Nexus solo mode preview

0:00 Hey everybody, this is Mike with the OneStop Co-op Shop and today I'm doing a preview play of Nexus's solo mode. And no disclaimer for this, we don't take money from publishers. I just want to help you make an informed decision. And if you like the content on the OneTop Co-op shop, consider supporting us through Patreon. You get early access to our videos and exclusive videos every month you can't see anywhere else, including for January some follow-ups on my top games of 2025 lists. You can also listen to our weekly podcast for reviews and design discussions, or join the conversation and say hi on our Discord. So, Nexus is a onevone dueling card game where you are playing events and summoning units to try to take down their nexus's life total. You start with 30 before they can destroy your Nexus. And it's got a sort of smashup combining element where you take two different factions and shuffle each of their 15 cards together to make your 30 card deck. And I've been playing this one for a while. They sent me a prototype of the 1v one decks and I've enjoyed it quite a bit. But I finally got a prototype of the solo mode decks, which at this point has four different decks that you can mix and match to fight against. And I'll be trying out against them. So, I am using the Pharaoh's Army, uh, like this Jackal Warrior here. Uh, their core thing is that they switch from day to night and back each round. And when they play units, they will have a day or night effect uh, if you play them at the right time. Like here, the Jacko Warrior, if I play when it's night, will deal three damage. if I play him in the day, he doesn't do any of that. And then my other army is the skeletons. I haven't tried them yet, but they

1:30 basically like to put skeletons in their discard pile, and then other characters become stronger, have more powerful effects based on the number of skeletons in the discard pile. So, uh, yeah, they like to bring back the dead, I guess. As for the bot, I'm using two of the four factions here. I guess I can show stuff from the deck. The first one is the Ratman. They like to do automatic damage. They get bonuses for the AI having a bigger hand size. And then they also have the goblins which summon these mobs, a bunch of little goblin units, but they get to attack and kind of stay around longer than most units. So that's sort of their main thing. And the main difficulty modifier for the game is to increase their life. Uh so 40 is sort of normal difficulty. Here I have them at 50 life. Although I have been winning at 50 in my last few games, so it's possible I should boost them up a bit more. I could go all the way to 60 life.

2:22 But what I could also do, which would be a huge boost for them, is let them play two cards a turn instead of one cuz generally each player and the bot are going to play one card each turn. Uh, but I think that's maybe a bridge too far and I might die too easily. So I'll show you them having 50 life and playing one card a turn. And again, I haven't played the skeletons before, so I figure they might be a little weaker for me. And we'll see how that goes. But yeah, basically, they're playing one card a turn. Things are pretty clear. Uh, the one main thing that you need for the solo mode is this target priority card that switches based on the player's life and the Automa's life, and it's going to determine who they attack when they have choices to do so. But they are taking the first turn. So, what you do at the start of your turn is you draw one card, except the starting player does not do that. Besides the first turn though, for every turn after this, they will draw one card. When the bot draws one card, it goes to the back of their hand. I have the hand spled out, by the way, because some effects will check how big their hand size is. And also, when they go above 10 cards, they have to trash cards until they go down to 10. That's the same for a player. They have a max 10 hand size. After drawing, the player has a play phase where they can play a single card from their hand. The bot will just play the top card of their hand. And let's see what it is. And some of these are events, which is like this one, the cure all potion, which means it'll resolve its effect and then get discarded. Uh, some of them will be units. Uh, and many cards will have this little gem here in the middle. This means that it does not count as your one card play for the round, and you can

3:54 play one more card. So, the bot is going to play another card after this. But, first, it says they restore two life, which is great because they're already at max life, and you can't go above. Then it says, "If you have 20 cards or fewer in your graveyard, return this card to your deck." So, they're just going to shuffle that back in. That was pretty much a null card. Just keeping their hand size lower. I don't mind that. All right. Now, here is a unit. Let's look at what's going on with them. So, their faction is goblin identified at the top. On the right is an orange icon with a one inside that shows that this is sort of a support unit. They're not an attacker or a defender. They just kind of sit there and do something special. Uh the value is the value of this card. It's how much life they have when you attack them to destroy them, but it's also a general approximation of their strength. And then many of these units will have an exhausting effect they can do once per round. This rescue squad says if they exhaust them, oh god, deal three damage and then shuffle your hand. And they also have a little special ability down there at the bottom. Each time one of your support or defense units would be destroyed, return a unit from a mob to your hand instead.

4:52 So these guys could have been incredibly dangerous if they'd come out when the goblins already had a bunch of mobs to protect them. as it is, they're going to plink me for three damage, but then if I can do a single point of damage to them, they'll be gone. So, not too worrisome. So, the bot will now activate all of its activation powers. If it could play more cards, it would also do that. And would kind of alternate playing cards and then checking for exhausting powers and playing cards again. Uh, there is no targeting priority needed here. The only thing they can attack right now is my nexus. So, I'm going down to 27. By the way, if you're wondering, I have borrowed life trackers from Sentinels of the Multiverse. And then the final step of the turn would be if they had any attacking units, which will have red values in a circle instead of the orange support values here. Uh they would try to attack people with them. But nothing going on with that right now. So that is the end of the first bot turn. All right. Now coming to me, I get to draw a card. Switches from day to night. And let's go through my options real quick.

5:48 I won't have to do this uh every turn since I won't have too many new cards. So I've got Eclipse from the Pharaohs. It says draw one card. Place this card on top of the day knight token and return it to your deck at the end of your turn until the end of your turn. It is both day and night at the same time and it is a free card with that gem. And then I've got two copies of this jackal warrior. So they are a two attacker which is the red icon there. That means during the attack phase of my turn I can attack units of the other side or attack their nexus. But the key thing with attackers, and this is a fairly unique thing to this game compared to most 1v one battling games, is that after they attack once, they are discarded. So they destroy themselves in the process of attacking. But the Jackal Warrior can ignore defense units. Usually blue defense units, which can't attack on their own, would just sit around blocking for other units, and they would be the one you would have to attack. And if I summon him at night, like it is right now, I get to deal three damage uh to a single unit or to the nexus if there's no one to block for it. So I've got two of them. Then for skeleton cards, I've got the death knight, who is a skeleton with a three attack value.

6:50 They have trample, which as you can imagine means when they attack somebody, they also go through to the nexus afterwards. And then this guy gets plus one to his attack value for every three skeletons in my graveyard, which is currently none. Also got another skeleton, the soul reaper. Also a three attacker. That little down arrow means that this is an ability that resolves when I first play him. So it says, "Search your deck for up to two units and place them in your graveyard and then shuffle your deck." That's pretty cool. Then finally, I've got a little weeny one health support unit, the Lich Queen. When I play her, I can deploy one skeleton from my graveyard. And the lightning bolt is an ongoing reaction ability. Says, "If a skeleton is destroyed, return one unit from your graveyard to your deck and deploy one skeleton with equal or less value from your graveyard without activating its deployment ability." So, she's definitely better for later game stuff.

7:38 All right, so with those being said, I'm leaning towards either the Jackal Warrior. He can deal three damage to their nexus and then kill the rescue squad with his two attack or the death knight or the soul reaper. The soul reaper would be a bit of a waste cuz if I attack the rescue squad with him, uh he would use his whole three attack to deal a single point of damage, but I don't want to leave them around to keep on hitting me. Whereas the death knight has trample, but if I use the soul reaper first and get a bunch of skeletons out, then he would also be able to do more damage. But for now, let's just get the death knight. Okay, so I'm going to play them as my one play. It's not a free card. Uh, then we go into my attack phase. I will attack for three damage. If there were blue units, I would have to attack them. Defensive shield units. If there were red units, I could not attack them. Generally speaking, red units can't attack other red units. You have to use direct damage effects and such. Uh, or I could attack their nexus if there's nobody blue to block it. Or I can attack a support unit. So, I'm doing three damage. Uh, one is enough to destroy them. And they don't have any mobs to protect themselves. Sad for them. And because the guy had trample, the remaining two damage goes through. But my death knight is discarded, which gets me my first skeleton in my discard pile for my lich queen to bring back to life and other fun stuff. Although I do realize maybe I should have done the jackal warrior because it's going to be day next turn. I won't have as many options. But I can just play the soul reaper if I need to. All right, now we're back to the bot's turn. They get a fourth card and they are playing a ratman card, the plagueunner. So it's a three attack. It says when it's played, it draws one card. They can ignore blue

9:10 units. And this card cannot attack blue units with value three or less. And the stuff on the left kind of overrides the target priority. That usually is four units. So this guy prefers to attack support units and then blue defense units. But here I've got nobody. And the priority generally speaking when nothing else is around is just to slam my nexus. So he's going to attack me for three and blow himself up. And considering that I'm down to 24 and they still have 48 life, uh, which is 18 more than a regular player would start with, they're doing fine. All right, we are back to the daytime. And what did I get? A frost skeleton. Okay, so when I play them, I can exhaust one unit or restore two life to my Nexus. That's nice. And then when I exhaust them, I can discard one card to draw one card. Oo, that's kind of nice, too, to get more skeletons in my discard pile. And they got a three block, which is pretty dang good.

9:58 Although I kind of don't want to play that until I have someone to block for like the Lich Queen. H So I do want to play the Frost Skeleton, but for now, let's play the Soul Reaper. So I get to search my deck for up to two units and place him in my graveyard. I'm going to put one of my one value skeleton warriors cuz when the other skeleton warrior gets played, they can deploy that one for free. And my other soul reaper, I guess. Now I've got a three attacker. So the question is, do I attack their nexus for three? Do I wait in case they summon some nasty unit that I want to take care of? But if I wait and they get a free damage dealing effect, which the ratman especially have quite a few of, I might just lose this guy entirely. Although I guess if they're attacking me, they're not attacking my nexus. So sure, I'll wait for now. All righty, they get another card. Oh, plague lord. So this guy is actually good to get right now. He's way worse when they have a bigger hand size.

10:49 So he is a ratman. He's got a three value. He says, "Exhaust. Restore one nexus health for each card in your hand, which right now is only three. Then search your deck for the uppermost defensive unit and deploy it. And each time a ratman is destroyed, return it to your deck instead of your graveyard." I don't know if that applies to him. I'm assuming it doesn't cuz he's dead before his effect would apply. It will certainly apply to other people. All right, so he comes out. I got to find the first blue unit, which is this knight hunter man. They're really going heavy ratmen. Uh, so the fact that this is a free unit with the gem does not matter here because this is a free deployment from the plague lord. This guy is both an attacker and a defender. So he has both kind of traits of that. And he's not destroyed after attacking. So he's going to plink me for one damage and then stick around. And it says, "If your opponent plays a unit, that unit is placed immediately in the graveyard before resolving any effect unless they discard a card from their hand." Well, that's annoying.

11:39 And he is a defender, which means I do have to deal with him before I can do anything to anybody else. Uh, great. All right. So, uh, after they play cards, they will resolve any exhausting cards. So, they're getting three life back. They're back to 50. Uh, this is definitely harder with this set of factions. Last time I was playing wizards who could do a ton of direct damage, and I was playing vampires who could heal my nexus. I made things a lot easier. All right, then the knigh hunter going to their attack phase is going to attack for one damage. Now, this time they actually have some choices because they could attack my nexus. Oh, no, no, never mind. They cannot attack my red guy because he's a red guy. So, we still aren't going to use the target priority card. Honestly, there aren't that many instances in my playing where I have enough stuff out that they need to use this. But here, the Night Hunter is just plinking me for one more damage, but again, they don't get discarded. All right, so he's going to nighttime. I need to deal with those people.

12:29 Although, the Nightigh Hunter is going to make things a little bit annoying. Oh, what's this one? Underworld Ritual. This is a nighttime card. Look at the top five cards of your deck. Shuffle three of them back into your deck. Place the remaining two cards on top of your deck in any order and draw one card. Huh. Might as well do it, right? It's a free card. So, I look at the top five cards in my deck, shuffle three of them back into my deck, then place the remaining two cards on top, and I get to pick which one I draw. Oh, I got the other skeleton warrior. That could be good. Got Sun Soldiers that can heal me. Meh. Um, another death knight, a skull rider, and a solar sentinel. Hm. I definitely want to draw the skeleton warriors cuz that's going to get me some guys to take care of that weeny knight hunter guy. So, I'll put him on top. And then who do I want to have? I guess another death knight. I am getting a lot of skeletons now. So the other three will get shuffled in. This one goes on top of my deck and then straight to my hand. And let's look at this guy now. So he's a one attacker and one defense.

13:22 He's a free play. When I play him, I get to draw one card. And I can deploy another skeleton warrior from my graveyard. Awesome. So I do that, but I'm playing a unit. So I do need to discard something else. H I'll discard my Eclipse for now. So that allows me to play him. And then he makes me draw my skull rider. Wait, was that what I wanted? I put the wrong thing on top. Lets me draw the death knight I had left. And I deploy the other skeleton warrior. Now note that I'm deploying him, not playing him. So the knigh hunter's ability does not resolve. Oh, but that's still a free action crud. If I deploy more people, I'll have to waste more cards. But actually, the Lich Queen's really good right now because I've got skeletons in my discard pile and skeletons here. So, let's go ahead and deploy her. So, I do have to discard another card. Well, hey, let's get rid of I don't know, actually. Maybe the death knight. Sure. Because then I can just bring him back, right? So, if a skeleton Oh, no. I get to deploy one skeleton from my graveyard, which can actually be the soul reaper. I do get to resolve his ability. So, I can put two units into my graveyard. Well, I've actually only got two skeletons left.

14:30 Uh, it's a skull rider and one of those frost skeletons. So, they both go in there. Now, just to remind you of her effect, it says, "If a skeleton is destroyed, return one unit from your graveyard to your deck and deploy one skeleton with equal or less value from your graveyard without activating its uh down ability." So, if I uh put Oh, I guess I could have put some of the the big value pharaoh cards into my discard. Ah, well, too late. But yeah, I could have put like a three value pharaoh card just to return it to the deck to get a big skeleton back. All right, so I have a ton of people. And what do I have? I have a one defender with the knigh hunter and then a threelife plague lord. So I certainly want to take care of those guys. And I could use one of the skeleton warriors to kill the night hunter without being wasteful. But I really like having defenders to tank damage, especially for my lich queen. So let's have my soul reaper uh go after the night hunter even though it's wasteful. Any I'm saying wasteful because this guy only has one life. But the entire three attack gets dealt to him. Oh, um, he's not destroyed after attacking. That doesn't apply.

15:39 What is this guy? Each time a ratman is destroyed, return it to your deck instead of your graveyard. Okay, so this guy gets shuffled back in from the plague lord's ability. Now, here's the crazy thing. I just double checked. Again, I haven't played the skeletons before, and every faction is a little busted in this game. That's kind of the design. It says if a skeleton is destroyed, which the Soul Reaper just was from attacking, I get to return one unit from my graveyard to my deck and deploy a skeleton with equal or fewer value. Okay. Yeah, this is great. I wish I had put some of the people I'm going to put my Soul Reaper that just attacked actually. Shuffle them back into the deck to bring out my big boy death knight. Now, they are exhausted. If you uh summon anybody through any means during the attack phase, they can't attack that turn. He can't have like infinite loops and stuff. Uh, but that was cool. Hey, with that, let's go and have my soul reaver attack their plague lord and destroy him. And again, I I think that his own ability doesn't apply and he just goes to the discard pile.

16:37 Could be wrong. Okay. And then that lets me shuffle somebody back in to get set somebody else. I'm going to put my soul reaver back in my deck as well so we can get me more skeletons and things later. And that's enough to summon another death knight. Although actually, yeah, there's only two skeletons in my discard. Never mind. I'm gonna summon the frost skeleton to have a big defender to block for stuff. I'm definitely not going to attack my skeleton warriors because they are more useful as defenders, I think. Wow. Uh, okay. Skeletons got a lot of units going on, don't I? Of course, I haven't actually damaged the enemy yet, but they're also a little bit weaker in hand. Ah, the fumigator. When they come out, they deal three damage and they're a three defender. And if this card is dealt damage and you have three or more cards in your hand, it goes back to your hand. That's annoying. Okay, so it's dealing three damage. And for it, its preference is to attack red and then orange. Now, direct damage can target red people, but it does have to target uh blue people. Oh, I forgot. Exhaust one unit restore two when that guy comes out. I healed, too. But yeah, so they still have to target defenders unless otherwise stated. And they go for the biggest one they can kill. So, they are going to kill my frost skeletons, but I kept everyone else safe. Oh, and if a skeleton is destroyed, what the heck, man? Um, I guess I will bring them right back by putting my death knight in my deck. Thanks, Lich Queen. You're just a little bit silly. But that is it for them. So, it's back today. And let's see what I get. Soul Harvest. Discard up to two units from your hand to restore one Nexus life for each discarded unit. Then draw one card for each discarded unit.

18:08 Oh, well, I could discard these guys just to make my Oh, my death knight's ready to attack now. Yeah, to make my death knight stronger. Yeah, I like that. Okay, so I'll play that as a free card. says, "I discard two units from my hand to restore one for each discarded unit. I'll discard the skull rider and the frost skeleton." Actually, will I? Well, sure. So, I'm going to draw two more cards. All right. So, I go back to 27. And then I'm getting a solar priestess. When I play her, I can return one card with day from my graveyard to the top of my deck. Oh, and if it's day, I can restore life every I guess every other round. And I get a Necro Nara. This card may ignore defensive units. And if it's nighttime when I play them, I draw a card. Oh, jeez. This is getting a little silly now. Look, this guy, the skull rider, I discarded. If this card is discarded, deploy it and they can ignore blue units. And if they hit the opponent's nexus, they deal plus one damage. So, they're a three instead of a two. I'm going to have to zoom out a bit here to get everybody.

19:01 So, remember that was a free play. Yeah, let's definitely get the solar priestess. Let's see. Is there anybody with daytime? Nope. So, that first effect doesn't uh apply, but I will go ahead and heal myself, too. This is looking a lot better now. And then how many skeletons? There's only two skeletons in the discard. I was going to have my death knight attack. Uh well, I'll still have him attack and blow up the fumigator, but he gets shuffled into the opponent's hand. But the lit queen does mean I guess I'll put the death knight in to get the frost skeleton, which lets me heal too cuz I don't have anybody to exhaust. The problem is I'm not getting any damage. Like uh there are factions that are great at defense. The skeletons appear to be one, which I did not realize when I picked them, but I'm not actually hurting anything at the moment. Oh, I can discard. Oh, I forgot about this. I can discard one card to draw one card. Okay, guess I don't need two Jackal Warriors since uh they can't do much right now. And this will make my Lich Queen better. I got another Necronara. What the heck? I don't think I need two of them either. So, let's discard one of them. Get a Soul Reaper.

20:09 Okay, I can play him later. Then, should I attack again all? Sure. I'll have my Skull Rider hit their nexus for three damage with its bonus, which triggers my Lich Queen. This is silly. Um, I can put Here's what I should have been doing. My Necronara in. So, put non-skeletons to get my Skull Rider right back. All right. Uh, good times. Good times. Okay. What are they doing? They are getting a fifth card. Oh, and they got a rat plague. So, when this comes out, it deals two damage to the opponent's nexus, reduced by one for each card they return from their hand or the bottom of the deck. Whatever. I got healing right now, so I'll just tank the two damage. And then it says, "If your opponent has units in play, deal three damage." That's pretty annoying. Okay, so they'll certainly do that. And it's definitely going to kill one of my frost skeletons. And I guess I can get rid of Jackal Warrior to bring back a skull rider. All right, good job, dudes. And I got another Necronara. Interesting. And it's night time now. So yeah, let's play some of these guys. Oh, the Necronara is a free play. So sure. So I'll play them.

21:07 Uh, which is free. And I get to draw a card immediately. It's a Tomb King. This card may only attack during nighttime. Oh, it's not destroyed after attacking and it can ignore blue units. Oh my gosh. [clears throat] Okay, that's a free play. Um, this is dumb. Okay, there a free play. And I get to draw again. Thank god it's night time. Okay, there's a sun guy. Um, and then I can finally play I guess my jackal warrior because it's night time. So, I get to deal three damage, which I'm going to do to the nexus while I waste it on the little rat guys. Okay. And then I got some stuff I can do. Uh yes, I do. Let's see. Let's uh let's trash one of my skeleton warriors um to kill the rat plague. And then I actually don't I guess I could return the frost skeleton, bring the skeleton warrior back, but that doesn't really seem worth it. All right. And then tomb king can just attack for free. So that's two. We'll go and do skull rider.

22:03 That'll be three more. So that's five. Gets them down to 39. And yeah, I don't I don't really want to do anything with the lich queen yet. I should have used the frost skeleton's power, but it's too late now once I start attacking. Oh, I'll have another skull rider go in and do three more. And then uh yeah, since these are similar values, I'll return one skull rider to the deck to get another one. Well, then what the heck? Might as well. I'll attack with all three of these guys for six more damage, which means they're down to 30 and I got a lot more uh units to use for skeleton renewal. Wait, but just a note, a player would obviously like hone in on the Lich Queen. Although, I do have enough defense that it'd be hard to actually get her. Oh, and you know what? Uh, if this seems too powerful of a combo, that's because it is. Cuz I was cheating. I just went and checked the online rule book. I don't have a printed one, so it took a little bit. Uh, but when you use a reaction ability, you exhaust the character. So, gosh, how many extra skeletons did I get? Um, a lot. Let's kill the frost skeleton. Ah, let's kill our really good Tomb King.

23:04 That's probably still not enough to even out the bonus I was getting from abusing and overusing her, but hey, we'll we'll say it's okay now. But honestly, that's a good thing cuz that was getting a little silly. Um, also, this is important now that I know it's limited. Uh, you unexhaust all your units at the end of your turn. So, I am ready to use the Lich Queen if they defeat like my skeleton warriors. Sorry for my rampant cheating. Goblins and rats. What you got in Oh, it's the fumigator again. So, they're doing three damage, which will kill my skeleton warriors. And hey, I'm going to exhaust the Lich Queen to return. Let's return one of my frost skeletons to get the other one in play. And I'll go ahead and heal myself for two. Still a great ability, by the way, especially if I keep defenders. But that's it for them. Um, so who can kill the fumigator?

23:55 The guy's got three life. Well, I don't untap the Lich Queen. I'm in the daytime. Oh, so I can heal. Oh well. Um, got another frost. Oh, I got a soul reaper, but I could also use the sun soldiers, but they aren't strong enough. Okay, so I'll play the soul reaper for my main play. And there are some three value uh and four value. Look at this guy. Four four uh cards, but I don't want to play them. I want to leave them around. So, I guess I'll put a death knight in my discard and um the other soul reaper. Sure. All right, that's my only play for the turn. So, let's have the soul reaper destroy the fumigator, which does get shuffled back into their hand again. Annoying. And then I could discard one to draw one. Do I want to do that? I guess I can have the frost skeleton in the discard pellet. It's actually a better place for him. Oh, uh, yeah, I should have done that before I attack, but whatever. Uh, and I could heal, but I'm at max, so whatever. Oh, and the skull rider can do Yep. I'll go and do that to do three damage with their bonus. So, I got them under 30, but I again can't bring anybody back. Man, I was cheating rampidly before.

24:58 All right, bot. What you got? The plague. Oh, it's a free card. They restore three. Whoops. I was too happy about getting them under 30. Then if they have four or more cards in their deck, they return this to their deck. It's not too big of a deal. Okay, then they play again. Ah, it's another Night Hunter. Okay, we'll deal with that in a second because they get another play and it's the fumigator. Well, that's not too surprising. They're doing three damage, which kills my frost skeleton. Oh, but I can use my Lich Queen again. Ooh, and I kind of need to cuz otherwise the knigh hunter will kill my lich queen. So, let's bring a frost skeleton back by putting the other frost skeleton in the Oh, no. I'll put the soul reaper in my deck because then when it's their attack phase and the knigh hunter wants to hit for one. My three defense is too high and they don't attack at all if they can't destroy something because they would just blow up their guy. So, that is it for them. Although, they do have their little knigh hunter make me discard a card to play an extra card thing going. It's night time. I got my bone golem. So, if this card is played from your hand, take up to six skeletons from your graveyard and place them under this card. Each time this card would be destroyed, you may instead take three skeletons from under this card and place them in your graveyard. And he's got trample. That's a lot of fun. Ooh, raise dead. Deploy one unit from your graveyard. So, I could use him with the bone golem and get them right back. It's also nighttime for the sun soldiers.

26:11 Well, here first, let's discard the sun soldiers to get something else. Ooh, it's a death knight. I like that. I need to kill the fumigator and the night hunter. Hm. here. Actually, the only way I see to do that is a non-skeleton thing. It doesn't say deploy a skeleton unit. I'm going to play raised dead as my main play, which uh then deploys the Jackal Hunter. Now, it says, oh no, when I play a unit, not use a deploy effective is also getting around the Nightigh Hunter's effect. So, when I play him, I'm dealing three damage. And then I'll have him attack to blow up the Night Hunter, who only has one life. The fumigator gets shuffled back in. He is very annoying. But the Night Hunter is just gone. I guess we have my Lich Queen back. I wish my hand size was larger. I could do more stuff. What's up? A sharp shooter. Ooh, deal two damage to the opponent's nexus. Well, that's fine. I can just heal that in two seconds. But then he's going to attack for two. No, he isn't because my frost skeleton is strong enough to stop him. Although, this guy is not a blue. I might have cheated before. You can't attack reds.

27:11 So, if I had a red attack, a red before. Sorry about that. So, actually didn't need to use my Lich Queen yet. That's cool. All right. Um, go into daytime. What's this? Solar Sentinel. Restore one and draw one card. And then while in play, this card adds two to its defense value during daytime. That's pretty great. So, I could be even. Although, I've already got a frost skeleton for defense. Should I do the bone golem? How many uh guys do I have? I do have exactly six skeletons. So, let's do it. Let me grab them all cuz I'll get him right back for the Lich Queen. All right. So, he's got six. And now in my attack phase, I'm going to attack. He does five damage. He would normally be gone, but who do I want to keep? Let's get another frost skeleton in case they do something crazy to me. And the soul reaper and the death knight, the biggest ones, right? So, I can't attack the sharpshooter since he's a red. But hey, I can take their nexus down five. All right, they're coming back. And they've got a scavenger. Look at the top five cards from your deck. Place all ratman cards on top of your deck in random order. Place the rest on the bottom.

28:12 After this card is destroyed, place the bottom unit from your grave on top of your deck. Honestly, that's not too bad since it's only a two life, though. Okay, we do have two ratmanmen. And where are all the goblins? There they are getting put on the bottom of the deck. Sorry, goblins. I'm basically only fighting a ratman deck right now. Okay. And then this guy wants to attack, but still the only blue I have is a three value, so they can't. So, it goes right back around to them. All right. And it's night time again. Ooh, Lunar Priest. When I play her, I can return one card with nighttime from your graveyard to the top of your deck and then deal two damage to the opponent's nexus whenever it's night. Heck yeah. It's the opposite of a solar priestess. Yes. Yes, I will play her. Sure. Okay. So, I can return one card with nighttime to the top of my deck. Do I want to put like the Jackal Warrior? No, I don't want to do that because the more things in the discard, the better my Lich Queen works. Okay. Um, so I'll go ahead and use her to do two damage to them. I can't heal right now. Oh, did I forget to heal last turn? Yeah, I did. I could have healed after the sharpshooter hit me. Well, my mistake. That gets him down to 23. All right. And then I guess we're just going to do Bone Gollum. So, he's not dead yet still. Now, this guy's a blocker, but he has trample. So, three damage gets through to the nexus. And when this guy is destroyed, place the bottom unit from their graveyard on top of their deck. Oh, they're going to have a goblin coming back. Well, eventually they got to go through their whole hand, of course. All right, but this is good.

29:32 Bone Gollum's got one more big attack in them. And I've still got the Lich Queen to bring people back. Okay. Oop, we finally got a mob. So, let's talk about this. So, they are free card. We'll get to that in a second. It says, "Join a hobgoblin mob." I'll show you what that means in a moment. There are two attacker. And if the opponent plays a card with a free action, the next card they play is chosen randomly from their hand. So, join a hobgoblin mob. If there was another card called hobgoblin mob, they would join together and they basically become a giant unit. So, like two hobgoblins would be four. Uh, three hobgoblins would be six. And whenever they attack, they only lose a single card. So, they go from a four to a two. So, they're kind of like extra nasty and annoying. Uh, when there aren't any out yet, what you do is you look at the top four cards of the bot deck. If there is a card with that exact name, you would play it for free, but you wouldn't resolve its played abilities. Uh, so you would get another hobgoblin mob. Here, I got lucky and they didn't get one. Okay, but that was a free card, so they freaking fumigator. Uh, they are blowing up my defensive frost skeleton. I don't want them to kill my my nice yellow people. Let's use the lich queen. Just been sitting here waiting for this. I'll put the death knight back into my deck to play another frost skeleton. Oh, and I can uh heal too when I do it. Or no, I'll exhaust the I don't know the hobgoblin mob so they aren't attacking me this turn because honestly, I'm not too worried about them killing me before I defeat them. All right. Uh, that is it. All right, it's daytime so I can heal with the priestess again. Let's not forget that. I can play my really good solar sentinel or my death knight because there are a ton of skeletons

31:04 there now. Yeah, I mean I just want to destroy them, right? So, let's do the uh the death knight. And do I want to discard one card to draw one card? No, these are fine. Okay, so let's heal two before I forget. All right, then we got a five trample and how many skeletons are there for him? There are five skeletons to discard. So, he only get plus one. So, that's a five trample and a four trample. And yeah, the Lich Queen's exhaust is so I'm not going to be able to do anything. Oh, no, no, never mind. I was thinking that if I did the bone golem first then he would boost the death knight but he is not technically a skeleton. So five trample and four trample. So it's nine total and only three is going to the fumigator. So they are down to 14. But fumigator still gets shuffled in cuz they still have three or fewer cards. I don't know how I can ever get rid of that guy. And he is extra annoying with his three auto damage. Oh, sorry. I should have said that the sharpshooter could not attack on their last turn cuz he only had two damage. So it would not be enough to uh defeat the frost skeleton that's guarding everybody. If I had not exhausted the hobgoblin mob with the frost skeleton's ability, then they could have both teamed up because damage does last for the turn, but doesn't carry over the next turn. Uh, so yes, that's why they did not attack with the sharpshooter. All right, but they're definitely ready to attack now. And ah, there's the rescue squad. So these guys come out. They're going to deal three damage and shuffle my hand. Well, the three will defeat the frost skeleton, but my Lich Queen is ready to bring him back. Yeah, I'll put the Death Knight in the deck to summon him again. and I'll exhaust one of the attackers again.

32:28 Let's just repeat our favorite tricks. Oh, and now this uh power actually matters. Each time one of your uh units like this would be destroyed, return a unit with a mob to your hand instead. So, if I got to kill the mob first, then blow them up, but they're a red. That's annoying. Once again, these guys can't attack cuz I have the frost skeleton. Nobody else they can target. All right, I think it's actually going to be time. Oh, no. No, she does not untap. It's going to be time for my jackal warrior to shine. Oh, I got another Lich Queen. Oh my gosh. Maybe I should do that instead then. I was going to I was going to play the Jackal Warrior to blast the uh the hobgoblin mob before attacking the rescue squad, but another Lich Queen would be insane. Now, notably, the Bone Golem's power does not let you add skeletons under it when it is played from your discard. Uh only, it says from your hand. So, I couldn't use a Lich Queen. Oh, that's only deploying one skeleton. Never mind. Yeah, no hurry.

33:23 Okay, let's use the jackal warrior while it work while it works. So, I will deploy the Jackal Warrior, which does three damage, and I will blast the hobgoblin mob, which takes away the rescue squad's ability to be protected by it. And even though it's a bit wasteful, I'm going to attack with the Jackal Warrior to destroy the rescue squad before it can plink me anymore. What else have I got? Oh, I can do two damage to their nexus because of my Lunar Priestess. And I guess that's it. I could discard something and draw with the frost skeleton, but I like the cards in my hand. All right, but the sharpshooter's hanging out. and ooh, mad raiders. Okay, when they get played, they return one opponent's unit in play to their deck and then they get to draw two cards and shuffle their hand every turn. And at the end of your turn, return any excess cards from your hand to your deck instead of burning them and then deal damage equal to twice the number of cards returned this way. Okay, so they just get crazy if we leave them alone. All right, they get to return one of my units to my deck. Oh, I haven't been keeping track. So, they are at minus 50% and I'm still at full life.

34:15 So, they would first prefer a red unit cuz this can target anybody. Then a orange unit uh with two or less value or that's equal to the damage. Oh, that's right. Wait, there's a return effect. I don't think it uses this. I think it is only for attacking. With other generic effect that just target things, it's just the highest value. And these guys are all tied with three. Now, at easier difficulty settings, you can pick yourself. At harder difficulty settings, they randomize. So, we'll say 1 to two, 3 to four, five to six. Okay, that's annoying. I really liked her. Although, I guess she just got used. and she is going to my deck. So, I'll draw her eventually. Okay, then they're going to draw two cards and shuffle their hand. They are not over 10 yet, but their hand is definitely larger than it's ever been. And then they still can't attack with the sharpshooter cuz my frost skeleton is still defending me. All right, let's see if we can kill these guys. We're in the daytime. And we got a soul reaper and the lich queen. H could also play the solar sentinel. Here's my thought. Let's play the Lich Queen to deploy a skeleton from my graveyard, which will be my other Soul Reaper. That lets me go into my deck and discard some cards, or not discard, place them in my discard because the Skull Riders ability wouldn't trigger. So, let's get like both my Death Knights in there. And then I've got two Lich Queens to use to bring people back, which I'm about to do right now because my Soul Reaper is going to attack. And I actually don't care about them right now. I'm just going to try to win. So, let's get them down to nine life. And then I'll use one of my two lich queens to get I think I want a death knight, right? They have by far

35:46 the most life. Oh, here I can put my bone golem back in my deck. Holy crud. And now I can deploy anybody because that guy's value is five. So yeah, let's deploy the death knight to blow people up next turn. All right, so they are very close to dead. Let's see what happens. Oh, so that's right. First they resolve all of these. So they do go up to what is that now? Nine. So, they are close to getting some free damage. Then they play infection. Your opponent places all cards from their hand at the bottom of their deck. For each card they choose to keep in their hand, their nexus is dealt one damage. Well, I'll keep both my cards cuz I got tons of life. I'm down to 28. That was a free card. Ooh, this guy looks nasty. Rat ogre. Search your deck for the uppermost unit and deploy it and draw one card. And this card cannot attack orange units with value three or less. So, he won't waste himself. Okay. Well, okay. Then they're deploying a hobgoblin mob and drawing one card.

36:38 Um, oh, and then I got to check if there's a hobgoblin. Nope, no free hobgoblins for them. All right, so they are doing a lot of attacking. Now, if I understand correctly, they go from left to right. So, the sharpshooter is going to be like, I got to kill the frost skeleton. And am I strong enough? Yes, if the rat ogre helps me. So, they waste to attack. I think that's how it works if I read the rules right. They're not smart enough to like have the rat ogre attack first and then have the sharpshooter come back uh after he's dead. So, they destroy him, but I'm going to exhaust my one of my two lich queens to get a frost skeleton right back, I think. Let's put uh Soul Reaper into the deck to bring out the frost skeleton. And I will exhaust one unit when I play them so they don't get to attack. Maha, you die, buddies. All right, that's it for their big turn. And let's see if I can finish them. Oh. Oh, it's Bone Gollum. Yeah, I think they're dead now cuz I've got one, two, three, four, five. Do I have six skeletons? Oh, sadly. Oh, actually I do.

37:39 Let's use frost skeleton to discard a card and draw a card. That gets me six. I mean, not that I need it cuz that is Oh, I'm taking away all the death knight's extra power. Okay, well that's fine though. Oh, I do have my knight priestess. I'm actually not finishing them off. Okay, well that's sad. But yeah, bone golem's attacking. Oh, wait. Yes, this will work out. Bone Gollum will attack. I'll put three skeletons back instead of trashing him. So that's five damage with trample. And then heal attack with plus one for four more, which gets through and does the nine we needed. Yay. All right, so there you go. That was a play of Nexus's solo mode. Sorry for all the rules errors. I still only have an online rule book, so it's hard to like reference it while I'm recording. But yeah, thoughts on this one. Uh, this is a fun card game if you like busted combos. That's kind of the name of the game here. It actually reminds me quite a bit for those who have played it of Epic the card game from I think it was Wise Wizards. That was one where you also drew usually only one maybe two cards a turn and you only played one card but there were cards that were free and let you play another card. And it's also one where there were insanely powerful cards kind of on purpose. This game is not as busted as that. Like the limitation that when you attack with attackers they get discarded kind of keeps you from getting huge and is blowing up your opponent in one turn.

38:53 But you saw even when I stopped cheating, I was still able to do tons of stuff because the enemy wasn't killing my units fast enough. So yes, this is a game where you're going to have exciting combos, but so are your opponents. So you might get frustrated if uh you know they get a crazy combo that's crazier than yours and win the game. Certainly I've had games that have been blowouts as the winner and as the loser in this one. So just something to be aware of based on your tastes. The other really cool thing are all the crazy factions. You saw the skeletons had their very unique thing going on. So did the pharaoh's army. And there are, I think, like 16 of them that they sent me. And they all have something unique and busted going on that's fun to play with. Now, I do think in my experience, some are better than others, or at least better counters to some units than others. Like here, the uh the Pharaoh's army was doing some good work, but I think the skeletons, even when I stopped cheating, were still like the strongest here. Although, that's only cuz I was able to keep my Lich Queen out. But how the game works in competitive is you draw four factions and then one player picks one, the other player picks two, and then the last player picks one again. So, you're going to have some balancing there once the players get familiar with the factions cuz you won't be able to get like the busted combos and stuff. Uh it's not quite clear how that'll work for solo. What I've been doing is randomly drawing one faction and being forced to use them and then drawing two more and picking one of the two to go with them and then randomly drawing for the solo bot. uh they don't I didn't see any drafting rules yet to like make that balanced. But yes, come to this game in terms of the competitive play if you want fun and quick card play that's also like a little busted and

40:24 crazy and full of insane combos and if you want great variety in the factions and how they play together. Oh, actually uh one more potential negative uh just to be aware of is that the faction combos tend to be mostly internal combos. So you saw that the skeletons mostly cared about other skeleton cards and kind of benefited themselves. And the pharaoh's army, well, they were a bit more general. Some factions are very like hyperfocused, like the dragon faction only cares about you having other dragons in play. Whereas the wizard faction just does direct damage to people, so they play friendly with all the factions. So some factions are kind of like hyperfocus on their own internal combos, some factions not so much. Again, just something to be aware of as you learn the factions and play the game. How about the solo mode? It is fun. Um, the four factions are quite varied. Um, again, you only saw two of them here and really you barely saw the goblins. Uh, the weird thing is that kind of like the players, they often need internal combos to reach their strongest. And like here, they never really got enough combos of goblin or enough combos of ratmanmen. Now, the way to fix that, and again, the way that I was a little bit scared to show you on camera, is to go up in difficulty level and let them play two cards a turn instead of one. And what you can do, and what I've been uh thinking about doing to make the games tougher, is to give them less life. Like maybe even going all the way down to like 30 or 40, but letting them play two cards a turn instead of one. Uh because you saw that already like their combos were very strong. If they had gotten like more of those mobs going, you know, then

41:54 suddenly like their other cards would work better. They have combos inherent in their cards. But uh if they're only playing one card a turn, it's harder for them to happen because it's all random what they draw. You know, the game is already kind of swingy, but that is increased for the solo mode. So, I think once you're familiar with the game, you're going to want to go up to two cards a turn for the bot. I think that'll fix some of the lack of comboing they do sometimes, but again, it might make it too tough. So, I think you will then have to probably go down to like 20 or 30. Besides that, the solo bot plays pretty smoothly. Like, there's a few questions I still have, like, was I right for that uh discarding effect where they just return the card to my deck to not use the targeting priority. The rule book is pretty good. that it's just easy to kind of forget when I'm not looking right at it. Um, and like this card by itself is not much of a player aid. So, I hope they include an actual solo player aid card that reminds you of the key rules and stuff. But, this is a cool game to have a solo mode for. And I'm really happy this one works well and plays smoothly and has variety in their factions, too. Again, with four factions, so, you know, whatever that is, six combos, cuz this is a game that my kids don't always want to play with me because the combos can get so busted and you can like destroy their coolest units right away with good card play.

43:02 So, it can be a little mean. So, these are the kind of games that I love having solo modes for because I don't have to make anybody mad if I just want to play the game and have fun with different combinations. So, that is Nexus with its solo mode and some talk about its competitive play. It should still be available for late pledging. So, go check it out. Thanks for watching everybody and a special thank you to our biggest Patreon supporters, Steve Ren, Miles, J William F, Casey W, Andrew R, and Chris C. We'll see you at the next