Review: Nemo Rising: Robur the Conqueror (Wizkids)

Set in the world of C. Courtney Joyner’s novel, Nemo Rising: Robur the Conqueror, sends players into cooperative adventures that deliver solid gameplay and plenty of surprises, all wrapped in rich steampunk art and supported by some innovative mechanics.

The game’s backstory pits two classic Jules Verne characters against each other: Captain Nemo versus Robur the Conqueror. Players take the roles of Nemo, President Ulysses Grant, and two characters from the book, Sarah Duncan and Adam Fulmer. As a team, you try to stop Robur’s evil plans.

Enough about the history; let’s get on with the top five things you need to know before wielding imaginative Victorian technology and saving the world.

Actions, Abilities, Threats, and Mission Points

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The heart of the game rests on the interaction of four things: actions, abilities, threats, and mission points. Once you understand what they do and how they interact, you’re a long way toward learning the game.

Actions let you move, explore, fight enemies, and secure rooms. To overcome challenges and defeat enemies, you need abilities from action cards, gear, or dice. The characters themselves don’t have any built-in abilities (which surprised us a bit), although each one has a unique trick up its sleeve.

Sometimes activating these abilities costs your team a mission point or two. These are the currency of your story. Spend too many mission points and you lose the game. Finally, threats represent the enemies that stand between you and your goals. Work together to either eliminate or avoid them as much as you can.

Taking a Turn

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Each player gets six actions per round (and maybe an extra action depending on what you do). You start by picking up an action card and its accompanying threat card. Choose how you’ll play the action card (more about that in a moment), then start using your action points.

Try to use all of your actions every turn — including the extras — because you can’t save actions from one round to the next.

One Action Card, Two Ways to Play

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Your first big choice each turn is how to use your action card. Every card plays in two ways. One way gives you one of the three abilities (brains, brawn, or skill) this turn, but costs you one mission point in the process.

The other way costs nothing to use. It offers things like an extra die roll, an extra action, stealthy movement, or use of a shortcut. Choose wisely!

Enemy Movement System Builds Tension

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We especially loved the way that the game brings enemy tokens to the board and moves them around. It’s a sweet piece of innovation that creates a lot of tension.

Every time you choose an action card, you also get a threat card. Threats add flavor to the game thanks to card titles like “mechanical wasps” and “poison gas.” They also complicate your life by introducing challenges to overcome or bringing in enemies and moving them around.

The enemy movement system is the game’s crowning achievement. When a threat card moves enemy pieces, it tells you which type of enemies to move (humanoid, bestial, or mechanical), whether they follow the red or blue arrows on the board, and how far they go.

You never know whether that enemy down the corridor will move away this turn or spin around and fight you. It’s nothing short of brilliant, and it makes the game wonderfully tense.

Lots of Play (and Replay)

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If Nemo Rising has a secret super power, it’s the amount of replayability the game delivers through its scenarios and rules variants.

When you set up each game, you select one of the two scenarios (air or sea) and then randomize the location tiles onto the board. Each scenario also includes its own mission and threat decks. The combination gives you a different play experience every time, since the rooms move around and you face new goals.

The game’s rules also offer a solo mode where you run a single hero around the board and try to complete the missions by yourself.

The stealth mode variant forces everyone to be silent while someone is taking their actions. Before and after the action step, players are free to talk and discuss options, but they can’t communicate once the actions begin. This makes each player think on their feet and improvise solutions to unexpected problems or opportunities.

Verdict

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There’s a lot to like in Nemo Rising: Robur the Conqueror, and we definitely recommend it for families and friends.

Its innovative enemy movement system puts a welcome new spin on cooperative games and can ratchet the tension through roof (and we loved it). You also get a lot of replayability for your money thanks to the random board setup, multiple scenarios, and variant rules.

Our only wish is that Wizkids streamlined the rules and included a quick reference chart explaining the terms and icons. Your first trip through the rules feels like a slog. Terms get used without definitions and icons get introduced, but their explanations are buried.

Some of the confusion comes from layout problems with jumbled heading and subheading sizes. This leads to frustrating moments as you figure out the game. To avoid this, give yourself time to read the rules once or twice before teaching others to play. You’ll make the evening much more fun for yourself and your friends.