Aeon’s End: The Descent (an expansion in the Aeon’s End universe, but also a standalone cooperative game) was on Gamefound back in Februrary 2024 and promised delivery in January 2025. Guess what? It actually got here early right before Thanksgiving 2024 (Nov 20, 2024 or so).  That’s right, it’s almost 2 months early!  Holy cow!  That never happens in crowdfunding land!

I went all-in on the new stuff and got the two expansions* (three if you count XAXOS inside), the mat, and the box!

I freely admit I was on the fence on backing this.  I do love the Aeon’s End system and its ilk (Astro Knights (see review here), Astro Knights: Eternity (see review here), Aeon’s End, Aeon’s End: War Eternal (see review here), Aeon’s End: Outcasts (see review here) etc etc etc), but I have a lot of Aeon’s End content already.  I mean, this is a great cooperative deck-building game system with a mage theme, and it basically made the #1 Spot on our Top 10 Cooperative Deckbuilding Games!

In the end, I chose to back Aeon’s End: The Descent because I was excited for the new Friends and Foes module which can be used in any game.  Not to bury the lede, but I think that new module makes the game that much better.  We’ll discuss that in detail below.

Let’s take a look!

Unboxing

This is a pretty standard sized box: see Coke can above for reference.

If you are considering getting this, I recommend the mat.  Of all the mats I have, the Aeon’s End/Astro Knights mats always seem the most useful: look above at how they well they help organize the play!  The mat from Conquest Princess last week was pretty good for solo, but not really useful for cooperative play.  This mat, for Aeon’s End: The Descent worked so very well in both solo and cooperative contexts.

Just be wary that the mat a little big (see Coke can for scale above) and it’s a little harder to carry around (see below).

There’s a little rulebook for the Friends and Foes module; I think it’s separate so you can use it with other Aeon’s End games easier. See picture above.

There’s a narrative booklet: this is to take you through the adventure with some text. See above.

And the main rulebook: see above.

At its core though, Aeon’s End: The Descent is a card game: see SO MANY cards above and below!

Luckily, these cards are very well organized: they have stop signs cards to surround each deck.

One of my favorite features of this game (and all Aeon’s End games) is that EVERY CARD IS WELL-LABELLED: see above as the Treasure card is from ATD-4-02 (bottom left of the card).  If you ever need to put everything back in original order, you can. 

Spoiler Alert: I played through the entire campaign,  and I was able to reset the entire campaign (sorry, they are called Expeditions here) back to its original pristine state.  And you can! See above as I try to separate the cards back!

At its core, each player takes the role of a mage, and his cards become his casting deck (which he has to try to build up using deck-building).  See some mages above … and some other ones come out later!

Generally, the mages are fighting a Big Bad! See some above! To win, you usually have to reduce the Big Bad to zero hit points by casting spells to do damage!

Along the way, you make some Friends and Foes, who help or hinder you just a little bit … and more come out as the Expedition unfurls …

There’s a bunch of tokens which you do need to notate moneys, power, charges, and some other stuff!

Generally, the components are pretty high quality, the art is good, and the production looks great. See above.

The Rulebook

The rulebook is .. fine.

It flops over the edges, making it harder to keep open on the chair next to me.  It really needs to be a smaller form factor: it gets about a C on the Chair Test.  I find myself grumpier and grumpier with rulebooks which are huge when opened up.  At least it does sit flat.

The Components page is nice* (*modulo one issue we had with Astro Knights: Eternity:  the Component pages STILL doesn’t label the Turn Order cards as coming from one of the 1X decks … you might find yourself searching in vain, until you open up all the 1A-1D decks).

Set-ups are nice, but if you get the Play mat, you really don’t need this section.

Generally, this was a good rulebook with good annotations, lots of pictures, and readable text. It even used color to differentiate new rules (in yellow) from older games.

This is a pretty good rulebook, but it had better be after making 5? 10? different versions of Aeon’s End. Although there is still one quirk in the solo rules … see later below.

Gameplay

I always forget HOW AMAZING the Aeon’s End games are for that first set-up!  Aeons’ End: The Descent is no different!  See above and below as the sheet that comes with the box helps you quickly unwrap and set-up your first game!  

If I ever get an Aeon’s Box in the mail, I am never worried about my first set-up*, because it always goes so well!

I don’t want to say too much about gameplay because we’ve discussed it before in previous reviews.  Also, there are a lot of great videos on the internet if you want to see how it plays. But I just want to say, there are a number of new mechanisms and somehow, they keep squeezing new ideas out of the Aeon’s End system!  Every game in the Expedition has a new “angle” or “mechanism” that keeps the game fresh! A new Mage?  A new weird way to defeat the Big Bad?  Somehow, Aeon’s End is still fresh after all these years!

Friends and Foes

Without a doubt, my favorite new thing about Aeon’s End: The Descent is the Friends and Foes module.   Basically, two new characters become embroiled in your story: a friend and a foe!

They are so embroiled, that the friend and foe each get their own turn within the turn deck!  See above!

Each friend and foe slowly evolves something: the friend is building up something good for the players, and the foe is building up something bad!  See above as The Corrosion can add his Draining cards!    The nice thing about the friends and foes is that they aren’t too bad; you usually have to make a choice about the goodness/badness every turn they come up! I really enjoyed having that extra choice! 

Do you add a few charges to the friend or foe?  Do you take some damage to Gravehold to avoid that charge?  The players almost always GET TO MAKE A CHOICE: what kind of good news or bad news do you want?  The players decide!!

See above as the The Scavanger Foe makes players draw a card and either suffer damage to Gravehold or let the Scavenger charge up!! What do you do?  What do you do??

As much as I like these choices, what I like best about the Friends and Foes is that they even-out the problems with Variable Turn Order gameplay.  What do I mean by that?

Those of you have been following my blog for sometime know that I am not a huge fan of Variable Turn Order: see the blog entry here for A Discussion of Variable Turn Order and How To Mitigate Its Randomness.   Basically, Variable Turn Order can be too random and cause pathologically bad draws which can make the game less fun.   To combat the problems of Variable Turn Order in Aeon’s End (and its ilk), I allow myself a simple House Rule: the Nemesis is never allowed to go more than 2 turns in a row. 

It turns out that I didn’t have to use this House Rule in any of my games in Aeon’s End: The Descent!! Why?  One of the things we discovered when working with Variable Turn Order in Unmatched Adventures: Tales to Amaze was that the bigger the deck, the less likely you are to have pathologically bad draws!   See blog entry for more Discussion here.

Because the Friends and Foes “fill-out” the Variable Turn Order deck from 6 cards (original length) to 8 cards (with one Friend and one Foe), there didn’t seem to be a need to invoke the House Rule!

In the end, I love this new Friends and Foes module for multiple reasons: it mitigates the Variable Turn Order issues I have in Aeon’s End: The Descent, it allows more choice into the game, and it has some really new ideas for how to push Aeon’s End into fresh territory.  Not to mention, you can use Friends and Foes with any Aeon’s End game!

I guess I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t think the game still needed one slight House Rule: the rules say that the Charges “must go off” when the Charge track is filled (see above).   Sure, this makes sense for the Foe, but not the Friend!!!  I played several times where the Friend’s ability discharged … and it was completely useless for me!!!  But, the Friend is your friend!  Ask them to hold on until next round when they activate!  This seems like a minor house rule, but I think it feels more thematic and more empowering as a choice-You don’t have to discharge the Friend’s ability just because it’s full.

Otherwise, Friends and Foes is a fantastic module.  I probably won’t play without it from now on if I can help it. 

Expedition

So, this game comes with a Campaign of 4 Sessions (4 battles): they call this an Expedition (much like in Astro Knights: Eternity … see here).   The basic flow of the game is described by the Narrative Book (see above and below).

Each section starts with a TON of text.  I have to admit, I was a little daunted the wall of text, until I realized that using the character sheets/mats made it more interesting and visual!

What I did: I found the character mats for each of the Mages described in the text (and the Friend),  and then I put them next to the Narrative book!  So, as I read, I could correlate who was speaking, who was acting, and who was who!  See above!  This brought me more into the story, and I recommend the same for you!

After the text sets up the story, the yellow boxes direct you how to set-up the game: see above for instructions on how to set-up Battle 3 (note, not really any spoilers in the set-up).

Most of the special context for the Expedition Battles is in one of three places: The Envelopes, the Specially Wrapped Cards, or the “unspecial wrapped cards”. 

The Envelopes typically contain Friends and Foes, a new Nemesis, some dividers, and possibly some new boards.  Minor Spoiler for Envelope 3: don’t look too closely at the picture above, but that’s what’s generally in an Envelope!!!

Most of the cards you need come from the special decks:  For example, you open 2B at the end of Battle 2!

Or open 1A, 1B, and 1C at the start of Battle 1!

There’s a ton of other decks in the game which just “augment” your game: this allows you to have other choices for your Gems/Relics and Spells.

Although your first game will have a rigourous set of Gems/Relic/Spells (see above), you can choose other cards for these.

Although there are some instructions for reseting the game, I strongly recommend you take pictures (like I did) of all the stuff in the Envelopes: Again, minor spoilers for Envelope 4! See above!

After playing through the Expedition solo (see Solo Play section below), I went ahead and re-sorted all the decks back to their original state!  I used rubber bands (I know, some people don’t like rubber bands) to keep them together.

It took about an hour or so to re-sort everything and put the box back to the original state.  You can do, but it is a lot of work.  I did this so I can play the Campaign with my friends all over again.

Solo Play

So, Aeon’s End: The Descent supports solo play (thanks for following Saunders’ Law). And it has choices!

You can either play true solo mode, where the solo player plays exactly one mage OR you can play solo two-handed.  And for true solo, they mention the simple rules “You are your own ally!”  (I would have LOVED some better solo play description like this for Freedom Five from a few weeks ago:  Oh, Freedom Five, I wanted to love you so much …).  In the end, I played true solo: one mage per Battle!

This true solo is interesting, because some variants of Aeon’s End only support the solo player having three turns and the Nemesis having two turns (most notably: the App for iOS! See our Discussion in Seven House Rules For Cooperative Games). This version of Aeon’s End: The Descent seems to let the true solo player have four turns (it’s unclear, because the set-up for the players has rules for 2,3, and 4 players … but not 1-Player? See page 8!). In the end, the defining text seems to be: “The turn order deck is always composed of four player turn order cards and two Nemesis turn order cards” (p. 8, Turn Order Deck).

Over the course of about 4 days, I ended up playing the entire Expedition!  Although the game box says 60 minutes per game, I kind of think that’s bogus: I am an experienced Aeon’s End player, and I think I took about 2 hours per game.  To be fair, when I play solo, I tend to be more thoughtful and take longer turns.

I chose to use a different Mage for each game: I started with Thraxir, went to Mezahaedron for my second Battle …

Used Raven in my 3rd Battle …

And finally ended Battle 4 with Brama .. the Leader!  

Using a different Mage for each battle was absolutely the right thing to do!  I got to play 4 VERY DIFFERENT Mages throughout the game!  Each play style was very different, and it was fun to try to learn and discover the strategies for each Mage! I had to use Destiny tokens, Knowledge tokens, and all sorts of new stuff I had never seen before!  

It was an absolute delight getting through this Expedition.  I had a blast!

Although the true solo game has the solo mage advance quickly, I always worry that they may die sooner, because they only have 10 hit points total!  At least playing two-handed solo, there are 20 hit points total between the two mages … Luckily, getting too low was never an issue. I don’t know if I just chose well, but my Mages never skirted death!  I always worry about the true solo player dying too early because there are no hit point balancing mechanisms (i.e., solo player has 12 hit points or something), but it hasn’t seemed to be an issue.

My only complaint might have been that maybe it was too easy?  I didn’t lose a single solo game along the way! And all of wins were pretty decisive!  Like I said, I am a fairly experienced Aeon’s End player, so that’s part of it.  Luckily, I noticed that every Nemesis does have a “advanced” mode, so if I play again, maybe I’ll do the advanced mode so it’s a little harder …

In the end, I had a great time playing the Expedition solo.  I was able to learn the game to teach my friends (see Cooperative Play section below), but still enjoy a full story and campaign!  If I never play Aeon’s End: The Descent again, I feel like I still feel like I got my money’s worth. The thing is, I would like to play it again! It was fun!

Cooperative Play

So, Robert, Becca, and Jeff and I played the first game of the Expedition! A 4-Player game!

We ended up winning and generally having a good time!

Becca, who doesn’t really like cooperative games that much, liked it enough that she expressed interest in ordering a copy!  I showed her the little catalog (above: came with the game) of all the Aeon’s Ends …

Generally, everyone was able to feel part of the team!  But, each Mage has their own personality, and I think everyone felt like they could do something interesting on their turn!  Sure, there were moments when one of us “took it for the team” and had a crappy turn, but it was always a conversation! Everyone was always involved, either figuring out their turn, or talking with others!

The only “real” problem was that the game lasted a good three hours!  Granted, this is a learning game for most everyone but me, but 3 hours is a lot longer than the 60 minutes on the box!  Still, we were engaged the entire time and had fun.

Cooperative play went well, even with 4 people who are all very independent.  And none of my friends (except Becca) are really “gamers”, but everyone took  to the game pretty well!  Generally, it was a smashing success and we had fun.

One final thing: the 4-Player cooperative game seemed harder than the true solo game.  I think if we played through the entire Expedition as a 4-Player game, the game would have been much more challenging.  The game just seems harder with more people.

“Emergency Sleeving!”

You don’t have to sleeve the game, but you really really really should sleeve the Turn Order Deck (see above).  Why?  You touch the Turn Order Deck every turn!  I didn’t sleeve my Turn Order Deck in the original Aeon’s End, and it got a little grody.

Just as we were starting the Cooperative game, I remembered how “grody” the Turn Order cards, so we had to have an “Emergency Sleeving!!!!”

Okay, you may now resume your regularly scheduled program.

What I Liked

The Campaign, er, Expedition Story:  Once I got into the Expedition, I enjoyed the story.  I needed the graphic support of pictures of the characters to jumpstart me into the story, but once I got into it, it was surprisingly enjoyable. And maybe even a little moving?

The Length of the Expedition:  I liked that the campaign was only 4 Battles: it seemed like just enough to be achievable.  It wasn’t too long to drag on, nor too short to leave me wanting more.  I said the same thing about the campaign in Astro Knights: Eternity: 4 Battles seems just right!

Friends and Foes: I adored the Friends and Foes addition.  It not only fixed the Variable Turn Order problems (or at least strongly alleviated the issues), but also added some extra choices to the gameplay.  Overall, this module is a major win for the Aeon’s End system, and may now be a necessary module moving forward.

Still Fresh:  Everything seemed “fresh”: the new Mages, the new Nemeses, the Friends and Foes, the new Gems/Relics/Spells, the new mechanisms (Knowledge, Destiny, etc)!  Somehow, even after 8 years since the original Aeon’s End, all this content still seems fresh!

New Narrative Booklets:  I like that the Narrative Booklets and the Expedition mode gives you an “excuse” to play through all the content.  I like this idea!  An excuse!  It sort of went under the radar, but this also included Narrative Booklets for both the original Aeon’s End and the Aeon’s End: War Eternal.  If I need/want an excuse to playthrough those games again, I have it!  I think it’s really cool that Indie boards and cards “retro-fitted” the Expedition onto the original games!

Standalone:  Were you always curious abut Aeon’s End but were turned away because of something (maybe Variable Turn Order)?  Maybe you found the Friends and Foe module  alluring?  Maybe the idea of a just-right campaign is alluring?  You do NOT have to get all the other Aeon’s End content … you can just get this standalone game and be very happy for a while!

What I Didn’t Like

Wall of Text:  I grew to like the story that came out, but that wall of text from the Expedition booklet is very daunting; I suspect it will actually turn some people away.   I would have considered putting in some relevant pictures in with the next, or at least “suggested” that players keep out the Player Mats so they can have pictures of the characters as they interact.

Friends Ability Activation:  I really think that the players should allow the Friend to activate abilities with a little more choice; right now they friend “must” discharge all their charges and activate their ability even if it’s not useful.   These seems against the theme; they are our friends, why can’t we work with them so they activate their abilities at better times?  This is my only real complaint in an otherwise wonderful Friends and Foes module.

Rulebook and rules:  The Rulebook and Narrative books are pretty good, but have a lot of weird discrepancies!  Why is one-player set-up not mentioned in the Turn Order Deck section?  Why are Treasures not emphasized more?  It’s one page in a floating box you will miss on your first read!  The set-ups in the Narrative book seem a little … spartan?  There needs to be more emphasis that we can choose Gems/Relics/Spells between Battles! And the Turn Order cards are referenced in the Components but “hidden” in the intro decks … it needs a slightly better sentence there.

These are all minor things.

Conclusion

I am not quite sure where I come down on Aeon’s End: The Descent, because I liked it so much! The Friends and Foes module, for me at least, is always necessary for any Aeon’s End game I play from now on!  My friends loved this game, even the non-gamers!  The cooperative experience has always been very strong in Aeon’s End: my plays with my friends accented how well it works! 

 

My solo games during the Expedition were so much fun, they will probably make my Top 10 Solo Games of 2024!

Aeon’s End: The Descent breathes new life into the Aeon’s End system. I loved it. I think I will give it an 8.5/10 or maybe a 9/10. I don’t know, maybe even a 9.5/10? It was such a great experience both solo and cooperatively!

My only question: should it make my Top 10 Cooperative Games of 2024 (because it’s a standalone game) or my Top 10 Cooperative Expansions of 2024 (because it expands other Aeon’s End games)?