Stellaris Nexus — Basically Twilight Imperium for the Digital Age
I am an old hand when it comes to the pleasures of the tabletop game. But there has always been one game which rules them all, for me. One game which transcends the silly limits of all that might be.
Now, some of you don’t know the pleasure of which I speak. I encourage you, without hesitation or cowardice, to rush into full knowledge of that which is TI. Your soul will be better for it.
For those who don’t have time, the short version is that TI is a massive tabletop boardgame where you command an entire space empire, from planets to ships, with the intention of — well, achieving one of the win conditions.
It is one of few games where you can literally push piles of plastic across the board, fleets clashing in the black of space, establishing starbases on the fringes of your worlds, and being in this weird dance of diplomacy and death with everyone else at the table.
It’s glorious, is what I’m telling you. Glorious.
The only real competition in the space (pun intended) is Eclipse: Second Dawn for the Galaxy, which takes beautiful things I love about TI and cranks them up to 11.
The major drawback for both of these games — well, two of the major drawbacks, are…
- Firstly that they are physically immense pieces of kit. They will eat an entire 4 x 6 table with no room to spare. In fact, you might want a side table.
- They also take an absolute butt load of time, as you might expect.
(Some of these issues are addressed in other games, among them one of my favorites, Pocket Imperium.)
Which brings us around, at long last, to the new offering from Paradox Games: Stellaris Nexus.
Paradox is pretty clear about what they want the experience for Stellaris Nexus to be, not least taking heavy inspiration from its videogame progenitor. A focus on multiplayer, leaning on a fair amount on randomness, some degree of limited actions that you can select per turn, and multiple win conditions. Plus Mecatol Rex — I mean Nexus, right there in the center.
Does this sound familiar? Are you feeling a little excited? I know I am.
We are going to get to have him a free crack at Nexus very shortly during the next Steam fest. Now I just need to find enough people who want to give it a go to jump onto the table and give it a ride.
Wait, that sounds wrong. No, it sounds perfect.
