The Best Deckbuilder Just Got More Stuff- Aeon’s End: Outcasts Review

I all but ignored Aeon’s End, which came out years...

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I started up Legacy with a friend before the plague hit and it seemed to be a great entry point for new players.

Yes I think Legacy is great for new players IF you want that bespoke breach mage and the legacy format. Not super into that format, so I prefer War Eternal as a starter option. Same game, really. Just different presentation.

I love me some AE, it's tied for my favorite solo game with Marvel Champions these days. Totally agree on Outcasts being a great second or third box, so you get the biggest impact from the stuff it does. I do mix all my sets though, I think it gives you the most fun and the most variability as long as you set things up according to a couple guidelines. 1) set up the nemesis deck with roughly equal amounts of each type of card and 2) make sure you have at least one cheap spell and one cheap gem. I'll pick a random 2 or 3 cost gem and spell then use a d8 to pick costs for the other cards and pick random cards of the rolled costs.

I also am not sure if I want more AE after this, but I already felt that way before I got excited about Outcasts and late pledged for the Kickstarter. I'm guessing I'll get another wave of content at this point just out of inertia, and having enough room to store another wave in my current storage solution

Timely, this thread just popped up on bgg where the designers if AE recently talked about the next wave Kickstarter on a podcast.

boardgamegeek.com/thread/2579572/ae6-leg...ckstarter-date-deta#

- Legacy of Gravehold is the most complex AE product yet - intended for the core fandom they've built up and not intended as much as an "entry point" product.
- Future AE products post LoG are also going to be that way. With so many Mages and Nems, necessarily you have to find more and more interesting things for them to do with twists, mechanics, and components.

- KS launching "near the end of Feb"

- This is going to be the most expensive AE product yet (around ~$100 MSRP quoted but no specific price given), but it has more than double the content of another big box.

- "It's a CRAZY legacy implementation. Pitch: What if we brought back like 25+ characters and you could fight as them all and some Nemesis you might NEVER see in your branching story paths?!?" - they took an approach of throwing in every single possible thing they thought they could squeeze in.
-21 mages, 11 nems. Normal big box is ~12 mages. Double the number of player cards as a normal box.

- Rationale for the insane pitch: For people that have played AE content and love the story, it's the climax of this story arc. People love the stories and characters, everyone has their own favorite mage. The story is built on the characters they love. The devs felt they had to keep throwing in more and more playable mages, not just mentioning them in the fiction, so that everyone's favorite could be represented.

I'll say here what I said there, which is as an owner of all the stuff so far I'm not sure that a double sized hardcore Legacy edition speaks to what I want from more AE. I might be tempted if it's like a big crazy replayable branching Expedition mode, but if it's straight up AE:L style stickering and half the stuff doesn't work outside the campaign at the end... Yea not sure about that. Just have to wait and see at this point.

Edit: also I don't know anyone that cares that much about the AE fiction

I can’t say that I’ve paid more than about five minutes of attention to the story.
I don’t think I can even name a character other than Xaxos and then only because he is in like 3 times but even then I just call him vampire dude.

I’m not sure the new one sounds like something I’ll pursue...after this cycle, I think I’m good. I would really like to see the designers try something new at this point.

Of note- longtime TWBG supporter and excellent designer Geoff Engelstein’s daughter Sydney is now one of the credited designers!

Thanks for giving her a shout-out! I'm really proud of the work she's done on AE (both design and writing), as well as her design on the new Terraforming Mars spinoff game.