Ahh, sci-fi! The place where imagination runs free and the dreams of film-makers and authors run riot, creating brilliant and beautiful worlds. Of course, we all know that the best sci-fi flicks are the dumbest ones where plans go awry at the flick of a switch. In Nefarious, you get to play one of those much beloved but utterly hapless scientists... but you still have a chance to take over the world. It's just going to take some effort...
I’m a sucker for B-movies, those crappy, wonderful, so bad it’s good efforts that are somehow thrown together on a budget of £40 and the good will of friends. Whether they’re old school classics, the likes of which you’ll see on Mystery Science Theatre 3000, or something relatively new such as The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra or Jesus Christ: Vampire Hunter, you can count me in. Fire up the DVD, make some popcorn and away we go.
The ones I really love are the sci-fi movies, especially those with the mad scientists intent on taking over the world. I think it’s because I like the deranged inventions that they come up with (probably why I like Bond movies as well – I’ve always wanted to be Q) and now I get to experience that when I’m sitting around a table with mates ready to play a game. Nefarious, the new release from Ascora Games, is all about world domination – in a most delightful way, of course.
Released at Essen 2011, Nefarious had a fair bit of buzz around it before it came out thanks to the name on the box. Designed by a certain Donald X. Vaccarino, he of Dominion fame, many gamers were expecting this follow-up to be something as big as his first title. What they actually got was something of a curve ball – a comparatively light affair a world away from Dominion. However, just because it’s light doesn’t mean you should dismiss it.
Between two and six players become mad scientists, hell bent on taking over the world by producing an array of increasingly odd devices. Everyone has a set of four cards, one of which will be played every turn to denote what action they’ll be doing – these are resolved in a specific order, beginning with Speculate.
Speculation allows the placing of a minion meeple (at a small cost) on the play board representing your lair – this will hopefully bring in some cash for you because at the start of each turn you check to see what card the opponents on your left and right have played. If you have a minion in a matching space, you get money from the pot.
Inventing comes next, allowing you to play an invention card from your hand. Each one has a points value, a cost which gets paid into the central bank and possibly may have some instructions in the form of icons at the bottom. Cards, money and minions can be gained and lost depending on what invention is developed, with arrows saying which players are affected; green arrows mean the player who created the invention gets the effect while red arrows mean everyone else gets hit. Selecting the right card at the right time could very well swing the game in your favour – Nefarious is very much a game of beating on your opponents as much as you can.
The third action is Development which gets you a little bit of cash and also allows you to grab a new invention card from the deck. Finally, as every mad scientist needs money to fund his evil schemes, you can choose to Work – this just brings in much needed cash, very useful considering some of your inventions are rather expensive!
Gameplay is quick as lightning – all players select their action card secretly, revealing their choice at the same time. After checking if you’ve got any income from your minions in your lair, the actions are resolved in order. When that’s done, you check to see if anyone’s got twenty points (or more!) – if they do, they’re declared the New Leader Of The World and all must bow down before their ingenious majesty. If no-one’s hit twenty, you play another round – and it’s as simple as that. Even with six players, this game is speedy – you can knock it out in less than twenty minutes.
There’s something else to consider too. The game comes with a stack of oversized Twist cards, each of which will throw a spanner in the works. From simple spins like increasing the amount of money work can get you to more complex effects like minions going on strike, these Twists add a huge amount of replayability to Nefarious. That small box has a lot of game hidden inside thanks to a huge amount of possible combinations.
It’s also a really pretty game; the artwork throughout is gorgeous, especially the invention cards. There’s also a fantastic sense of humour throughout – as you’d expect, this is not a game that takes itself too seriously. It is, after all, a game where maniacal genuises develop things like Brain Swappers and Buttered Cat Arrays. If you’re expecting a Dominion-esque game from Nefarious, you’re out of luck. However, if you’re after a slick design that’s fun to play, this game comes highly recommended, and while it may be tricky to hunt down a copy, if you can find one you should certainly pick it up!
I’m a sucker for B-movies, those crappy, wonderful, so bad it’s good efforts that are somehow thrown together on a budget of £40 and the good will of friends. Whether they’re old school classics, the likes of which you’ll see on Mystery Science Theatre 3000, or something relatively new such as The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra or Jesus Christ: Vampire Hunter, you can count me in. Fire up the DVD, make some popcorn and away we go.
The ones I really love are the sci-fi movies, especially those with the mad scientists intent on taking over the world. I think it’s because I like the deranged inventions that they come up with (probably why I like Bond movies as well – I’ve always wanted to be Q) and now I get to experience that when I’m sitting around a table with mates ready to play a game. Nefarious, the new release from Ascora Games, is all about world domination – in a most delightful way, of course.
Released at Essen 2011, Nefarious had a fair bit of buzz around it before it came out thanks to the name on the box. Designed by a certain Donald X. Vaccarino, he of Dominion fame, many gamers were expecting this follow-up to be something as big as his first title. What they actually got was something of a curve ball – a comparatively light affair a world away from Dominion. However, just because it’s light doesn’t mean you should dismiss it.
Between two and six players become mad scientists, hell bent on taking over the world by producing an array of increasingly odd devices. Everyone has a set of four cards, one of which will be played every turn to denote what action they’ll be doing – these are resolved in a specific order, beginning with Speculate.
Speculation allows the placing of a minion meeple (at a small cost) on the play board representing your lair – this will hopefully bring in some cash for you because at the start of each turn you check to see what card the opponents on your left and right have played. If you have a minion in a matching space, you get money from the pot.
Inventing comes next, allowing you to play an invention card from your hand. Each one has a points value, a cost which gets paid into the central bank and possibly may have some instructions in the form of icons at the bottom. Cards, money and minions can be gained and lost depending on what invention is developed, with arrows saying which players are affected; green arrows mean the player who created the invention gets the effect while red arrows mean everyone else gets hit. Selecting the right card at the right time could very well swing the game in your favour – Nefarious is very much a game of beating on your opponents as much as you can.
The third action is Development which gets you a little bit of cash and also allows you to grab a new invention card from the deck. Finally, as every mad scientist needs money to fund his evil schemes, you can choose to Work – this just brings in much needed cash, very useful considering some of your inventions are rather expensive!
Gameplay is quick as lightning – all players select their action card secretly, revealing their choice at the same time. After checking if you’ve got any income from your minions in your lair, the actions are resolved in order. When that’s done, you check to see if anyone’s got twenty points (or more!) – if they do, they’re declared the New Leader Of The World and all must bow down before their ingenious majesty. If no-one’s hit twenty, you play another round – and it’s as simple as that. Even with six players, this game is speedy – you can knock it out in less than twenty minutes.
There’s something else to consider too. The game comes with a stack of oversized Twist cards, each of which will throw a spanner in the works. From simple spins like increasing the amount of money work can get you to more complex effects like minions going on strike, these Twists add a huge amount of replayability to Nefarious. That small box has a lot of game hidden inside thanks to a huge amount of possible combinations.
It’s also a really pretty game; the artwork throughout is gorgeous, especially the invention cards. There’s also a fantastic sense of humour throughout – as you’d expect, this is not a game that takes itself too seriously. It is, after all, a game where maniacal genuises develop things like Brain Swappers and Buttered Cat Arrays. If you’re expecting a Dominion-esque game from Nefarious, you’re out of luck. However, if you’re after a slick design that’s fun to play, this game comes highly recommended, and while it may be tricky to hunt down a copy, if you can find one you should certainly pick it up!
