StarlightBG

If you’re looking for a well designed war strategy board game, then look no further. Nexus Ops easily tops my list of board games to play with friends.
In Nexus Ops you play as competing factions on an alien planet rich in rubium, the currency of the game. Players compete to control rubium refineries to collect money to train units for their disposal. The competition can be fierce as the map is limited in size. The unit you can buy vary from the cheap lowly Human Miners to the costly ferocious Rubium Dragons! The models for the units are beautifully detailed and really add to the experience (as per the 2012 reprint).
The object of the game is to collect 12 or more victory points. Victory points are awarded when you win battles by completely wiping out the opposing army in a contested hex. I really like this game mechanic because it encourages aggression and quick kills. You only get victory points if you win battles during YOUR turn. You can’t sit back and turtle, waiting for others to attack you. You can also get victory points by completing Secret Mission cards which you pick up at the end of your turn. Secret Missions award you victory points based on risk and difficulty. The harder the mission, the greater the reward! As long as you successfully fulfill the conditions described on the Secret Mission card during your turn, you get the victory points. This element introduces some luck with drawing random mission cards, but it also balances it out with varying difficulties to the missions. You are more likely to collect easier missions than the difficult, high reward ones.
I’ve owned Nexus Ops for two years and played it several times. I still get very excited whenever we play! Definitely has a lot of replay value! The mechanics are very well balanced and the rule book is easy to read thanks to its diagrams and clear descriptions.
If you want to see pictures and learn more, check out my other reviews for Nexus Ops!

The concept of Boss Monster is to put you in the shoes of the dungeon bosses you beat up in the classic NES adventure games you played as a kid. Instead of playing as the hero killing monsters, solving puzzules, and navigating the dungeon, you are the Boss building traps and monster rooms with treasures to lure the hero to their death!
The artwork and theme of the game is tied together very well. You get a sense of what the game is about just by looking at the box cover and the artwork used on all the cards.
The game mechanics allow some player interaction through the card’s abilities. Some abilities will allow you to encourage heroes to overwhelm your opponent’s dungeon making their Boss monster lose health. However, there are a lot of different card abilities in the game that will leave new players scratching their head deciding which card to play. There are so many different possibilities it can be difficult to choose how to start. During one of my games, a couple of us forgot we could destroy a trap dungeon card and kill a hero on the spot. You can easily lose track of your opponent’s abilities mid-game as well.
I wish the components of the game included small tokens of the different types of treasures your dungeon holds. Reason being is I found it annoying to have to peek over at other people’s dungeons to count how many swords or magic books they had, compared to the number I had of the same treasure. The number of treasures is important because heroes attracted to that type of treasure will go to the dungeon with the most number of that treasure. Having a pool of treasure tokens or a rotating die to count the number of treasures you have in your dungeon would make it easier to keep track of.