Aeon Trespass Odyssey

I just finished cycle 3 with two days to spare. I’d set myself the target of completing the game before then end of 2023.

I really enjoyed cycle 3. The story had a lot of layers of depth that started to be revealed. The map had some interesting mechanics as it was split across three time periods (past, present and future) and time rifts were used to travel from one to another. The primordial fights were also interesting.

Having being thorough with my explorations and side quests I was able to talk the final boss down and void the final fight. I was going to play it anyway, but then the true villain revealed themselves. There had been hints that there was a mastermind behind current events, but they were subtle and easy to miss. I was genuinely surprised that there was a final-final battle. Even here I was able to avoid the fight by having being thorough with exploration in the cycle. An ally turned up at the last moment and was able to beat up the boss on my behalf. Having skipped the previous boss though I decided to play this battle myself regardless. It was really fun to play: my Titan’s felt suitably epic and the boss felt truly powerful.

Time to pack the game away until Cycles 4 and 5 turn up in 2024.

This is the very final model from the first box. I believe it’s Helios, God of the Sun. It servers no in game purpose, hence why I did it last. It was a nice refreshing model to paint though.

The skin was painted bugman’s glow, washed reikland fleshshade, then layered with cadian fleshtone then kislev flesh.

The hair was painted xv-88, washed seraphim sepia, then highlighted balor brown followed by zamesi desert.

The loin cloth was painted celestra grey, washed nuln oil watered down with water 50:50, then highlighted ulthuan grey followed by white scar.

The clouds were painted the same as the loin cloth except the wash was watered down drakenhoff nightshade.

The rocks were painted mechanicus standard grey, washed nuln oil, then highlighted dawnstone followed by administratum grey.

The sun halo was painted averland sunset, washed casandora yellow, then highlighted  flash gitz yellow, then given a fine edge highlight of white scar.

Having painted the Cycle 3 models and looking back into the box I realised there were two functional models left to paint – a titan that is linked to the alternate game mode, and the vantage point for the Cycle 1 big boss.

There’s also the Kickstarter Only model but that never takes part in the game. I’ll paint it up in the coming weeks.

Nothing new with the paints used, apart from the fact I used talassar blue for the trouser stripes on the titan.

I quickly finished off the Primordials and Titans for cycle 3. As before, just a quick paint job with contrast paints. For these the theme was shyish purple, terradon turquoiseb aethermatic blue and apothecary white.

Cycle 1 took me six months to complete, playing roughly one session per week. For cycle 2 I got into it more (mainly because I had no PC game I wanted to play) so I played one session most days. It took just over two months from start to finish.

Let’s see if I can play cycle 3 in under two months and finish the three released cycles in 2023 like I set out to do at the start of the year.

Pros

• I’m really enjoying the complexity of the story. It’s well executed with lots of interlocking parts.
• The way your accomplishments though the campaign in terms of story development feed in to the final battle is great. You feel really well rewarded for doing all the “side quests”.
• Progression in terms of unlocking technologies, abilities and gear also feels rewarding.
• This cycle in particular keeps offering you the choice between obvious gains at a cost of your humanity, versus help people out but your cause suffers. I chose the latter option every time but was then rewarded in the end by having powerful allies to help me out.
• A portion of this cycle has a really cool “flee your pursuers” phase that lasts about 10 game turns. It was different and tense. I really enjoyed it.

Cons

• You get hit with events outside your control which cause you to loose the cycle (loss of crew, damage to your ship, Titans being killed outside battle, amassing too much fate, etc). The game assumes you’ll loose a cycle several times and just restart. I’m not restarting a ~80 hour cycle. I just ended up ignoring these loss conditions.
• This cycle has a humanity mechanic but it never explains it. I just started to be told an event had caused me to loose one point of humanity, so I guessed I started at zero and counted down. Near the end there are some events that check your score and this confirmed I got it right. Oddly at the very end you can unlock an ending if you have positive humanity. That would be out of your control as there are loads of events that reduce it but only the occasional random event (i.e. critical hits on certain locations) that increase it. I ended on -10 and I avoided every loss of humanity where I could.
• I find many battles are quite static and don’t interact with the terrain much. It tends to just end up with my Titans surrounding the Primordial and pummelling them. Sometimes they knock me back and I have to spend a turn running back. Some are dynamic, but less than half. Not sure if it’s me not doing all the rules correctly or by design.

Well this Primordial is certainly an unusual model. My wife actually saw it before I painted it and she asked if I’d 3D printed it because it looks very pretty.

Colours as before, but with volupus pink, talassar blue and ork flesh used for the monsters trapped in the Primordial.

Not much to say about these. Colours are as before except:

The grey-green skin was achieved with a 1:1 mix of militarum green and basilicanum grey.

Added gore-grunta fur for bronze areas.

Using abaddon black to represent ambrosia gloop.

When I finished Cycle 1 I was able to bypass the final battle, having completed a side quest. However, I was curious to see how the final battle would have played out.

Most of my best Titans were dead, so I only had one of the special ones and the other three were the standard variety. They all had pretty good gear though and I had defeated the Temenos Primordial before. On the downside I had a scattering of despair token from the final storyline events.

Having completed all of the side quests in the campaign I found each one gave me a bonus in the scenario. I was able to go first (a rare and significant advantage) and I received various buffs on the Titans. I started closer and the Primordial’s vantage point was exposed from the start.

And after those three short turns, the battle was lost and the campaign would have been to if I had had to fight it.

I’ve found the combat in this game to be fun but often quite random with card draws. Sometimes they’re great for me and sometimes its terrible. Overall I’m ok with it. Just in this, the most critical battle of the campaign, luck did not go my way.

You may have also noticed the terrain never played much effect. I find this is the way in most battles. I’m not sure if its the rules mechanics, or just that I don’t have the bandwidth to use it properly while also managing every other game rule while playing solo.