Nexus ►►► MTG meets Smashup in this gateway card battler!
Transcript
Hey everybody. Today on Roto, we're going to be covering Nexus, but we're doing things a little bit differently today. Instead of doing a runthrough, we're jumping right into the final thoughts. And of course, please keep in mind this is a paid preview. Now, let's talk about it because I think this is a really good way to get people into these dueling card games. One thing I really like about this is that it doesn't take a lot to keep each match interesting, keep each match different because every match is going to be a blend of these two decks. So, it does have uh some things in common with say Smashup for example. Um and obviously the comparison to games like Magic the Gathering is going to be present because it does follow a similar format. You know, it's a dueling card game. you're trying to uh attack each other's life. But this is not a collectible card game in that sense. At least as far as I know. Um it's just got these basic decks of each different faction. You put them together and you attack each other with them. And so the melding of those two different game styles makes for something that is very easy to pick up and has uh that level of variety that you want in a game like this. um but without any of the overhead of you know trying to figure out figure out what like what card do I put in my deck? What card you don't have to construct any of these decks beforehand. Um at least not with base game as far as I know. It's possible that with expansions they could introduce that. But the base game alone is what I'm talking about. And that is uh a much easier experience with this
because like I said all you need to do is put two decks together and you're ready to go. So how does it play? Well, one I'm going to say that it's like I said, it's very easy to get into. So, the decision space is not uh incredibly complex. You don't have to burn your brain to figure out what the best move is. You can usually uh find out or just sort of go on vibes. Um you when you're playing, you often want to I I found that you want to focus on the abilities of one more than the other, but sometimes they do really work together. Um, and then sometimes you uh sometimes you get decks that don't quite work together, but that becomes a challenge as to how to synergize their abilities. And uh sometimes that works better than others. I will say I felt like the assassin vampires that was a great combo. There's a lot of quick damage. Whereas the uh siege master celestials, I don't know if that comboed quite as well. I don't think that their abilities were as complimentary. Now, if you're thinking that, well, if it's just random each time, then what's the what's the point? Uh, well, it's not random each time because, uh, you can do it randomly, and I think for your first few games, that's probably the best way to go. But once you know it, uh, a little bit better, once you've played a few games, then they recommend you do a draft so that you, you know, you start off picking one and then the other player picks a couple, you pick a couple, and then you've got your decks.
And they have an interesting draft variant where instead of just playing one game like that, you are creating I think you have you get four different factions. You put together two and two uh and like each player gets four factions. Each player is putting together two and two. So then you're choosing one of your sets to go up against each other and then in the next match you have your other set to go against each other. And if one player didn't win both of them, then you're choosing one faction from each of those two sets, mashing those up and then having your third match. And that's I think an interesting way to do it. Now, who is this game for? Well, people who are like really deep into head-to-head card games like this. People who, uh, are really into Magic the Gathering or, uh, like games like Netrunner or things like that, uh, where the complexity is extremely deep. I don't think they're going to get quite as much out of this. But people who are a little bit newer to the game, especially people who uh want to dip their toes into the water or specifically don't want something that's so deep as like Magic the Gathering is are going to find a lot from this because you can just pick up and play this kind of thing. It is taught very quickly um and it's played very quickly.
Uh all you really need to do is learn what your faction does. And there were a lot of factions with some of them having certain special abilities that you need to learn ahead of time. Like for example, the assassins. So I was playing with the assassins in one side and these have a special ability. It's mostly written on the card, but there's a little bit of nuance that you need to learn, but that takes all of a minute and then you've got it. Um, same with the siege masters. And I'd say it's about half of the factions in this in this game that I've seen. And I haven't seen all of them, but I've seen a lot. Uh, I think the the demo pack that I am working with had like 12 different factions or something like that. So, I've played with most of them and there's definitely I definitely have favorites of some versus others. I think some are uh inherently a little bit more interesting. Like I really like how the assassins work. Um, I like that personally a little bit more than the siege masters, but uh I think the siege master uh their buildout is really interesting. There's another faction that I didn't play with here, which is the pirate faction, which I really liked because that ends up stealing cards away from your opponent. And then your abilities get stronger the more um blunder you have. Uh which is just an interesting mechanic. So each each faction, well, most of each uh most of the factions have some really cool like aspect to them. Again, some of them I like a little bit more than others, but that doesn't always speak to their effectiveness. I think uh one of the
ones that I found a little bit less interesting was incredibly effective. It just wasn't as intricate as the assassins were. Um so there's definitely variety in all the different factions and like I said there's a lot of them uh to to pick from. So I would say that this like I said at the top is really easy to create the variability in uh this game that you have to work a lot harder for uh in other types of games. So, I would say if you are looking for a two-player head-to-head battler uh that is really easy to get into and uh comes with a lot of v variety right out the box, but aren't looking for something that's so heavy, so deep, so uh murky at times as magic is uh as murky as magic is at times, uh then you should definitely check out Nex. It's good quick uh good quick battler and it's going to satisfy that fix. if you just want a nice quick experience. Um, so that's going to be all for me. Thank you all so much for watching. I will see you folks next time. Bye-bye.