Aeon Trespass Odyssey

I’ve finally found another city on the map. The main drive for the first part of this cycle is I’m meant to be finding cities that I can deliver aid to, following a massive “natural” disaster we inadvertently triggered. I had found one city, but when the Nemesis spawned it destroyed that city. It’s taken me several gaming sessions to find another.

This session was my first battle against this cycle’s Adversary, Titan X. It’s most notable speed – it doesn’t just run as fast as it wants to get to you, but it then hits you and runs past, making retaliation difficult. I managed to get seven wounds in, which was the criteria for winning my first battle against it. As luck would have it, my first hit was a critical which ripped it’s helmet off giving me a secret item. The problem is if I use it, in future battle the Titan X won’t be messing around anymore and will be more lethal. I’ll decide if I’m going to use it before my next battle with it.

Just a reminder of how much space this game takes up: one full dining table for combat, an A0 poster board for the map and another A0 poster board for the technologies I have.

This was my second battle against the Dragon of Phobos. This is the Primordial that usually retreats after each attack and vanishes. Since my first battle with it, the story had a segment where my hero’s were practicing a simulated battle with the Dragon. They were saying that if they surrounded it, it would not be able to retreat and vanish. I couldn’t see how that worked in the rules, as normally a Primordial that needs to move through a Titan simply does so and inflicts damage on the Titan. But I assume I’m missing something, and decided to follow the story. So in this battle I surrounded it, trapped it, and subsequently beat it up. My new oxygen technologies also meant none of my Titans died from running out of oxygen in the underwater battle. I did loose one to a level 3 AI attack. Some of those can be incredibly lethal – I only had a 1/1000 chance of being totally unharmed, and a 1/100 chance of having the non-lethal outcome. There was therefore a 989/1000 chance of dying.

This was my first battel against the Meduketos. It’s a Primordial that starts off hidden down geysers. You have to search for it to reveal it. It’s not that tough once exposed, but after taking three wounds it hides again. When hidden it’s attacks are primarily to fire microwave lasers (I’m not making this up) from off the board edge.

As with the previous battle, the main problem is that it’s underwater and after three rounds my Titans run out of oxygen and drown. I tried to go for it and manage seven out of ten wounds inflicted before loosing all my Titans. But I did get enough resources to craft two sets of gear that give Titans an extra round of oxygen, and I’ve also researched a tech that gives another two Titans an extra round. That should be just enough to start winning some battles.

This was my first battle against the Dragon of Phobos. As is usual for the first half of the cycle, the battles are really hard. For the Dragon, two mechanics really work together to make it virtually impossible. The first, is that after being hit the Dragon moves away, and if it reaches a board edge or end us outside your light radius (currently 0 or 1 for all my Titans) it vanishes. You can’t interact with it until it turns up again to attack. That turns the battle into a slow waiting game. The problem is that the second mechanic is that we’re fighting underwater and holding our breath. After their third action a Titan dies.

So this time round one Titan died to an unlucky card draw, then a second drowned, then I retreated to save the remaining two. Until I get some new gear that increases my light range and allows me to hold my breath for longer, these battles will keep going that way.

This session was brief, as it was just the second half of the cycle opening sequence. I had another battle with the Ur-Fleece, except this one was a flash back, despite me now having more advanced equipment. A bit odd, but basically a re-run of the last session’s battle.

I’ve changed my game layout for this cycle so that the Nymph summon cards that I might use are stored near the area of the board where they might be of use, i.e. the battle summons are on the side of the battle area, the map related ones are by the map. This way, I might actually remember to use them.

It took more time last week to pack away the cycle 4 stuff and get out the cycle 5 stuff than a normal gaming session.

Still, I was all set to go this week and so the first session threw me straight into a battle with this cycle’s boss Primordial. I did ok, but the objective isn’t to kill it, it’s to run away. The battle also takes place on a moving board (i.e. the terrain all moves in one direction) which simulates a chase.

Also most battles this cycle will take place underwater, which at the moment means I either win in two rounds or run out of oxygen and drown. Wasn’t a problem today, but it will be interesting to see how that plays out.

I’ve now finished cycle 4!

In this session I was supposed to have a normal Primordial battle (simply due to timeline progression) the same turn I triggered the end of the cycle final battle, so I just skipped the normal battle. I’ve done those plenty by now and I really wanted to finish the cycle on the 26 week mark.

The final battle was suitably climatic, with me getting plenty of buffs thanks to the side-quests I’d completed. The battle itself went reasonably well until after turn 3 or so when I just auto-lost. There’s a rule which I unlocked earlier in the campaign where four terrain pieces are removed per turn, starting from the centre of the board. Once all the terrain’s gone, I loose. I also drew a location and wounded it which removed all the terrain from the edge of the board, so I had no terrain left and technically auto-lost. But the fluff is that my Titan’s need this terrain to climb on to as the fight is actually fought at high altitude. But all my Titans had climbed on to the Primordial by this point. So it made no sense thematically for me to loose, plus I’d had no control over this outcome, so I just ignored it and played on.

I really enjoyed this cycle’s theme of Persia being obsessed with infinite economic growth and it ruining everyone’s lives. Has some strong parallel’s with capitalism and current government rhetoric which hit home.