Although the main purpose of replying was the side note, now that I’m here I should relate my Aeon’s End experience, which was to buy the game excitedly about 3 years ago and then have it sit unplayed ever since. I think it was the rules overhead and the fussiness of not shuffling that were making me baulk at it. Those were probably factors more in my head than in reality.
Now, fast forward to today. I moved in with my partner and her 9-year-old son for lockdown. We had a great time playing the Hero Realms cooperative campaign, despite tears about how hard it was and the fact that it was criminally short and very generic. I haven’t been to my flat in 6 weeks. Today I have to head back there to fetch some documents (otherwise my car tax is going to expire) so I was thinking that I might pick up my copy of Aeon’s End for some more co-op deck-building fun.
But @RogerBW’s comments about the art are making me think twice, in that it might not be appropriate for the boy, who does tend to get scared quite easily. What do you think? Fetch it or leave it and pick up something else?
(edit: by “gets scared easily” it’s probably fairer to say that he doesn’t manage his fear-type emotions very well.)
I didn’t think the art was inappropriate; for original AE, it just seemed terribly generic.
In terms of diversity it does a decent job; in terms of showing female characters as more than a set of breasts, it does a great job.
FWIW, I would recommend Legacy as a great intro to the game and its concepts, and a pretty solid legacy implementation as well, only not recommending it if you just can’t abide the idea of legacy games and the permanent changing of game components (though they do sell a reset kit if you must). I know that’s similar to what some people said above, but they mostly seemed to recommend it for legacy fans. my feeling is that it’s the best intro the game’s got, period.
That is of course assuming you’ll buy into more sets if you enjoy it, since the legacy campaign tops out around 10-12 plays and that’s if things go south more than they have for us. You’ll probably need the regular game content to play indefinitely. But if you like it, that shouldn’t be an issue, and if you don’t, why worry about it?
Having just binge-played the entirety of Aeon’s End: Legacy over the course of 24 hours, I can confirm it’s a great intro to the game. It was my first Aeon’s End, and it ramped up the mechanics in a way that was smooth and never overwhelming. The story was absolutely terrible, in my opinion, but the core game is awesome. I would also say it has plenty of replay value after you finish the campaign. Without trying to spoil anything, you can play with the mages you end the story with, and almost all of the Nemeses you fight during the story are playable in isolation and are great fun just by themselves. I was worried I would need to buy into more sets to play more Aeon’s End, but the amount of replaybility in Legacy is pretty tremendous in my opinion.
Some of you may have seen a recent post in the thread:
Last game you bought?
After a bit more reading, it appears that Aeon’s End: The New Age will spoil Aeon’s End Legacy (or some of it, at least).
I feel as though I have a lifetime supply of AE content already… and they seem to still be putting out new content - so I have to ask myself (and, by extension, this thread): can I just skip AE: Legacy?
Right now, I’m leaning towards, “Yes” but I’d be interested in any thoughts veterans of the franchise might have.
How into Legacy games are you? I think it’s a great legacy experience. If you’re just there for more Aeon’s End stuff, I agree there’s just piles of that already.
I’ve never bought a legacy game (well, before backing Frosthaven at a level that includes Gloomhaven) because I have three fundamental problems with them:
Reviews can either spoil secret elements (not good) or skirt around them and, as a result, not give a clear picture of how the game experience will fare with different groups.
They aren’t resaleable, which is my preferred acquisition method: buying things on the secondary market
They suggest a consistent group to play through; and that seems unnecessarily excluding.
Even in the friendliest of scenarios where you play through an iterative story, you still end up having conversations along the lines of, “Oh, hey, we’re starting in Scenario 7 because we’ve already done Scenarios 1-6” (this actually happened when some friends brought Hogwarts Battles over).
So, acknowledging Frosthaven and Gloomhaven will be a thing in my house at some point in the future… and that AE, FH and GH may end up being, all three, primarily-solo affairs: I dunno.
If you already have loads of AE content and you’re not new to the game, you can probably skip it. The story isn’t good enough to worry about it getting spoiled (unless you’re super into the lore of Aeon’s End for some reason), and while there is a solid amount of Nemeses to fight at the end, I found the mages you create to be less interesting than the curated ones that come in the other boxes. Also, Legacy introduces a couple minor mechanics that aren’t in other AE boxes (certainly not in New Age, which is the one I own), and those mechanics can sort of mess up the experience. As a non-spoilery example, there are player cards that provide you with extra benefits if you also have other similar cards; if you have a ton of player cards other than Legacy, though, it’s very likely that you won’t get any of those benefits, so that card becomes much less useful. There are also mechanics that you just might not remember, and so you have to relearn new keywords every so often when you play with the Legacy content.
It was a great intro to the game for me, and I like the box size as a storage space, but if I already had a ton of content I don’t think I would need it.
(insert my standard Gloomhaven isn’t really a legacy game even though people talk about it that way disclaimer)
Aeon’s End Legacy offers a reset pack. That is admittedly more money to drop though. It’s also cool because in addition to getting to customize your rift mage and their special starting card, there is an enemy evolution mechanic that offers particular incentives to prioritize those targets so you don’t have bigger problems all game.
Like Pandemic Legacy, I feel like those elements make the decisions a bit more interesting than the base game. I think New Age has some of that also, though?
I wouldn’t play it for the story, no. Although, FWIW, Pandemic Legacy (season 1 - haven’t played 2) doesn’t really have much story - actually probably less than AE. What’s cool in PL is the way the very simple narrative beats reconfigure the gameplay, your objectives, etc, and particularly because you quite possibly won’t be expecting them a lot of the time. AE:L’s story is pretty straightforward, and it doesn’t change things up as much so far as we’ve played but the mechanical implementation is still fun to tangle with.
Well, after finally getting round to play Aeon’s End maybe two weeks after fetching it, I can confidently say that it was most definitely the right decision and I’m very glad to all of you who encouraged me to do so.
It really is very very good. Much better than the disappointing Hero Realms campaign mode. We’ve played it about 5 times now and are loving it, although trying to convince the 9-year-old not to take all of the “Wild” turns and hoover up all the cards that might be better in someone else’s deck is a challenge! I’ve purchased a couple of expansions and so far the 1st edition/2nd edition graphic design clash isn’t too jarring.
Looking forward to playing this one many more times!
I haven’t played AE since everything shut down, or really any board game. I should clear my table and play a couple solo games, or see if any of the TTS mods are good and play with my friends. I miss the game.
There’s a Steam App which is good fun and works pretty well on “Remote Play Together” which is basically screen sharing and mouse sharing. It’s a little fiddly to get set up as it can be a bit glitchy unless you fiddle with the settings, but once you’ve got it up and running (and got used to the fact that you can’t move the mouse while it’s someone else’s go) it works nicely enough.
No expansions, save for a weird app-only cameo from one of the One Deck Dungeon characters, so the content can run dry quite quickly.
There’s a couple of TTS mods. I don’t know how official/sanctioned they are. One of them makes my computer lock up but has all of the product line. The other one is only the first wave, I think.
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