Nemesis

Components

Nemesis plays 1 to 5 players, and the official rules recommend an age of 12 and up. A game officially runs 90 to 180 minutes, and a first session will likely take longer.

Setup

1. 1Lay out the central board on its basic side, shuffle the Room tiles, and place them face down on the matching '1' and '2' slots. The Special Rooms (Hibernatorium, Cockpit, and the 3 Engines) start already face up.
2. 2Place one Exploration token face down on each Room tile.
3. 3Draw one Coordinates card at random and place it face down beside the Cockpit. Stack both Engine tokens (Working/Damaged) face down for each of the three Engine slots so no one knows their true status.
4. 4Set out Escape Pod tokens based on player count (2 for 1–2 players, 3 for 3–4, 4 for 5), alternating between Evacuation Sections A and B, all starting Locked.
5. 5Place 5 Egg tokens and 3 face-down Weakness cards on the Intruder board, and fill the Intruder bag with a mix of Blank, Larva, Creeper, Queen, and Adult tokens.
6. 6Each player drafts a Character and secretly receives one Corporate and one Personal Objective card. Set up starting weapons and the two Quest Item cards.
7. 7Place the Time marker on the green space of the Time Track, and determine the First Player.

Round structure — Player Phase and Event Phase

1. 1Player Phase: everyone draws back up to a hand of 5 cards. Starting with the first player and going clockwise, each player takes a turn of 2 Actions in rotation, passing once they have nothing more (or no wish) to do. Once a player passes, they cannot act again for the rest of this phase.
2. 2Once everyone has passed, move to the Event Phase.
3. 3The Event Phase always resolves in this fixed order: ① advance the Time marker (and the Self-Destruct marker too, if active), ② every Intruder sharing a Room with a Character attacks, ③ every Intruder in a Room with a Fire marker suffers damage, ④ draw an Event card to move matching Intruders through the numbered corridor and resolve its effect, ⑤ draw 1 token from the Intruder bag and resolve it (Larva upgrades to Adult, Creeper upgrades to Breeder, Adult/Breeder force everyone to roll Noise, Queen triggers an Encounter or adds an Egg, Blank adds an Adult).
4. 4Once the Event Phase ends, a new round begins with the Player Phase.

Noise and Encounters — how Intruders appear

1. 1Entering an empty Room (no Character, no Intruder present) triggers a Noise roll.
2. 2On a result of 1 through 4, place a Noise marker in the corridor with the matching number. A corridor can only ever hold 1 Noise marker.
3. 3If you're instructed to place a marker in a corridor that already has one, an Encounter happens instead: clear every Noise marker connected to that Room, then draw a token from the Intruder bag and place the matching miniature there.
4. 4Compare the number on that token to how many Action cards you're holding. If you have fewer cards, you suffer a Surprise Attack and immediately draw an Intruder Attack card.
5. 5Beyond plain numbers, the Noise die can also roll special results — Silence, Danger, Fire, Malfunction, Slime — which combine with the Exploration token flipped on first entry to make every Room different each game.

Combat and injuries — an Intruder's 'blood' value

Intruders have no visible health total. Every successful hit adds an Injury marker, and whether that kills it is checked fresh each time by drawing a card.

1. 1Shoot spends 1 Ammo from a Weapon and rolls the Combat die. A hit places 1 (or sometimes 2) Injury markers on the target.
2. 2Melee Attack costs an extra Contamination card and rolls the Combat die. A miss also inflicts a Serious Wound.
3. 3A Larva or Egg dies from a single Injury marker.
4. 4A Creeper or Adult draws 1 Intruder Attack card after a successful hit and checks only its 'blood' value. If your accumulated Injury markers meet or exceed that number, it dies. A Breeder or Queen draws 2 cards and adds both 'blood' values together.
5. 5If the drawn card shows a retreat icon, that Intruder survives and instead flees through the numbered corridor to another Room.

Objectives and contamination — why you can't trust each other

The moment the first Intruder appears on the board, you choose one of the two and pursue only that one for the rest of the game. Failing your objective doesn't disqualify you from surviving (hibernating or escaping), but being recognized as a winner requires both completing your objective and surviving.

1. 1A Contamination card stays in your hand as-is — unlike other Action cards, it can never be discarded to pay for an Action's cost.
2. 2You cannot tell whether a card is 'Infected' until you Scan it, which only certain Room Actions (the Canteen, Shower, Surgery) or specific Items allow.
3. 3If a scan reveals an Infected card, place a Larva miniature on your Character board. If you're infected again while a Larva is already there, that Character dies on the spot and a Creeper appears in that Room.
4. 4If you reach the end of the game with unscanned Contamination cards still in hand, any infection hiding inside them can still surface at the very end.

Ending the game — three routes out

1. 1If the Time Track reaches its final red space (hyperspace jump), every character not hibernating dies instantly.
2. 2If the Self-Destruct Track reaches its final (skull) space, or a 9th Fire or Malfunction marker would need to be placed, the ship explodes and everyone aboard — along with every Intruder — dies.
3. 3The moment the last character who hasn't escaped or hibernated dies, hibernates, or escapes, the game moves immediately to the 4-step Victory Check below.

1. 1① Engines Check: reveal all three Engines' top tokens. If 2 or more are Damaged, the ship explodes and even hibernating characters die.
2. 2② Coordinates Check: if the destination isn't Earth (barring the Quarantine objective's Mars exception), hibernating characters die.
3. 3③ Contamination Check: survivors Scan every remaining Contamination card in hand. A Larva marker, or even a single Infected card, kills that character.
4. 4④ Objective Check: only characters still alive reveal their objective card and confirm whether they met its requirements. Only those who both completed their objective and survived are declared winners.

Getting started

• Exploring alone means you shoulder every Noise roll by yourself. Early on, stick together while exploring, but remember a single Event card can force an entire group into simultaneous Encounters in a cramped Room.
• A Contamination card isn't dangerous the moment you receive it — leaving it unscanned is what's dangerous. Don't put off visiting a safe Room like the Canteen or Shower when you get the chance.
• Cooperating purely around Corporate Objectives can leave you blindsided by someone's hidden Personal Objective. Don't assume everyone is equally cooperative.
• Without 2 working Engines, the correct Coordinates, and a clean scan, hibernating accomplishes nothing. Run through this checklist again as the endgame approaches.
• An Escape Pod holds 2 people. Waiting to launch can let you bring along a teammate, but it also gives Intruders more time to find you.

Expansions and modes

In Korea, the game was officially localized and released by Dive Dice in 2020. The Korean rulebook this guide cross-checked is the file Awaken Realms hosts for regional distributors' print runs, matching the English edition page-for-page, so it is treated as equivalent to the Dive Dice retail edition's text.

Frequently confused rules

History and editions

Designed by Adam Kwapiński, Nemesis was published by Awaken Realms in 2018 and was a nominee for the 2018 Golden Geek Best Thematic Board Game award.

After the base game, small expansions like Carnomorphs and Voidseeders were followed by Aftermath (2021) and the Mars-set stand-alone expansion Lockdown (2022), with Retaliation, set in an alien nest, releasing in 2025. According to Namuwiki, Medic and Aftermath were originally Kickstarter-exclusive, though Aftermath later received a retail release, opening the door to a Korean edition.

In Korea, the game was officially localized and distributed by Dive Dice in 2020. Both English Wikipedia and Namuwiki were cross-checked as of 2026-10-11.