Optional Rules and Units for Nexus Ops

[rccod]

Has anyone been tinkering with this game? There appears to be a lot of options to enhance and/or change the nature of this game. Some ideas I initially want to throw out are the following:

1. Introduce different terrain tiles- How about an expansion with new terrain tiles (like what Days of Wonder did for Memoir '44). Also, make more tiles to add to the current game to enlarge the combat area.

2. Change the game rules so that the alien creatures are hostile to all human units...sort of like a Starship Trooper game.

3. Introduce RISK 2210 playing pieces into the game.

4. Make the lava tiles turn into active volcanic sites that spread additional lava over adjacent hexes, destroying mines and units.

[Islander]

The hex-type I add to my games (for fun, mind you) are called "Miasmic Caves". These are foggy cliffs, filled with spectacular rock outcroppings, dangerous fumes, and mazelike deathtraps. The wonders themselves take a terrible tool upon any who enter.

1. A mine within a Miasmic Cave produces one extra Rubium.
2. Subtract one from any attack roll made out of or into or within a Miasmic Cave.
3. During your turn, after your step 4 but before step 5, you must roll a die. On a 4+, choose an opponent (or yourself, if no opponent has a unit in any Miasmic Cave); that player chooses and removes any one of his or her units from a Miasmic Cave and puts it back into his or her supply.

A dragon's plasma breath attack is affected by Rule 2. Rule 3 is ignored if nobody has any units in a Miasmic Cave. Rule 3 makes the caves more and more dangerous with more and more players in the game.

Placement: I add three single-hex Caves to my games (add only two in a two- or four-player game). The caves can go next to the monolith, into the second ring, or even into a third ring -- their placement doesn't seem to disrupt normal gameplay too much, no matter where they go.

As far as a third ring goes, since there are not enough exploration tiles to begin filling a third ring, it is probably best to make sure that no hexes in the third ring border any player's homebase. This way, by the time one of those third-ring hexes is reached, there should be enough used exploration tiles from which to randomly choose a fresh one to use in that hex -- and if a mine is revealed thereby, just use the tile itself as the mine's marker, since there's not going to be enough mine markers either. Or, just buy another copy of the game and add in the markers from that

The caves add a little more money to the game's economy. It adds a small "get-the-leader" effect too, since players tend to choose the leader during rule3.