Tom vs Bruce: Nemo’s War
Part III: 52 Weeks Later
Tom: On week 29 we spend a little downtime converting salvaged ships to armor for the Nautilus. This expensive upgrade will protect us better from warships. I also draw an event called Arabian Tunnel, which lets me move between the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean. In other words, the Suez Canal! Jules Verne has thought of everything.
Bruce: There are so many ways to earn VP in this game that I feel like Im playing Banjo Kazooie. A special method is something called Scouring the Seas, which gets you victory points based on how well youve distributed your kills over the globe. What it really is is a mechanism for discouraging you from parking in one ocean for too long, but just because I can see through a game mechanic doesnt mean I cant appreciate it. Sinking three ships in each ocean is worth far more VP than sinking six in three and none in the others, even though both add up to 18 sinkings.
Ive sunk a lot of ships in the North Atlantic, South Atlantic, Eastern Pacific, and Indian Oceans. Not so much in the Mediterranean and Western Pacific. So thats where I need to go.
When I get to the Mediterranean in week 31, I not only sink some ships, but find some treasure. The treasure marker I draw actually tells me to draw two treasures! How cool. And the first one is the Marianas Trench, which is a Wonder and is worth 10 VP to me if I stick with the Explore commitment. Thats a powerful argument for doing so. But the second is not so much a treasure as an instruction directing me to lose one Resource. I sacrifice a crew, because Nemo is a ruthless man, and because it doesnt change my modifier. But dont think the whole ruthless Nemo thing didnt play into it.
Tom: Week 35 is my favorite moment in this game. Among my favorite moments from any game. For three weeks I’d been fighting a frigate in the Western Pacific. I kept exerting crew and missing, which means I’m losing men in the ongoing battle. The frigate had scored two hits. When a warship hits, you roll a die to determine if the Nautilus is damaged (most likely), the crew is depleted (less likely), or Nemo himself is affected (least likely). Against all odds, both of the frigate’s hits landed on Nemo. And on the fourth week, with the frigate still a thorn in my side, I draw an event in which a capital ship jumps the Nautilus. It scores a hit, which once again affects Nemo himself, moving the Nemo track to the turning point in the game. Now I have to decide how the scoring will work.
Here I’d like to talk a bit about music in games. But before you continue reading, start this YouTube video.
Most games come with music. But one of the great thing about boardgames is that you don’t have a game designer thrusting a soundtrack at you. I like a little Jeremy Soule as much as the next guy, but it can be a bit much. With boardgames, you provide your own soundtrack, if you even want one. I use Pandora for this. I’ve been playing a game called Endeavor with friends, which is about colonizing the New World. I started a Beethoven channel on Pandora for our Endeavor games. It’s perfect. It’s also perfect for Nemo’s War. Because as soon as the capital ship lands its hit on Nemo, the Pandora channel starts up with a famous Shostakovich waltz. I wouldn’t know it by name, but if you followed my instructions, you’re listening to it now.
The waltz fits perfectly with this moment in the game. Nemo gripping the Nautilus’ flying bridge, determined to maneuver his submarine to ram the massive warship newly arrived on the scene to help the tenacious frigate. Nemo stands firm as the waves pitch the submarine to and fro, cannon fire plunging into the sea on either side. He calls out orders to his crew as the capital ship bears down on the Nautilus, forcing him to decide whether to risk the well-being of his men, of his craft. He finally admits defeat and glares balefully at the enemy ship’s high prow as the nimble submarine slips under the waves and steers away. Shostakovich’s waltz plays out the grotesque wistful pomp of war machines grand and intricate, ruled by proud men a thousand miles from their homes, perched precariously atop the greatest and most uncaring vastness Man has yet known.
As I make a cup of coffee to ponder Nemo’s motivations, to decide how best to parlay my situation into victory points, the waltz plays out the scene in my imagination, twirling grandly as waltzes will do. Nemo considers all the treasure in his hold, and resolves that he will use it to empower people to rise up against the oppressive military might of the world’s imperial powers. I chose Anti-Imperialism, which means I’ll sink commercial ships and spend treasure to liberate oppressed people. My Nemo is a revolutionary who believes in self-determination. I like to think Shostakovich, a successful composer who will be broken by polio and Soviet Russia, would be proud.
Bruce: Frankly, thats the first time Ive heard Tom admit that Soviet Russia broke anybody.
While attacking a lowly mail ship in the South Atlantic, I risk my crew with a +3 modifier against a defense value of 8. Unfortunately, I roll a 4, and with a +3 bonus that only gets me to 7. Im one short.
Tom: By the way, here are the dice that come with Nemo’s War.
To give you some sense of scale, here they are next to real dice.
Bruce: Fortunately, I have some options. Because Chris Taylor is a genius at combining theme and mechanics, you can incorporate events from the story into the game in a meaningful and direct way. Need to change a roll? After you fail, you can get a +2 modifier, but Professor Aronnax goes missing and you lose VP in exchange. Ned Land escapes for a +1 modifier. Conseil is killed for a single re-roll (without modifiers). You can just imagine brave Conseil giving his life to save Nemo from the shark in an event called Jaws Wide Open. Its an action that directly represents what it is trying to depict. No red cubes here. I love it.
After all that, I decide to save my VP and lose the crew. Its not worth -3 VP right now, and I want to save those bullets.
Tom: If Nemo’s War was a Eurogame, the red cube would represent Ned Land.
Bruce: In the North Atlantic in week 34, I find Alexandria, which is a weird place to find it but its a wonder worth 10 VP so Im not going to complain too loudly. The Mediterranean treasure gets replaced by a doubles roll, so I head back there to scoop it up and run into a capital ship, which hits me before I sink it and costs me one Nemo point. Nemo is sliding into uncertainty. Final commitment! With two wonders in the bag, Ill stick with Explore, because theyre worth ten points each. I wonder (ha!) how many there are, total. (Post-game color commentary: there are five.)
Tom: I’ve been sinking my fair share of mail ships, which always seems to incur a notoriety hit. The imperial powers get irked when you sink mail ships. Those Victorians really liked their epistles, missives, and dispatches.
Bruce: With the Mediterranean successfully scourged, I survey the map and the Sunken Ship Record Track. Ive only sunk one ship in the Western Pacific. That limits me to 3 VP for scourging unless I can get there and sink some more. I point the Nautilus south, then east. Its week 38.
I slow down to search the South Atlantic and then the Indian Ocean. The South Atlantic produces a treasure which gives me +4 Notoriety. I wonder what kind of treasure that is. The Indian Ocean nets a much more reasonable 3 VP treasure. Probably a coelacanth.
Tom: As my year-long voyage is winding down, I need to advance the liberation marker. This is a mostly useless track unless Nemo commits to anti-imperialism, as is the case in my game. Unlike the real world, liberation in Nemo’s War is almost entirely fiscal. The idea seems to be that you’re funneling money to revolutionaries. I can explain this to Bruce by saying “like the contras in Nicaragua”. The money funnelling is your entire action for a turn, and you furthermore have to gamble your treasure. You add the treasure’s value — which is from 2 to 5 — to a d6 roll, and you then subtract five. This usually equals zero. But if it doesn’t equal zero, you scoot up the liberation marker that many spaces. And if you get a natural six, you get an extra point on the liberation track. At the end of the game, the liberation marker gives you lots of points if your Nemo is going for anti-imperialism.
So I spend several turns just sort of bobbing in the ocean, throwing treasure at various indigenous peoples, hoping they’ll use the loot to throw off imperialist yokes instead of buying food, building schools, and repairing roads. Hey, do you hate empires? If so, have these pearls and doubloons that I stole! I am a nautical Robin Hood! I spend my best treasures first, and don’t have much luck. Maybe I should have gone for the science objective. Indigenous people can be such ingrates.
Bruce: After placing a ship in the Indian Ocean in week 45, I get an event. Its called A Hollow Explosion. That sounds pretty bad. It adds the whole Red Reinforcement Group (this is likely a simulation of the influence of Karl Marx, important at this time) to the Available Ships Box, and then has me draw ships one after the other until a warship appears, and then I have to fight it.
So that sucks, but not as much as what it means that I drew A Hollow Explosion in the first place, which is that I am almost out of cards in the deck. As I mentioned earlier, the way you construct the draw deck at the beginning is to find a special event called The Maelstrom, and then shuffle it into four other cards which become the bottom of the draw deck. On top of that you place A Hollow Explosion. Its like a sentinel, telling me that the game-ending event could be anywhere in the next five cards. Not much time. I need to move to the Western Pacific.
Tom: A draw an event called 42 Degrees Centigrade. The end result is that the Nautilus is repaired. I’m not sure what this has to do with the water being so cold, but I love a fully repaired submarine.
Bruce: The very next week, I draw an event, and its The Maelstrom. Well, great. The game would have had six weeks left to run. I could have used just one week here to kick up my sunken ship count, and increase my Scourge bonus.
But no. Now Im facing a die roll needing to get 12, to which I can add my Nemo, crew, and Nautilus bonuses. The penalties for failure are severe.
Tom: There’s a Norwegian movie called Maelstrom about, well…I don’t remember what it was about. Something about fishermen, I think. But I do remember shots of dead fish accompanied by sudden orchestral swells and a men’s chorus chanting “MAEL-strommmmm!”. This is the image in my head as Bruce draws his card. DUM DUM DUMMMM: “MAEL-strommmmm!”
Bruce: I roll a 4. I get +3 for Nemo, +3 for crew, and +1 for the Nautilus (which by now is kind of beat up). Thats 11.
This is awful. The immediate consequence is that I lose 1 Nemo, 1 crew, and 1 Nautilus, since I risked them for the bonuses. But now, according to the event, I lose 1d6 crew and 1d6 Nautilus. If either one of the rolls takes me into the red zones on the resource tracks, I stand to lose a lot of VP. Fortunately, I am at least 6 spaces away from either killing the crew or breaching the hull, which would destroy the Nautilus and cost me a whopping -50 VP.
The first die roll: a one. The crew survives in the Fit zone. Good for them.
The second roll: a three. The Nautilus hull marker drops three spaces to the Seaworthy box. One more space and I would have been at Listing for -15 VP. But we make it. The hatches were battened.
So thats it. The Nautilus goes through the Maelstrom, but somehow survives anyway even though it disappears forever, which is one of those literary paradoxes that are easy to accept in a game.
Tom: My game ends up with a tense last-minute skin-of-my-teeth situation. On turn 50 out of 52, I draw the same Public Opinion event that hit Bruce earlier in the game. This drops a ship in every ocean, which fills the map entirely with enemy ships. This will trigger an imperialist victory if I don’t do something about it by the end of the turn. I have to sink one ship. My victim is a frigate in the South Atlantic. Its attack against me is deflected by the additional armor I fitted on the Nautilus, which is the only time in the game the expensive armor comes into play. Fortunately, I’ve kept my ship and crew in top shape and we easily sink the frigate.
My last two turns are spent throwing treasure at ineffectual native populations, hoping they’ll advance the liberation track. They come through splendidly on the final turn, when I roll a six and scooch the liberation track all the way up to the nine. I may be poor, but the world is freer. And I didn’t get sucked into a whirlpool like Bruce.
Bruce: heres how my score shakes out:
Warships: 16 x 1/2 = 8
Other ships: 29 x 1/2 = 14
Adventure: 14 x 2 = 28
Treasure: 19 x 1 = 19
Liberation: 0 x 0 = 0
Science: 4 x 5 = 20
Wonders: 2 x 10 = 20
Crew: 0
Hull: 0
Nemo: 0
Ned Land: 0
Conseil: 0
Professor Aronnax: 0
112 VP, Inconsequential Results
In keeping with its storytelling architecture, Nemos War has this cool outcomes chart in which you cross-reference your result with your goals, and read a little paragraph about how it all ends. Cross-referencing “Exploration” with “Inconsequential Results” gets me this:
The Nautilus continues undersea exploration for a while, but eventually Nemo retires completely from even this small amount of science. His journals eventually surface and become somewhat of a collectors item.
So thats how my run as Kapitan Nemo ends: my diaries are being sold on eBay.
Tom: Here’s how my score shakes out:
Warships: 7 x 1 = 7
Other ships: 17 x 2 = 34
Adventure: 3 x 1 = 3
Treasure: 4 x 1/2 = 2
Liberation: 9 x 5 = 45
Science: 4 x 0 = 0
Wonders: 0 x 0 = 0
Scourge: 0
Crew: 10
Hull: 15
Nemo: 0
Ned Land escaped: -3
Conseil killed: -6
Professor missing: -9
98 VP, Failure
My epilogue is a cross-reference between “Failure” and “Anti-imperialism”.
Captain Nemo loses faith. He orders the crew to leave the Nautilus off the English coast and then disappears into the murky sea. He is never heard from again.
Wait, what? So he jumped into the water and drowned? I did so poorly that a great literary figure committed suicide? At least I didn’t get an “utter failure”, in which even the submarine disappears. I’m going to assume England finds the Nautilus and reverse engineers it, benefiting from Nemo’s u-boat tech and therefore bottling up Germany in the battle for the Atlantic in World War II. Bruce produces obscure writings and I hasten the end of Nazi tyranny. Bruce might have more points, but technically, I’ve won.
Bruce wins.
