I purchased this game because it was accidentally shipped to me and Time Well Spent Games gave me a discount to purchase it outright instead of paying me to ship it back to them. It seemed like a nice light game that would fit in my sister’s wheelhouse and so it became an early Christmas gift when we had a mini-family reunion this past weekend. Since my girlfriend was a non-gaming mood, I ended up playing lots of boardgames with my sister. After about thirty 2P plays of this game, I think I am qualified to say something about Nefarious as a 2P game.
Because my all the plays of this game were with my sister, so her preferences should be put up front. She and her husband (who did not come) are gamers, so she is perfectly capable at playing heavier games like Agricola, but she strongly prefers lighter games. Even a simple 2P abstract game like Let’s Catch the Lion was way too heavy for her tastes. She enjoyed Too Many Cooks (I think in part due to the art) but wasn’t totally enamored with it, nor with Indian Chief. Nor Parade, which can be a surprisingly thinky filler. I suspect No Thanks would have been played in regular rotation except we need a third player and my girlfriend was having none of that. The light Russian beating game Durak and Korean fishing game Go Stop both worked nicely as did Plato 3000 (which is a little too light for me).
As for me, I typically prefer slightly meatier fare, but if I’m having fun why not? My 10’s are typically fillers because the great ones are reliably good in any situation where as medium / heavier games require the right crowd and mood. That said, my current hotness is Container, In the Year of the Dragon, Nefertiti, and Troyes.
In Nefarious, each player is an evil genius trying to take over the world by creating new wicked inventions. Since this is a Eurogame, taking over the world means getting 20 VP’s before your opponents (of course!). Mechanically Nefarious is is a simultaneous action selection game where you collect money, draw invention cards into your hand, and gain VP’s by purchasing these cards in your hand and playing them to the table. You earn money by “Speculating” what actions your opponents will select (that is the only use of those minion meeples) as well as selecting either the “research “($2) or “work” ($4)actions. You gain cards into your hand by taking the “research” (one card) action. To play the invention cards to the table you “invent” them spending your money to get them into your tableau. Along with VP’s, most invention cards have instant effects on you and/or other players for good and/or bad
This is a very nice clean design. Everything in this game has their place and there are almost no “exceptions”. Minions do ONLY one thing (earn you money through speculation). Inventions get played to the table ONLY via the “Invent” action. You gain VP’s ONLY through invention cards in your tableau. Effects from invention cards are ONLY instant and are not permanent. Effects from inventions affect you or ALL players (no selective attacks against other players). Money and cards in hand are more fluid, but of course these are the two resources you have to manage well to win the game
The only thing that seems complicated is Invention Card effect resolution — but even then the rules are pretty clear. All players resolve invention effects simultaneously. Each player will resolve all personal effects (green arrow) first (from top to bottom). Then they will resolve effects from other players (red arrows) in player order relative to their own seat. It sounds complicated but it really isn’t. And of course in a 2P game this is completely not an issue.
Of course, such a nice clean simple game can get pretty dull pretty fast. Even so, I think the first two or three plays with the base mechanics was still quite fun. But right as we began to tire of it, we opened up the pile of 36 “twist” cards that selectively modify the game slightly and every game should be played with two of these. Some of them are pretty simple, like giving you more money to start the game or increasing the victory VP requirement but some of them can make things pretty wild, like making the effects of your invention happen twice or letting you take two actions a turn. We played the twist deck once through and with two cards played per game there are definitely a lot potentially cool twist combos still out there (though of course there are also a few boring ones also).
I’m by no means an expert Dominion player, but whenever I play with expert dominion players, they look at the table and they know what they want to do for the whole game, which thus essentially boils down to a shuffling exercise. There is a bit of that feeling in Nefarious once you get a little experience. At the start of the game you will you look at your hand, look at the twist cards, map out a strategy and execute. Ultimately, this is a race game to 20 points so messing around isn’t gonna get you anywhere but last place – and there isn’t that much game space to explore anyways. Maybe there is a bit more interaction with more players (I suspect the red arrow effects are a bit underpowered in a 2P game) but otherwise, it’s really is just a race to 20 points.
As fitting a lighter game, there is a decent amount of luck of the draw which can doom you. But even then, it isn’t about getting the killer card XYZ, but a case of a series of bad draws that do not interact well with the initial strategy you chose to start the game. The deck is nicely balanced which gives you room to do some optimization and well as make make mistakes which will doom you. Then again being doomed isn’t that big of a deal, after a few plays, we were knocking out a game every 10 minutes.
In short, Nefarious is a fun game and in the right crowd (such as say, hanging with your sister who doesn’t like heavy games).
But do I love it? Not really. I don’t hate it, but I just don’t see much more there to explore, and I don’t usually find myself in a context needing a light multiplayer game. The multiplayer aspect sounds fun, but after a lackluster attempt at King of Tokyo, I’m not sure a lighter, silly, interactive game of this type is going to be normally a right fit for me. Currently I rate it a 6, however I suspect that it may slip down to a 4 as time slips by.
That said, Donald X. has cemented himself as a top notch designer. His games don’t grab my attention, but he has two popular and critically acclaimed hits with Dominion and Kingdom Builder. For Nefarious he clearly wanted to design a lighter filler that was fun to play repeatedly. After thirty plays it’s hard to argue he did not succeed again, splendidly!
One more note: I know it sounds like taking hatred of paper money to an absurd level, but this game is greatly improved if you replace the cardboard money tokens with full size poker chips. Once you get used to it, it’s easier to keep track of money with white=1, red=5, blue=10. During the game there will be a lot of single dollars coming into your system. In a 2P game you’ll be getting 2 or 4 bucks almost every round just due to speculation via your minions. Furthermore if you “research” or “work” you’ll get either 2 or 4 bucks. That’s a lot of singles, and it is a lot easier with poker chips to keep exchanging the big red and white chips instead of fiddling with the smaller cardboard money tokens.
Originally posted on Boardgamegeek.com