Ah, the boss fight. Perhaps gaming’s greatest contribution to the artistic canon. No other narrative form has climaxes that can match the sheer moment-to-moment intensity and immersive properties of a properly designed boss fight. Of course I’m mainly talking about video games, but many a tabletop experience has tried their hand at them as well. Sadly, most of them stink; boost a standard enemy type’s stats and a throw in a shallow gimmick or two to avoid accusations of a creative laziness. And the ones that do get ambitious tend to do so by subverting all sorts of established game concepts, adding unwelcome amounts of additional admin and rules to remember. To be fair, it’s hard to fit a proper boss fight into the cadence of your average dungeon crawl, which tend to have combat systems largely predicated around mob management, area control, and equipment load outs. Squeezing satisfying showdowns into the final few minutes of an exhausting tabletop session is a difficult design challenge. Many games have tried and failed (Legends Of Andor) and many other games don’t even bother to try (Mage Knight Board Game). Then there’s Aeon’s End, in which the boss fight is the system — and it’s awesome.
Aeon’s End is one of the only recent tabletop experiences that understands that board games aren’t video games but still wants you to enjoy epic boss fights. Kingdom Death: Monster did emerge from the shadows first, but it covers way too much ground to be accurately described as a boss fight simulator. Aeon’s End, however, is nothing but. It skips entirely over the boring mob skirmishes that have plagued every co-operative tabletop combat game for all of existence and gets right to the exciting part: the climactic confrontation with the big baddie. Mechanically, it might initially seem like just another deck-builder, but the game’s frictionless pacing and constant tension ensure this excitement is never lost. As for the backstory, while it’s not particularly unique, it sells the game’s concept well. Players don the cloaks of “Breach Mages”, spell-wielding defenders of “Gravehold”, humanity’s final settlement, deep into the days of the apocalypse. The cause of which are “The Nameless”, eldritch colossi from beyond time and space that seek the abject destruction of every last man, woman, and child that yet breathes. Each game of Aeon’s End pits you against a single Nameless, known as the game’s “Nemesis”, and the goal is very simple: kill it before it exterminates all of Gravehold — and the future of humanity along with it.
Like most other deck-builders, your starting deck in Aeon’s End is mostly currency, here called “Aether”, that lets you buy better cards that do more useful things. Also like other deck-builders, the supply of cards to purchase throughout the game can either be chosen by the players beforehand or determined randomly. These cards are split into three types: 1) “Gems”, which generate aether to help you buy more cards; 2) “Relics”, which give you all sorts of fun abilities to work with; and 3) “Spells”, which let you dish out pain to the nemesis and any minions they summon. The nemesis also gets a deck of their own which is formulated at the game’s outset via standard enemy deck preparation methods which make sure cards drawn toward the beginning of the game are easier to manage than ones toward the end. The nemesis’s cards also come in three, albeit different, varieties: 1) “Attacks”, which are resolved once and discarded; 2) “Powers”, which are similar to attacks but operate on a several-turn delay to give players a chance to prepare for or even cancel them; and 3) “Minions”, which are evil little mini-demons that continuously screw with your day until they are dealt with. The nemesis deck contains a mixture of cards that can appear in any game and cards that are unique to the particular nemesis you are facing.
Once the nemesis deck is prepared, the supply is determined, and all players choose their Breach Mages the game begins, in which players and the nemesis take turns trying to violently end each other. Turn order is randomized, handled by a deck of cards revealed one at a time announcing who is next. When that turn is over another card is drawn to determine who goes after that, and so on and so forth until the deck is empty and the round is over. At first, the way turn order works in the game seems insignificant, but there is a wee bit of magic to it for a number of reasons. One, no one ever forgets when it’s their turn because the answer to that question is built directly into the structural cadence of the game. Two, it adds a unique probability component to the game because as rounds progress you can calculate the odds of whose turn will be next and plan accordingly. And three, its suspenseful! The nemesis always gets two turns per round, so the persistent threat of it potentially going two, three, or even four times in a row keeps everybody on red alert at all times. Sometimes such an occurrence can even be welcome, as the players get several uninterrupted turns afterward to potentially implement a powerful counterattack. Consistently unpredictable yet rarely cheap or unfair, the dynamics of turn order in Aeon’s End are genuinely some of the best I have ever seen in a co-op game.
Now for the turns themselves. The nemesis’s is simple. First, resolve any power or minion cards that are still active, then draw a new card and resolve that too. These cards typically result in damage being dealt to Gravehold or the players — or set the nemesis up to damage Gravehold or the players on future turns — amongst other negative effects and do-not-wants. Player turns are much more involved (as they should be in any properly admin-balanced co-op game). First, they are permitted (and sometimes required) to cast any of the spells they prepared on previous turns. Following that, they may perform any of the following actions as many times as they are able to and desire: play relics or gems from their hands of 5 to gain access to their effects; purchase cards from the supply with the aether they’ve generated this turn; purchase “Charges”, which when collected in the appropriate quantity allow them to utilize their Breach Mage’s unique ability; “Focus” or “Open” breaches which grant the player permanent and temporary spell slots, respectively; and play spells from their hand to any of their focused or open breaches. They may also take the appropriate actions at this time to cancel any of the nemesis’s active power cards, or activate the ancillary effects of spells equipped to their breaches. After doing what they do they discard as needed and draw back up to five, which brings me to another excellent design decision that benefits both the game’s pacing and its tactical depth: in Aeon’s End, you never shuffle your deck. When it runs out you simply flip your discard pile over and “Voila!” keep on drawing. This is one of those rare ideas that few people would ever think of, yet in hindsight seems so obvious. It adds a minor, but interesting decision space to the generally braindead act of discarding and at the same time summarily does away with the rhythm-destroying act of the mid-turn shuffle. It’s hard to say how well this idea would work in other deck-builders as a lot of other rules and card effects would have to change to accommodate it (which sounds like it might be a worthwhile design experiment), but here it is just fantastic. Many cards are built around this concept — amplifying their effect if multiple are played from the same hand and so forth — and seeding your deck in a way that grants you consistently effective turns is a joy. Even better is when you and your allies manage to sync up your strategies and execute them harmoniously in concert. Several cards and abilities grant benefits that you can bestow graciously upon your teammates, which can result in some seriously efficient god-slaying spell-casting while also making you feel warm and fuzzy inside. All in all, the deck-building in Aeon’s End is unique, tactically satisfying, and meticulously splits the difference between Dominion‘s probability game and the deterministic march of traditional engine builders.
The polish and speed of Aeon’s End‘s systems keeps the player’s focus solely on the game’s drama, which stems mostly from the nemeses themselves and the distinct flavor they each bring to the table. One nemesis has a fury meter that grants them additional actions when their anger is pushed passed a certain point; another births swarms of insect offspring that modify their master’s behaviors depending on their quantity. Cranking up the creativity dial, there is a nemesis that feeds on the supply piles the players purchase cards from, turning the standard act of purchasing cards into something that may spell your future doom. My favorite is the nemesis that adds cards of their own to the player’s decks. Cards with effects that, while useful, disproportionately further the nemesis’s own interests. Admittedly, certain tactical considerations stay the same no matter the villain — cancel as many power cards as possible, deal with minions first unless the nemesis is nearing the tipping point of defeat, etc. — but their behaviors differ enough that each feels wholly individual and rewarding to defeat. Generally, I am not one to indulge in expansions — maintaining a diverse collection with limited space is my main priority — but I would be lying if I said I didn’t feel the temptation to splurge on an extra nemesis or two after finishing the four that come in the base game. It’s exciting to think about the possibilities of Aeon’s End‘s system and its capability to deliver endless amounts of challenging and entertaining boss fights. No wonder its been followed up by a deluge of sequels and spin-offs. There’s even *shudder* a Legacy version (you know me).
Aeon’s End is a feat of wonderfully inspired streamlining. By incorporating its engine building grind directly into the boss fight it creates an environment where even your earliest turns are tense and exciting. Thought it pulls inspiration from many different sources, it successfully binds them together and edits them down to an elegant, expressive experience of its own. I know I said toward the beginning of this review that Aeon’s End understands the difference between board games and video games — and it absolutely does — but that doesn’t mean there aren’t some rather large sprinkles of influence here from the electronic realm. One comparison that immediately stands out to me are the boss fights in traditional turn-based JRPGS. Preparing your spells each turn feels similar to entering menu commands, and the way turn order works is much like watching a round of combat in Dragon Quest unfold, in which you never know whose commands are going to get executed next. Another resemblance that comes to mind is how much spinning the dials of the nemesis’s life meter to reduce its health mimics the satisfaction of watching a chunk of a boss’s life gauge drain away in Dark Souls after landing a successful hit. Whether these points of reference are intentional on part of the designer or merely expressive connections manifested by my own artistic taste, the fact that I feel drawn to make them is a testament to the excellence of Aeon’s End‘s design. In a genre overflowing with dull, repetitive combat scenarios and lifeless RNG engines, this is one of the few co-operative tabletop experiences that genuinely makes me forget that my opponent is really just a shuffled deck of cards and small collection of cardboard bits.
Aeon’s End gets a rating of FOUR out of FIVE, indicating it is RECOMMENDED.