Designers:  Sydney Engelstein (The Dragon & Flagon, Space Cadets, Space Cadets: Dice Duel), Nick Little (Aeon’s End: Legacy, Legendary: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Path of Light and Shadow), Kevin Riley (Aeon’s End, Aeon’s End: Legacy, Aeon’s End: The New Age, Aeon’s End: War Eternal)

Artists:  Gong Studios (Radiant: Offline Battle Arena, Tiny Towns: Fortune)

Publisher:  Indie Boards & Cards (Aeon’s End, Aeon’s End: Legacy, Aeon’s End: The New Age, Aeon’s End: War Eternal, Coup, Flash Point: Fire Rescue, Haggis, The Resistance, The Resistance: Avalon, Snowdonia)

Genre/Mechanisms:  card drafting, card game, cooperative game, deck building, hand management, variable phase order, variable player powers

Funding Status:  At the time of this posting, Aeon’s End: Outcasts is already fully-funded. Pledges currently total more than 8x the initial funding goal, with 6 days left to go on the campaign.

Player Count:  1-4

Solo Mode:  yes

Complexity:  medium-heavy

Risk:  medium-low

What It’s About:  Following last year’s Aeon’s End: The New Age campaign and its expansion of the Aeon’s End deck-building universe, Aeon’s End: Outcasts continues the narrative and introduces “new mages, nemesis, gems, relics, and spells that are fully compatible with all existing Aeon’s End content.”

How It Works: Each game, players decide upon a specific Nemesis to battle. The players are victorious when the Nemesis has no cards in its deck and no minions or powers in play, or if the Nemesis is reduced to 0 life. The Nemesis wins (and the players lose) if all players are exhausted (have 0 life) or if Gravehold (the town they are protecting) has 0 life.

Gameplay in Aeon’s End is similar to many deck-builders; players will draw up to a certain number of cards at the end of their turn, and each turn they’ll work with the cards in their hand to execute abilities and purchase more powerful cards. What makes Aeon’s End different from other deck-builders are two mechanics: 1) players work to open Breach slots, rotating Breach cards as they do, to gain more slots to activate Spells, and 2) when players discard their cards at the end of the round, they can choose the order of their discard, bringing an additional level of strategy to the game. There is no shuffling when the draw pile runs out (as is the case with most deck-builders), so the order of the discard pile is maintained, and the game does not force a certain level of randomization.

Turn order, however, is random, and constantly determined by a turn order draw. This affects both the players and the Nemesis. On their turn, the active player executes the following phases in order: Casting, Main and Draw.

During the Casting Phase, the active player may cast Spells slotted to Open Breaches, and must play Spells slotted to Closed Breaches.

During the Main Phase, the active player can take the following 8 Actions, in any order, any number of times: 1) Play gem or relic cards, gaining Aether or health/abilities; 2) Gain a card (from the supply, by spending Aether); 3) Gain a Charge (by paying Aether); 4) Focus a Breach, paying 2 Aether to rotate the breach card 90 degrees; 5) Open a Breach by paying the Aether cost (this is the more efficient way to Open a Breach, but the Aether must be paid out in a single turn; Focusing is less efficient, but essentially allows the player to split the Opening process over several turns with smaller Aether increments each turn); 6) Prep a Spell to Breach (into an Open Breach, or a Closed Breach that has been Focused that turn); 7) Resolve a “While Prepped” effect; and 8) Resolve a “To Discard” effect.

During the Draw phase, the active player places all of the Gem and Relic cards played that turn into their discard pile, in any order they so choose. Unlike many deck-builders, players do not also discard unused cards from their hand, but instead keep them. If they player has less than 5 cards in remaining in their hand, they draw cards until they have 5. Players may look through their discard pile at any time, but they may not reorder it after their initial discard. Players may never look through their draw pile. There is also no hand limit; if a player has 5 more or cards left in their hand at the end of their turn, they do not discard any cards, they simply do not draw additional cards.

During the Nemesis’ turn, it activates a Main phase, resolving Persistent Effects and removing 1 token from each Power Card. When a Power Card has no tokens remaining, it resolves its effect and is then discarded. Then the Nemesis Draws. An Attack Cards is immediately executed and discarded. A Minion Cards immediately resolves any Immediate Effects, then receives the indicated number of Life Tokens. A Power Card immediately resolves any Immediate Effects, then receives the indicated number of Power Tokens. If there are no cards for the Minion to draw, it Unleashes 3 times (generally doing a lot of damage).

If a character ever becomes Exhausted, the following occurs: the Nemesis Unleashes twice, the Exhausted player destroys one of their Breaches and discards any attached Spell, and discards all Charge Tokens. The Exhausted player continues to take turns, but cannot re-gain any life. Any cards targeting the player with the lowest life targets non-Exhausted players. And any damage that would be dealt to an Exhausted player is instead dealt to Gravehold, twice.

If all players become Exhausted, or if Gravehold’s life reaches 0, the players immediately lose the game.

Comparisons:  Some of the most popular deck-builders include Ascension, Dominion, Dragonfire, Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle, Hero Realms/Star Realms, the Legendary games including Legendary: A Marvel Deck-Building Game, and Thunderstone Quest. Other games that include deck-building as a primary mechanic but aren’t solely deck-builders include the Clank! series, Great Western Trail, and Tyrants of the Underdark.

What Should I Pledge?:
$69 Tornado of Insight: includes the new Aeon’s End: Outcasts expansion, the Aeon’s End: Return to Gravenwald mini-expansion, and all stretch goals unlocked during the campaign to be bundled together as Aeon’s End: Southern Village.
$130 Lightning Arrow: everything in the Tornado of Insight pledge, plus 1 extra wave of Aeon’s End (a wave of Aeon’s End includes the base game or a major expansion, the mini-expansion that was produced alongside it, and the second mini-expansion of the campaign that collected that wave’s stretch goals).
$195 Fortifying Blaze: everything in the Tornado of Insight pledge, plus 2 extra waves of Aeon’s End.
$260 Clarifying Light: everything in the Tornado of Insight pledge, plus 3 extra waves of Aeon’s End.
$325 Destiny Forger: everything in the Tornado of Insight pledge, plus all 4 previous waves of Aeon’s End.

The waves of content available piecemeal in the various pledge levels above include:
Wave 1: Aeon’s End (the original base game) with The Depths & The Nameless
Wave 2: Aeon’s End: War Eternal with The Void & The Outer Dark
Wave 3: Aeon’s End Legacy with Buried Secrets
Wave 4: Aeon’s End: The Shattered Age with Shattered Dreams & The Ancients

Add-Ons:
$10 Additional Accessory Pack from Outcasts: provides enough starter cards so that every new mage in Outcasts has their own unique, dedicated set.
$25 Neoprene Aeon’s End: Outcasts Play Mat
$15 Into the Wild: an additional mini-expansion from The New Age that includes a Nemesis mat & card divider, 2 Mage player mats, 17 Nemesis Cards, 40 Player Cards, 18 Treasure Cards, and a new story continuing The New Age narrative.
$10 Kickstarter Promo Cards from The New Age: a KS-exclusive, 46-card pack.
$10 Additional Accessory Park from The New Age: provides enough starter cards so that every new mage in The New Age has their own unique, dedicated set.
$5 GTM Promo Cards from Legacy: 6 Fleeting Vision cards.
$5 Retailer Promo Cards from Legacy: 14 Splinter Missile and Echo Stone cards.
$5 Kickstarter Promo Cards from Legacy: 26 cards, including Baneshire, Glyph Enigma, Drown in Flames, and Blank Turn Order cards.
$20 Additional Accessory Pack from War Eternal: provides enough starter cards so that every new mage in the Aeon’s End base game and War Eternal has their own unique, dedicated set, including those from the expansions and stretch goals of both campaigns.
$10 Promo Pack from War Eternal: 12 cards, including 9 Nemesis cards and 3 market setup cards.
$5 Dividers from War Eternal: 21 extra card dividers for Spells, Gems & Relics.

KS Exclusives
There are a variety of cards in the Aeon’s End: Southern Village mini-expansions that are labelled as Promos, and aren’t not currently slated for sale at retail, though they may be in the future, as a separate mini-expansion. There are also several cards in the stretch goals that are KS-Exclusive and will not be included in retail versions of the game, period.

All-In Total: In the continental U.S., you’re looking at $325 for the Destiny Forger pledge, $25 for the Neoprene Play Mat, $15 for Into the Wild, $10 for the KS Promo Cards from The New Age, $5 for the GTM Promo Cards, $5 for the Retailer Promo Cards from Legacy, $10 for the Promo Pack from War Eternal, and $5 for the Dividers, plus $49 in estimated shipping for a total of $434. If you want to also throw in the various Accessory Packs so that every character can have its own unique, dedicated starter deck, then add $40 for the 3 Accessory Packs and a total of $474.

Aeon’s End: Outcasts completes its Kickstarter on Thursday, February 27th and tentatively ships in August 2020.