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.…