Objective: Complete one of the victory conditions while stopping your opponents from doing the same. There are 3 different victory conditions for the game, each different in nature. The first objective is to take the 4 spaces adjacent to the nexus and hold them for a turn. The second is to have the most pieces on the board when every space is filled. The third is to have a piece in every square between any 2 axes and hold them for an entire turn.
Play: Movement is done by adding a piece in a space adjacent to one of your pieces, or adjacent to an enemy piece which is next to one of your own pieces, by 'jumping over' the enemy piece. Two other kinds of moves are also valid, one being the destruction of an enemy piece, which can only be done if two or more of your pieces are adjacent to an enemy piece, and the other being a 'zap'. A 'zap' is performed by hitting the zap button and then selecting the arc or axis to zap. Once you hit the zap button, valid zap move will highlight automatically. If you own one of the four larger spaces at the end of an axis, you may destroy everything between that space and the center, or nexus, of the board. This is called an axis capture or axis zap. Another form of zap is between 2 nodes on axes which are 90 degrees apart and on the same axis. In this case, everything between the 2 spaces on the arc may be destroyed. This is called an arc capture or arc zap.
In this version of Nexus, the default option is to disallow repeated moves, that is, a player may not immediately move back into a square for which the piece was destroyed by a normal takeover, and must wait a turn to do so. This was added to facilitate shorter game play, but the option may be turned off and often makes for more challenging games when playing with 3 or 4 players. The third victory condition may also be turned off.
Nexus is based on an original concept and board game by Raph Koster. The original game is intended to be played with the 2 default options off, that of the third victory condition and disallowing repeated moves.|
