• Game: Nexus Ops
• Publisher: Fantasy Flight Games
• Designer: Charlie Catino
• Genre: Dudes on a Map
• Players: 2-4
• Playtime: 60-90 minutes



• What's Hot: A modern classic of streamlining and simple gameplay



• What's Not: Ugly, murky graphic design that misses the point of the original; new content isn’t worth $50 for 1st edition owners; inexcusably misprinted setup diagrams

by: Michael Barnes

Nexus Ops is one of the best games of the past decade, a minimalist take on the Axis and Allies-style light war game that still feels highly innovative seven years after its initial availability as an Avalon Hill/Wizards of the Coast title. It’s a game with a unique, day-glo arcade cabinet look that stands apart from countless other games with their darker, bleaker artwork and atmospheres. Even if the game weren’t completely awesome, it would still be one of the brightest and most unique games on the market. But now, the game is the next stop on Fantasy Flight Games’ quest to own printing rights to every hobby game ever published.

The good news about the reissue is that FFG didn’t pull a Dungeonquest on us by changing the rules or mechanics to mark its territory. No threat dials, card combat systems, or come-ons to buy into a line of expansions. It’s 100% Nexus Ops, with a couple of minor tweaks and some optional new variants. The bad news is that they’ve completely redone the graphic and product design so the day-glo figures and quirky artwork are gone. In doing so, the game’s singularity- and in fact something of its soul- has been lost.

Nexus Ops ’11 is one of the ugliest, murkiest, dingiest looking games I’ve ever seen with too-dark artwork and wallpaper-like terrain textures clashing with pastel miniatures. Sure, the figures have more detail and are more “serious”, but they’re also not nearly as appealing, memorable, or idiosyncratic. The illustrations are likewise muddy and oddly nondescript- it’s almost as if they asked one of their in-house illustrators that usually does darker fantasy and sci-fi work to do something “a little more cartoony” or something. It didn’t work. It’s almost like FFG just didn’t get the original game’s visual style.

But FFG at least understood the gameplay. It’s the same as it ever was, and it remains great. Players represent four different corporations exploiting an alien planet for a resource called Rubium. From a home base, Crystalloids, Lava Leapers, and other tamed native critters are sent out across a modular hex map surrounding a central Monolith to set up new Rubium mines that finance new unit purchases. Victory points are earned by accomplishing secret mission cards distributed throughout the game, which might include battles with specific parameters. Combat is dice based and scheduled on an order of battle triage, with each unit featuring terrain or movement advantages and an occasional Energize card tilting the balance. It feels very much like a Risk descendent by way of StarCraft.