Aeon Trespass Odyssey

I had a good feeling for this battle at the start.

It was my fourth battle with this cycle’s pursuer. These primordial’s aren’t related to the main story. Rather, the pursuer’s chase you across the map on some sort of personal vendetta. They don’t level up like normal primordials, but they tend to “play” with you. Their scenario’s progressively get more punishing until you kill them the first time. Then the gloves come off and they’re very punishing until you finally defeat them again.

I was still in the playing phase, but by this fourth battle the stakes had become very high. I could only loose by being totally wiped out, and I could only win by inflicting ten wounds.

The battle dragged on a bit more than usual, as this guy’s quite tough. I started to run out of fate (the resource that gives me re-rolls) and two of my titan’s died. I had it down to nine wounds taken, but by now my titan’s had each attacked five or six times. Each time you attack your rage goes up by one, unlocking better skills. So the longer a fight goes on, the deadlier you become.

Rather than keep hacking at it, I took a turn to disengage and move my titans into an ambush position. I knew this particular primordial often teleports to the centre of the board after attacking, so I stood next to the centre of the board. The ambush worked, and I managed to not only hit, but critical hit a level three body part. That does two wounds. So it had taken eleven wounds, enough for me to win, but if I could to twelve in total I’d actually kill it. I decided to take the gamble and it paid off. I was able to kill it.

It’s been a while since I’ve had such a tough battle and it was rewarding to reach those higher rage levels. Now in the campaign I can setup a battle three turns down the timeline to try and finally defeat the pursuer, but until then it’s battles will be even more tough.

Not an awful lot to say about this session. Made a bit of progress with side quests and then fought a Midascore. During a side quest I’d unlocked wise providence, giving my Titan’s the ability to go first in the next battle, rather than the Primordial. As such, it was half dead before it even acted. It also helped that I’d unlocked the technology to make some better armour which I immediately crafted and equipped.

I found that someone has uploaded technology trees for each cycle on Boardgame Geek. They should help me manage getting new technologies going forwards.

This cycle saw me make good progress with the main plot. I had the customary battle with the main baddie. I was able to win without taking any damage, although I was running very low on resource by the end of battle so still couldn’t have kept fighting much longer.

For completing this stage of the chapter I received another cypher card (see image). I’ve now received five this cycle. The language you see on them is used a lot in this cycle. I suspect I don’t need to, but will get a lot from solving the cypher so I can read these messages. That’s how deep this game can get – you have to solve a real cypher to get the most out of it.

Having a titan be disembowelled on turn one was quite unfortunate.

Other than that, the gaming session went as normal. A few story elements were explored which were interesting, and the battle with the Primordial was a challenge but I’m more or less getting the hang of the combat now.

One thing I did notice was that I really struggle with the tech tree. I have done in every cycle so far. The way it works, is that you get a combat tech and a non-combat tech every four or five campaign turns. Each tech comes on a card that lists its prerequisites and also the techs it helps to unlock. But I find it really hard to keep track, as once I unlock a tech that card needs to go to where it’s used, otherwise I’ll forget it exists. Combat abilities go near the combat board. Map interaction technologies go near the map. And so on. It makes it very hard to check I’ve got all the prerequisites.

I noticed today that I have a string of about five techs, but missed the first one in the chain. A page in the rulebook that was an actual mapped out tech tree would be very useful. I’ll have to give it some thought and see if I can come up with a better way of tracking it all.

13 sessions in and I feel I’m able to keep on top of about 95% of the rules. I forgot to take a picture again – I need to do that just to add some interest to these posts.

I’m looking forward to finishing Aeon Trespass (which I expect will take until at least the Autumn, if not the entire year) then I’ll go back and play Kingdom Death Monster again. It feels like KDM is a much simpler game!

Not much to say about this particular gaming session. I triggered a positive main story progression, which nearly always triggers a battle with the main Primordial of the cycle. The battle went ok, with only two of my Titan’s dieing.

The way story progression works in Aeon Trespass is that there is a positive quest card and a negative quest card. When you make progress you put a token on the positive card, and when you reach the required total trigger the next positive story event. Similarly there are doom tokens that go on the negative quest card and trigger negative progression events. Reach the end of the final negative card and it’s campaign over. Reach the end of the positive cards and its the final showdown of the campaign. Progress and doom tokens are distributed randomly on the map and also come from narrative story events, where sometimes you can choose to gain/avoid them and sometimes they just happen.

This session had a couple of interesting mini-games. To simulate an escape there was a version of the card game Combination and moving along an escape track. This actually occurred twice in rapid succession. On one hand it was a nice twist to the game, but on the other I was in the middle of a narrative story section and I didn’t have the room to set it up – so I just skipped it assuming I’d passed.

There was also a chase mini-game (in photo above) where the bad guys made a get-away I used these special cards to plot their route, following them back to their master’s layer. I think I did it correctly, some of the rules were a bit confusing. At the end of the day it generated a destination though so I can still progress the game.

The battle was another Midascore fight. It went smoothly enough. No Titan’s died and I think I only forgot one minor rule.

Time for another battle with the main Primordial for this cycle. These battles are triggered by progressing in the story (rather than at set times on the timeline or when the Pursuer catches up with us).

The battle started well. My first attack (one I get for free before the battle starts) did a critical hit which opened up all the Primordial’s vantage points (locations I can use later to hit it in vulnerable areas). I was able to very rapidly get two of my Titan’s in said vantage points in my first turn.

Then the game did it’s usual swingy shenanigans.

It turns out I did too well in my first turn. By battering the Titan, I added more level 2 and level 3 AI cards into it’s deck, so on its first turn it unleashed a level 3 AI card on me, targeting the two Titan’s that were on the vantage points. One was immediately turned to solid gold and killed, and the second simply took massive damage. I drew my damage card and got a free interrupt attack. Except it was against a level 3 body part that I had no chance of wounding. Failure to wound resulted in instant death.

I fought on with my two remaining Titans for another round. In the Primordial’s second round it again severely wounded a Titan. I drew my card and got another bonus attack. This time I managed to draw a card that I could wound, and delivering a wound from the vantage point location is the win condition for the scenario.

I have to admit that the wild swings of this game frustrate me when they go against me. But after the battle when I was reflecting on it, I do think I prefer a swingy game that can work for me as much as against me, as compared to a very predictable game where I just have to grind through it. I’ll have to remind myself of that next time a Titan dies very quickly due to bad luck.