBAR this time around. On a bad day in Nemesis, one alien would show up. In Retaliation, corridors can fill with hordes of the blighters, and you can find yourself surrounded in a heartbeat.

Fortunately, you have the firepower to deal with this pest problem, as Retaliation introduces the bursting mechanic, letting you unload ammo into corridors to splatter multiple intruders in one go. This is vastly more efficient than trying to fight them in the same room as you, forcing you to think carefully about how you engage.

If you do mind yourself getting snacked upon by the aliens, things can unravel quickly. Infection cards make a return, gumming up your hand with useless cards and potentially killing you in the endgame. You'll also have to deal with serious injuries, which limit your maximum health and have their own special debuffs depending on where you took the hit.

You'll also need to manage your supplies, with each player starting the game with a limited selection of ammo, grenades, medkits, and oxygen. Oh, did I not mention? Until you activate the life support, there is no air in the facility, so you're breathing on borrowed time. You can replenish all these supplies at the landing pad or within the facility, but that takes precious time, and who knows what you might run into along the way.

One of the major differences between Nemesis: Retaliation and its forebears is the game board itself. Previous iterations used fixed layouts and just randomised the room locations, but Retaliation takes things up a notch, using a deck of exploration cards to determine corridor locations. Core rooms show up in every game, but the rest are up to chance, meaning the tools at your disposal will change each time you play. There's even a robot helper in the facility that can be one of six variants. The result is the most replayable version of Nemesis to date.

Which brings me to the core thing that might rub some people the wrong way. Nemesis: Retaliation is just like its predecessors; it's a stressful charge through an unrelenting torrent of challenges that can at times be downright unfair, and that's by design. Aliens wasn't fair, and it would have been a bloody boring movie if everybody survived. It's about emergent storytelling, not mechanical mastery. Sure, you can play well, and you can certainly play badly, but neither of those things guarantees your success or failure. Sometimes, the plot says you die, and you just gotta make sure you make the most of your final scene. At least that's what I keep telling myself. I'll survive a game one day, I swear.

Should you buy Nemesis: Retaliation?

What do you think I'm gonna say? Yes, buy it at once. That is assuming you're a fan of big, chunky board games and have a strong hatred for your character being alive.

Nemesis Retaliation is a glorious continuation of the franchise, providing an action-heavy twist on the traditional gameplay while still retaining all the stress, drama, and backstabbing of the original. The new mechanics force you to consider new tactics, and the completely modular nature of the game board allows for even greater replayability. Just as Alien and Aliens are impossible to choose between, I love Retaliation exactly as much as the original game.

Once you get a feel for the characters, you'll want to play them again in different scenarios… or you'll want to play a different character to see how you fare. And even if (or in my case when) you die horribly, you’ll be excited to rerack and try again.

My only hesitation would be that if you're new to the series, you should probably get the original Nemesis first. You don't need to have played the original — and you could certainly start here — but it just feels right to start at the beginning. If you're a series veteran though, it's a must-have.

Note: At time of writing, you won't actually be able to buy a copy. Nemesis: Retaliation was funded by backers on Gamefound, and developers Awaken Realms are still in the process of delivering to some backers.

Ratings

Buy it if...

Don't buy it if...

How we tested Nemesis: Retaliation

Because the reviewer already owned Nemesis: Retaliation, they played it multiple times with differing player counts. For a better look at our process, check out how we test board games or the GamesRadar+ reviews policy.

Want more tabletop recommendations to try out? Be sure to see the best tabletop RPGs or the best card games.