Aeon's End: Beyond the Breach ►►► What's new for the greatest co-op deckbuilder ever?
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Transcript
Hey everybody. Today on Roto Runs through we're previewing a prototype of AON and Beyond the Breach. But before I get going, please turn your subtitles on to the Cleon channel so that when I make rules goofs, you'll know what they are. And if you've done that, well then welcome to my latest expedition into the worlds of Aon's End. And uh today I am going up against the disgusting Oracle of filth uh who does maybe the most disgusting thing an enemy can do in Aon's End. Clogs up my deck full of garbage. And I'm going to be doing my best to overcome this oracle by taking on the role of Nook the Lost. But Nook is not alone. Even though I'm playing solo today, I've got a friend, Lash the Dreamer. But the Oracle has a helper as well, the creeping dark. Yes, that's right, folks. With this latest version of Aon's End, they're bringing back the Friends and Foes system that was designed by design superstar Dave Ty and this new expansion/standalone comes with a bunch of new enemies, a bunch of new heroes, and a bunch of new friends and foes. And also some new gameplay rules as well.
and I'll be showing you how they work as we get going. But there ain't nothing to it but to do it. Let's see if Nook can beat the Oracle of Filth. So, got to shuffle up the old turn order deck and see who is on first. By the way, I should say folks, everything today is a prototype. And this prototype I got did not come with nemesis tokens or ether tokens. So, I'm just using power tokens in place of that. And the creeping dark starts with one nemesis token that's represented by this power token. Uh so you may notice a little bit of weirdness about that. But anyway, let's get going. Who's up first? It is me. I am on deck. So let's get my starting hand of 1, two, three, four, five cards. And here is my banner because I'm playing with a friend. And it's the banner of vigilance. Um which, you know, is a replacement for one of my normal gems.
It gives me one ether that I can spend. And folks, we're getting right to it. One of the new features of the game is this trinket deck that's kind of part of the market, but really separate. This is full of fun little cards that will help me out in a pinch. And I can collect trinkets by activating certain cards from the market. But I figured just to show it off to you, I'd have my banner card this time be the one, the vigilance, that gives me trinkets. So, what am I going to be doing? Well, I'm going to be playing these cards. I've got one ether and one more ether from a crystal. That's two. Plus, Nook is very, very interesting. He starts with a superior spark and a superior crystal. And these things generate three ether and three damage instead of the normal one and one because they are superior.
But the problem is these wear down over time. So, you're going to see that in action. Anyway, so I've got three, four, five ether that I can spend. And I've also got a spark and a superior spark. And let's go on ahead and put the spark on my one open breach. And by the way, my breaches are supposed to be over here. I've just kind of moved things around so it fits on the table a bit better. So I'm prepping that for being able to do one damage to the Oracle of Filth later. And then there's my superior spark. Actually, let's put the superior spark there as it will do three damage, but then it will downgrade from a superior spark to an infused spark. This gets weaker over time the more I use it. Now, if I don't want to, I don't have to do three damage. I can do one damage with it instead so that it doesn't wear down over time. But anyway, uh I've also got this other spark that I'd like to get going, but I need to um put it in a uh in in a whatchamacallit.
Uh can't think of the word. Uh in a in a breach. So, I need to spend some ether. Now, because of my superior crystal, I could spend 1 2 3 four five. That's enough for me to open my second breach right out of the gate. I mean, that's huge. Normally mages can't open something that fast. Um, but my superior crystal is letting me do it. Or instead, I could just spend to um, you know, to focus a little bit so that it'll get cheaper later on. Wait a minute. Hold on. Do I have this right? Oh, it's supposed to be like this. Yeah, it's five. So, I could, like always, slowly open my breach and make it cheaper over time. But, you know what? I've got so much ether. I'm just going to do it. I'm going to blow all five of them and just open my second breach right out of the gate and prep my spark there. All right.
So, I'll be casting those spells later, but I have burned through all my ether. So, I won't be doing any deck building. I will not be grabbing any cards. The Abyssal Vile, the Omen Loop, the uh Luminous Facet, the Vortex Blast. Those I'll have I'll I'll do some deck building later. But this was just too good to pass up. Getting a second breach open right out of the gate. Now, let's look at these cards a little bit more closely, though, because there is more to them. Um, so I get three ether. I did that. But now this has to be swapped for the infused crystal. So, uh, you know, Nook has a swap pile. So, I'm putting superior away and bringing out infused, which in the future only can generate two. Oops, that's a spark. Need the crystal. The infused crystal generates two mana. This, after I use it, will downgrade to the dim crystal. And the dim crystal, if I use it, will downgrade to an empty crystal that does nothing other than clog up my deck. So, that's kind of Nook's main thing is he can um his crystals and his sparks get weaker over time and then my rupture time lets me um charge them back up again. So, anyway, so I'm swapping that and uh you know, but I still got the three ether, but this is what's going to go in my discard pile. And um the banner of vigilance says, "Hey, in addition to getting ether, I can gain a trinket and place it on top of my deck.
And if I do, my friend gains a charge." uh which I think I will definitely do. So, I'm playing all three of those and I'm going to grab my first trinket. Let me just shuffle this trinket deck up a little bit more. We'll see what we get. All righty. Well, we'll see in a bit. It's going to go to the top of my deck, which means I'm not going to go through my entire deck in this first round. These trinkets are really interesting. There's lots of ways you can get them, and they fill up your deck very quickly, but they empty out of your deck just as fast. You'll see that in a second. But because I used the banner of vigilance to get that trinket, good old Lash over here gets one charge. And he needs five charges to unleash his inspiration. So I'm on my way to unleashing that. So that was it. I prepped some spells. I did not buy anything. Instead, I opened a breach and I got a trinket. So those all go into my discard pile. And now I draw five cards, which means I did not go through my deck entirely. One, two, three, four, five. All righty. And that's a spark that didn't come out. But here's my trinket. It's the power trinket. So, you'll see that in action pretty soon. Heck, maybe you'll see it right now. Do I get to go again? Yes, I do. All right. The uh the turn order deck is being kind today. So, let's see what I got. I've got three crystals.
That's going to be three ether that I'll probably use to buy something this time. I've got a spark, which I got to prep. And I've got my power trinket, which will let me get a charge. Um, and then this is the way trinkets work. You use them and then you lose them. They go to the top or to the bottom of the trinket deck. So, they temporarily fill your deck up with stuff, but then they go away just as quick. Now, before I do any of that, it's time for me to unleash. I will cast this spark and do one point of damage. Oracle fill starts with 80. Woohoo. Down to 79. Yeeha. And now I got to decide, am I going to do my superior spark? I'll do three more points of damage to the Oracle, but right now doing three damage is not that useful.
I'd rather save the superior spark for when he brings out some kind of evil minion that I could then just plow through really quick. Plus, don't forget, as soon as I use this, it gets weaker and it'll be a while before it gets better again. So, because it's in an open breach, I don't have to cast this right now. And it's not like I have to get it out of the way to make room for other stuff. So, I think I'm going to wait. I'm going to wait and see if a minion comes out because I'd rather do three damage to it than the big monolithic 80 points of damage there. So, I'm just going to leave that queued up. And so, I am going to queue up another spark. And now I've got three to spend and my power trinket. I'll use that right now. It goes back to the bottom of the trinket deck and it gives me one charge. That was the equivalent of getting two ether. All righty. Boop.
Okay. And now I've got three crystals to spend. So what am I gonna buy? I could afford atomized ash. I could afford um the omen loop, which will cost three. Or I could spend two and basically do a down payment on it. What's that called? That's called um development. The development system is back where if I only had two, I could put my down payment and then pay two later on and get it. um or but I've got enough to buy it outright right now. But I think it's always a good idea to invest in more money makers. So, uh rather than getting a relic, I'm going to go ahead and get the atomized ash. So, I'm playing all three of these. That's three ether to get the atomized ash. And when I gain this, gain a pulse token. What's a pulse token, you ask?
That's a new system as well. This is and these are the pulse tokens. This is a prototype though. Uh I don't know if this is what they're ultimately going to look like. So, I've got one pulse token. The thing is, some cards can use pulse tokens to power themselves up. And the interesting thing is I might get a pulse token from one card and then pump that token into a different card if you've got multiple post token type cards. So, anyway, when I when I first gain this, get a pulse token. Now, this is a gem that's going to give me two ether. And it's got the recall ability. Remember, recall, recall is back, baby. As long as it stays in my discard pile, I can uh use a pulse token I've got to do a damage whenever I if I just need one more little damage. This is like damage I'm carrying over. And you'll notice um uh you know, this is available as long as it's in my discard pile because of the recall. So anyway, so I've gained that. That cost me the three and I think that's it, right? As I used the trinket, it's gone. So I'm charging myself back up. Yeah, that's fine. So, I'm done. All three of these cards get discarded however I want. And now it's probably going to be my opponent's turn. No. Oh, this deck loves me. It's time for Lash to step up to the plate, my friend. Um because in this deck there's cards for me, for the big bad, and for my friend and my foe, the creeping dark, who's backing up the Oracle of Filth. So Lash says, and I've always known right from the get-go, Lash is going to bring um on
the team work, cuz that makes the dream work. Lash gets one charge. Yay. So he's charging up for his big inspiration power, which basically gives me an extra turn, which is awesome. And the players can collectively discard two prepped spells. If they do, Lash gains two additional charges. And now folks, you'll notice it just so happens I have two prepped spells. I'd have to give up my superior spark, but that means I'd be charging up Lash that much faster. It's almost like I planned this cuz I can see what my friend is going to do when they eventually go. I know what my foe is going to do when they eventually get to go. So, it made sense for me to leave this at the ready because that means I've got two. It's It's kind of a pain not to do three damage. But on the other hand, I'm not weakening my card. So, I'm going to do what Lash says with some teamwork. I'm going to collectively, and collectively means if I were playing a multiplayer game, I might give up a card. You might give up a card. But since I'm solo, I got to give them all up, which is why I kept this here. So, I can collectively discard two prepped cards, and I can put them in whatever order I want.
And Lash gets two more charges. And just like that, he is I mean, he needs five charges. That's like 10 ether or eight ether worth of stuff there. So that worked out uh pretty pretty well. Okay, so um Lash is just about ready to go and his card goes away and we find out what's he going to do next time he steps up. He's going to unleash the twist of fate where again he gets two charges or I can get an ether token, reveal the top card of the turn order deck and place it at the bottom if I don't want that thing to happen for a while. So that's what Lash will do for me next time he is up. Thanks buddy friend. And now finally the Oracle of Filth gets to step up. Yes, the Oracle of Filth says it's time to shine. So the Oracle of Filth has as part of setup their pupil of oblivion who has two hit points and they are already in play. So remember whenever a bad guy activates they activate all their existing cards in order from oldest to newest and then they draw a new card that will set me up for the future. So first of all the pupil of Oblivion. Oh, isn't he a delightful fellow? Um when a player deals damage to this with a spell, place that spell in the vortex. So, here's the thing. The pupil of oblivion, who I'd like to get out of the way, only has two hit points, but I end up losing the spell I use against the pupil of oblivion. You better believe I don't think I would have wanted to have used
my superior spark and then lost it into the um not the Oblivion, the vortex deck, which means I'd have to wait to get it out of here later. So, that's just the thing. If I hit this thing with spells, I then lose those spells. Now, that's a way to get rid of sparks, to get sparks out of the way and put them over there. But I was in a situation where I needed to have multiple sparks set up so that I could um do the teamwork. Right. So anyway, so uh that's just a going thing. Whenever I attack the pupil of oblivion, I temporarily lose the spell I used. And the um right, if the pupil of oblivion ever has 13 or more life, um it consumes eight of its own life. the basically the pupil of oblivion can have um you know can keep on earning life over time and if it gets up to 13 life then the Oracle of filth will expune which means I take this deck uh from the vortex and throw it into my deck. So I clog up my deck with a bunch of crystals but this is also how I get back the stuff that I had thrown in there if I've lost any of it. Um anyway otherwise the pupil just keeps healing.
heals, gets two more hit points. So, they're on the way to allowing their teacher, the Oracle of Filth, to expunge. So, that's what they do. And eventually, they're going to clog up my deck with all those crystals. All right. So, that's it for them. Now, the spreading of the shadow, which is in play because of the creeping dark. The creeping dark foe put this out here. And when all of these emptied out, the creeping dark will strike and hit Gravehold hard, like super hard. Um, and there's really uh nothing I can do about this cuz this is going to stick around the spreading of shadow for the rest of the game because of the foe creeping dark. All right. So anyway, so I've resolved those things and now I draw a new card. I have no idea what it's going to be. It is going to be Oh, I'm being perplexed. This is a specific card for the Oracle rather than a standard one.
Unleash. And then any player suffers two damage and places a crystal in hand into the vortex. All righty. Oh, whoops. I did not refill my hand. One, don't shuffle. Two, three, four, five. So, I totally forgot. I should have had my hand at the ready with my infused crystal and my regular crystal. All righty. So, anyway, so they're perplexing. First of all, they're going to unleash and unleashes list here. The pupil of oblivion gets four health. So, here's a five with one in change. And boom, they are getting closer and closer to that um 13 that life they need to basically clog up my deck with all of these um boring, you know, starter crystals. So, that's not great. But, um right, so they've unleashed and now any player suffers two damage. So, I'm going to take two. Oh, by the way, I didn't set myself up. I started with 10. Now, I am down to eight. One, two, three. So, I'm down to eight hit points. And I have to give up a crystal and put it into the vortex. So I have less to spend on my next turn and more to clog me up later on when the bad guy expunes. And I got my two sparks, my banner of vigilance, and my infused crystal. Okie do. Um, so and then that was just an attack. So that card goes away. Nemesis is done.
Nemesis might go again. Nope. I am up again. Hurrah. Although I should say folks, I am going by the friends and foes solo rules that I played a year ago when I first covered the scent. My prototype did not come with friends and foe rules. So, I'm not quite sure if I'm supposed to still be using the um the third card in the deck. I've been waiting to hear back from the publisher. And oh my gosh, I'm checking my email right now. I should have checked my email before I started filming. What does that email say? Yep, this is right. It should be set up like this. Anyway, so I'm getting to go again. This is my third action. And then the rest of the cards are just going to be the nemesis and the foe. All right, so what have I got? Well, I've got two sparks to prep. Good thing I've got two breaches ready to go. I've got the banner of vigilance again, which gives me ether plus my weakened infused crystal gives me two.
So I've got three. Or if I don't want this to get any weaker, I could just get one, which means I have two, which means I could put the omen loop um as I could develop it and, you know, make a down payment and get it later. Or I could give myself another charge. But let's worry about that in a second because right now I want to get another trinket and put it on top of the deck. So that'll come up and you can see when the trinkets are coming because they have a different card back. Um because when you get a trinket, you don't necessarily have to play it. Uh but it's just going to stay in your hand until you eventually do. Sometimes trinkets instead go into your discard pile instead of going to the top of your deck though, right? So anyway, okay. So I got to go back. Am I going to get two out of this and weaken my crystal even further? Or am I going to get um just one? Cuz with two, I could give myself a charge. Yay.
Or I could put a down payment on the omen loop. But if I go for three, you know what? I think I'm going to go for it. I'm going to go for three. I'm just going to burn through my crystal very, very quickly. So, I've got three ether with which to buy another atomized ash, which gives me another charge. And now, this is in my discard pile. So, I could lose one pulse token per turn to deal one damage. You know what? I'm going to give up one of those pulse tokens I just got to do damage to the pupil of oblivion, thereby putting off his countdown towards the expunge. And the thing is, I did it with a gem, not with a spell. So, I don't end up losing this. You know, if I hit this guy with spells, I lose the spells, but not the gems. So, that worked out pretty well. So, this now unfortunately has to swap from being an infused crystal down to a dim crystal. And then I'm going ahead and All right, I got my Right. So, that was it for me. Boom. Right. Okay. Is there anything else I want to do? I don't think so. Oh, wait. Yes, there is.
Always read the small print, folks. If I get a trinket, which I did, my friend gets a charge. Uh, Lash wants his fifth charge and he says, "Inspiration." Boom. He burns through all that. And then I can shuffle any player's turn order card. And since I'm playing by myself, there's only me back into the turn order deck. So, I just got an extra turn. Thanks, Lash. And now, if it had been bad timing to get that and I didn't have any of my cards in the discard pile, then Lash would have um basically just uh gone gotten four charges back. So, you know, he'd only burn one. But that was perfectly timed. This is a good first trip through the round. I'm slowing down the pupil of Oblivion without losing anything. Um you know, I' I've got two breaches. I'm doing great. I still got another one of these um pulse tokens that I could use next turn and do another point of damage um as long as this um atomized dash stays in my discard pile. So I need to keep it on display like that. So yeah, I'm pretty happy with that. And then I draw one, two, three, four, five more cards. And now let's see whose turn it is. Oh, all righty. Oracle is going to go again. Um, the uh pupil of filth is or the pupil of oblivion is getting ready. He's up to nine of 13 now. The power keeps counting down until the shadow will spread from the creeping dark and then they do another bad thing.
Hey, they've got a minion. It's a blind gazer. Four hit points persistent. The pupil of oblivion gets to the pupil of filling up even faster and I start taking damage. All right, so you've got four hit points. You're somebody I would like to take out sooner than later cuz you're not very cool. Blind gazer. All righty. So, there we go. So, that was it for them. And now it's time for the foe. And the foe says, "I have a choice. Creeping dark." The foe gets two charges so they get closer to lengthening shadows, their big special thing, or I can discard a gem. And if I do that, I remove one power token from the spreading shadow, which means they get closer to unleashing. So either way, they're going to get closer to lengthening shadows or closer to spreading shadows, one or the other. Um, because they're snuffing out the light.
So, am I going to give up a gem? Well, let's see. I'm not going to give up my atomized ash, which generates two. So, I'm if I don't give anything up, I've got five to spend. Plus, I've got my golden trinket. Um, which gives me another one and an additional one. Um, that can only be used to gain cards. So, I've got 1 2 3 4 5 6 seven. So, I could afford to go down to six. But with seven, I could buy the Vortex Blast, the most powerful card there is in this particular game. And the interesting thing about the vortex blast is this is a card that only goes in the game when you're fighting the Oracle of Filth because the vortex card basically pays attention to how big the vortex um is. The more stuff that's in here, the more powerful this card gets. So the more I if I have a vortex blast, I want my sparks to get sucked into there so that this card becomes progressively more powerful. And wow, I mean, being able to buy a size seven card, although I don't have to. I if I got four, you know, I could buy a mega slice plus an omen loop and spend the seven that way, you know, or I could um, you know, build up my um my charges so that I can start refilling my crystals because they're getting dim fast, folks. So, anyway, um, right, I have to choose. I think I'm going to keep it. I'm going to keep a gem, which means creeping dark gets two charges.
So, they're getting they're halfway now towards shadows lengthening. Alrighty. And so, they're going to go on to their next thing, which is um that's from the glitter. That's from the trinket deck. Their next thing they're going to want to do is drain the light. Okay. So, they'll do that in the second time through the deck where they're going to remove one power token from spreading shadow. So, it's getting closer to the countdown. Three times. Do it three times. or he gets two more charges. That'll be in the future. Either he's going to unleash or he's going to get much closer to doing that. They're both bad, but I'll get to choose. Anyway, though, uh it is time for me I get one more bonus uh action during this trip uh thanks to Lash the Dreamer. Okay, so what am I gonna do first of all? Hey.
Okay, so these sparks, normally I'd pump them into the blind gazer and get this thing half done, but now I kind of want to throw them at the pupil of oblivion, thereby slowing down the Oracle of filth and making a vortex blast more powerful. It'll do two additional points of damage if I put two additional cards in there. Oh my gosh. And you know, it's it's so far out that I'd be able to get that that quick. There's actually two cards that have to do with the oracle filth. The Vortex Blast. Let me go on ahead and zoom in so you can see them. Oh, that's uh There we go. The Vortex Blast. Only use this card when fighting against the Oracle of Filth and the Abyssal Vile. Again, use this when playing against the uh and so this is one of my two relics where I can get a charge, which is worth two ether, or I can place two cards that I played this turn in the vortex. So, this lets me feed the vortex with anything I want, like getting rid of stuff that clogs up my deck, but at the same time makes vortex blast more powerful. I think I have no choice, folks. Uh, this is too big to pass up.
Having seven this early in the game because of the golden trinket and my atomized ash. Yeah, there's no two ways about it. Um, but wait, before I do any of this, before I play any cards, I got a couple of sparks. Uh, I got a couple of bright sparks here and they're going to go pew pew and either do two damage to the big boss, to the blind gazer, or to the pupil of oblivion. Um, I say, yeah, go to the pupil of oblivion. So, it do does two points of damage, but then these get lost. They fall into the vortex. Um, and so, uh, that just and right, so I've done that. I've slowed down the expuning. I've gotten rid of some loby cards. And now I'm going to spend one two three four five six plus one more if I'm gaining a card with it. And then this goes back to the bottom of the trinket deck. So thank you um golden trinket. That really made a big difference. One extra ether was all it took for me to buy a vortex blast. Boom.
So I've used all those cards. And now before my turn is over, I'm going to go on ahead and take this other um whatchamacall it pulse token and do one more point of damage, slowing down the pupil of oblivion without losing cards. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I'm fine with that. Okay. And then all these cards, they got discarded. And then I've got to draw one, two, already. Three, four, five. Okay. Boom. There we go. And that was our first trip through the deck. That was very effective. The Oracle of Filth does not know what hit him. But don't feel bad for the Oracle, folks. He's still got 79 hit points. I got a long way to go. All right, let's see here. What do we got? Boop. Boop. Hey, I'm up first.
Okay, so let's go. I've got my banner of vigilance again. So I I got nothing to shoot. So, let's go on ahead and get one ether plus get another trinket, put on the top of the deck, and start charging up Lash again. Thanks, buddy. You're the best. And all right, so that's one ether. Two, three, four. If I use this dim crystal, it's going to go empty, but that does give me four. And I'm going to prep my superior spark and my regular spark. Okay, so I've got four to spend. But because I'm uh using the dim crystal, it gave me its last little bit of energy and then became an empty crystal. It is a total waste of space in my deck. But I wouldn't mind this empty crystal coming over here into the vortex to make my vortex blast that much more powerful.
So, we'll see about that in the future. But anyway, I've got four to spend because I've played these cards. So, maybe I should buy an abyssal vial so I could start putting things that I don't particularly like in the vortex. And then if I can just keep the pupil of oblivion at bay, then they'll never expune all this stuff back into my deck. And then all of a sudden in my my deck is full of clogs with a bunch of garbage. That's not bad. That's not bad at all. Now, on the other hand, I could get a luminous facet. Uh generates three and gets me a trinket. And now this just says gain a trinket, which means it's going to go into my discard pile and I'll f and I'll be able to use it later on. So, that's pretty cool. Um, let's see. What else could I get for four? Uh, I could get a some jeweled shrapnel, do four damage, get two trinkets, place them on top of your deck, and then get destroy a card in hand. That's not bad.
Or, oh, oh, you know what? We played this. This was This is pro This is maybe Jen's favorite card in this entire expansion. Mega flux mega mega mega flux slice. That's what I said. That's all you heard me say. Mega flux slice. Um, this it does two damage and you get a pulse token. And um, when you cast it, instead of just doing two and getting a pulse token, you can spend three pulse tokens and do seven points of damage. So over time, it slowly builds up and then the um, what the fourth time you use it, right? Boom. It hits for seven. But the thing is I it this doesn't have to be the thing that generates the pulse tokens for me. I could get pulse tokens from atomized ash and instead of using them just, you know, popping things off, I could pump the pulse tokens I get from atomized ash and pump them into mega mega flux. Mega flux slice. See, it's an X. Um, so I got four to spend. What am I going to buy? I'm, you know, Jen would never forgive me if I didn't buy that, but I'm fine with my um, you know, my my pulse tokens just slowing down the pupil of oblivion. You know, that's that's not bad.
And I do like um you know just being able to throw garbage in here to make my vortex blast. When am I going to be able to I mean I'm only going to have one vortex blast in the desk. But you know what? The more I can use the abyssal vial to get stuff out of my deck. Maybe every turn I'll be doing this vortex blast and do and let's go for it. I'm going to buy the abyssal vial with the four I've spent. And I've totally emptied out this crystal. And there we go. So that was it. And then I draw five. One, two, three, four, five. Okay. And I am done. And do I have any? No, I do not have any um leftover powers. So, who's up next? Oh, it's the foe. So, the foe says, "Light drain. Remove one power token from spreading shadow and then repeat it twice." So, there we are only five away from graveold getting hit hard. And remember, if Graveold falls, I lose. So, I can I can basically lose three of those five. So, it's going to be that much quicker. Or I can let him get two charges, which means he will do his shadow lengthening right now. Now, that means when the shadow lengthens, one of these comes off anyway. So, the timer still counts down. I'm sorry, two of them come down. And um he gets a nemesis token, which means when he hits, he hits harder. I don't want that hit.
Right now, he's only hitting with a he only has one nemesis token. Every nemesis token he's got does three points of damage. So right now he only hits for three. Now is not the worst time for this to hit. So I'm gonna say remove one, two, three power tokens from the spreading shadow cuz it's going to hit. I might as well um you know m make it when he's relatively weak as opposed to getting those charges and powering up so that he would do six points of damage instead of three. Yikes. All righty. So that is what he did. removed one power token from spreading shadow and then did that twice. That's what creeping dark is all about. Trying to run out the clock so that he can hit grave hold hard and also loving himself up so he hits harder. So that was it for him that he drained the light and he's getting ready to pull the blackness. All righty, that's it for the foe. I am up. Okay, where's my hand? Let's see here. I've got a glittering trinket. So I get one and an ally gets an ether token. Now, like I said right up front, my prototype didn't come with any ether tokens. So, I'll just use a power token. Power tokens don't normally appear on, but pretend that's an ether token. So, that's an ether token that I can use.
So, that's one two. Uh, of course, I would give it to another player if I were playing multiplayer, but since it's So, basically, I've got 1 2 3 4 5 6 and my vortex blast is up. All right. Oh, I'm sorry. I did things out of order. First of all, it was time to go pew. You know what? I am just going to get this blind gazer out of the way cuz I do not want him pumping up the fuel. So this is 1 2 3 4 and that just takes out the blind gazer completely before he ever knew what hit him. He could He didn't see it coming, folks. Okay. And so the spark gets discarded. I did that one first. No. Okay, I'll do the superior fire first, but before it does, it downgrades from superior to infused. Now it only does two points of damage instead of three. All righty. But anyway, still that was pretty good. Now I get to start doing stuff. So I've got the trinket which gave me an ether. So this is basically one, two, because I'm gonna spend that right now. Three, four, five, six. I'm going to prep my vortex blast which does one damage plus one for every card in here. All righty. And that'll be coming later. And um right. So six. What am I going to do?
666. Hm. Six. There's a couple things I could do. Well, first of all, you know, I could buy a Stone Fury eruption. Or I can't quite get another. I could get the erratic slump, the most valuable jewel in this particular game. What does it do? Gets three and gives two trinkets. One of them goes directly in my hand. So, I could use it immediately. That's pretty awesome. Awesome sauce. the Stone Fury Eruption, four damage, and then every ally, and of course I'm an ally to myself, who has Stone Fury Eruption in their discard pile gains one. There are actually several cards in this expansion that have this idea that a card does something, but then it will do more if one of your allies has that card as well, maybe in their hand, maybe in their discard pile, whatever. So, there's several of these types of cards that encourage multiple people to invest in them and then try to time their decks at the same time. Right? Okay, I've got this. I'm not going to use it this turn.
I'm going to wait until you've got your version of it in your hand so it can do more. This is a really cool idea. I've seen uh two or three cards that have this particular idea. I really like it quite a bit. Um and of course, I am my own ally, so if I get one of these, I want to have a second one, one in my um you know, my discard pile. So, I don't want to cast them at the same time. I want to kind of spread them out. Anyway, though, I've got six to spend. What else am I going to do? I could buy two Omen loops. Um, which give me two pulse tokens. Oh. Oh, okay. I've got six. I could buy a mega flux slice and I could do a down payment on Omen loop and um, you know, and then I could start building up those pulse tokens to be able to do seven points of damage with this. That's interesting. But you know what? There's other things I could do as well. Uh, coming back over to me, I've got six. I could fill up all the rest of my charges and unleash Rupture Time, which um basically lets me take three cards, uh three crystals or sparks, you know, basic stuff, either from my hand or the discard pile, and I put them into the swap pile, and I bring out whatever I want. So, I can turn like So, if I did that right now, if I spent all six just to power myself up, I could throw this empty crystal and um this spark. Oh, shoot. Okay, I can't quite do it because I do not have a third thing. Oh, and
I've now messed up my order. I'm not supposed to do that. I believe this is how it was. You're never supposed to rearrange the distance of the cards. That's cheating. Anyway, though, so I can't quite do it. So, it doesn't make sense for me to do this cuz I'd only have two things to put back so that I could get my superior spark or my super superior crystal back out. But that's the way I work. You can see it's only four charges. It's one of the quickest powers you can use. And that's how I get all my souped-up cards back out. And see, this is an interesting thing. This makes it really great for me. Oops. For me to be fighting the Oracle of Filth who wants to fill up my deck with garbage. I could then take that garbage and swap it into my swap pile to get back good cards. So, I'm very well suited against the Oracle of Filth. But there's one other thing I can do with my big big massive pile of six creeping dark anytime I want. I could spend five and remove the nemesis token. That means when Creeping Dark strikes um and it says, "Hey, do three damage per nemesis token." He'd have none. So, he wouldn't hurt um Graveold at all. I could prevent damage coming to Gravehold. So, that's cool. I have a lot of options to spend.
And never mind the fact that I could buy two atomized Ash and get myself a couple more pulse tokens to keep the pupil of oblivion at bay so my vortex blast can keep on charging up to be more and more powerful. Oh my gosh. Yikes. So, what am I going to do? I'm not sure, folks. So, I think I'm going to stop right there, though, cuz that should give you a pretty good idea of what's new in Aon's End: Beyond the Breach. And now, if you'd like to hear some final thoughts about this standalone/expansion, uh, well, you come to the right place. But before I get to that, please remember, folks, this was a sponsored preview. And with that out of the way, well, okay folks, you know what I'm going to say. There's a reason Aon's End has been in my top 20 games of all time for years now. And it's because the developers somehow keep coming back game after game after game, expansion after expansion, coming up with cool new ideas. And this one is uh no exception.
Although, one of the things that's very nice is seeing the return of some ideas like, you know, the layaway program and whatnot that have been brought back. I love the friends and foes. There's a bunch of new ones here that do all kinds of fun stuff. Uh, but then there's the new things, the trinkets, which are incredibly cool. And if I kept playing, you would have started to I mean, not only are they just quick little one up, hey, I get a card, it does a boost, and then it goes away. But in a game where controlling the flow of your deck is so important, you know, especially when you're doing cards that say stay in your discard pile and um give you ongoing powers as long as you're in your discard pile. getting things like trinkets that let you keep stuffing your deck full of stuff so that you can keep your discard pile static for longer. You can start to imagine some very very cool combinatorial powers here. The trinkets do a bunch of really neat things. And um you know, none of them are super overpowering, but heck, if you saw the run through I did, just that one little extra juice you get when they come along can be huge and very much appreciated.
And then the other thing, oh, what are they called? The pulse tokens. the idea that uh basically cards can do one thing, but then they can build up strength over time. So, they become more powerful. They It's like it's a second form of ether that isn't used to buy spells, but to pump spells up. And the more of it you earn, you can apply to different spells. One spell I'm just using or gem I'm using you to get the pulse token so I can pump into this other spell that I'll use later. Stuff like that is very fun as well. There's a couple of other new things. Um, one is, oh, five chapter expeditions. I think there's been a lot of people requesting. I think there's been some fan variants to make longer expeditions. Well, now you can officially have five chapter expeditions that give a new type of treasure. Uh, it's a treasure where you you get it at the party, the level four treasures, if I recall correctly. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. That it's it's a it's a spell that's awesome. That's a cool special one-time thing, but um that you have to buy um and instead of buying it from it's it's something that only you can buy. So, as soon as you can save up for it, you can buy it and get it going. So, those are very very cool. And for people who would like longer expeditions, they're here now for if for people who really dig that system. So, that's very very cool. And um right otherwise, you're just getting a ton of new stuff, new mages. Like uh there's one mage that is like the ultimate nuclear bomb. Um and it's a mage who wants to get exhausted. That's not something you see every day because when she gets completely exhausted, she does 10 damage to um you know to to the big bad and to every minion. Um uh or no, no, no, no. It's no. She she has these cards that are super powerful, but she accumulates doom. And once she gets too much doom, then she instantly explodes.
does 10 damage to every minion, every bad guy, and 10 damage to herself, thereby exhausting herself. Um, so if you use that at the right time, it can be gamechanging. Um, but as she's building up those doom tokens and she's about to explode, she can use her, you know, her charge power to get rid of the doom tokens, which allows her teammates to draw cards. The closer she is to exploding, the more she helps everybody else. There's another one I didn't play uh that Jen played that. Oh. Oh, you know I was talking about earlier treasures. Treasures have just been a thing that's been introduced specifically for the expedition system. There is a new mage that can basically collect the treasures outside of expeditions and use them. So that's very very awesome because we getting you probably like me have a big collection of treasures in your box. She uh gets more access to them than anybody else.
she kind of, you know, goes above and beyond the expedition system. Um, I mean, so there, as always, there are so many cool new ideas and the bosses are cool. Also, I always love pointing out the story line is great here, too. It all centers around Nook, who you saw me playing. Nook, we've seen in a few other uh Aon's End expansions in the past. He's the guy whose brain is completely fragmented in time and he experiences the past, the present, and the future all simultaneously, which has led to some very, very cool gameplay systems for him. But now there's an entire fivechapter expedition told from his perspective. And I thought it was very impressive reading a piece of science fiction or fantasy fiction that is told from the point of view of somebody who doesn't know whether they're experiencing the past, the present, or the future at any given time. And that's really, really cool, too. And it was also a very touching story as well. I'm assuming it's still Sydney Angeline writing all these and she just continues to get better with every story. Um, yeah. So, if for folks who like it, you got a really great new story line to play through. But even if you don't care about that, you can just open all the envelopes and just get unlock everything and get right to playing with some really Oh man, the story line here, it's the kind of story. Well, here's I'll say I don't want to spoil the story at all, but if you've played Frost Haven, one of the missions in Frost Haven is a mission that I designed or I co-designed with Isaac Childris. If you've ever played that, you know the kind of thing I like
to do in game design. Um, and this entire box does that like crazy. So, as you might imagine, this was a story line I found myself very much enjoying going through. And I think uh everybody will as well because it's really wonderfully put together. Uh, very mature bit of writing. And then on top of that, just a ton of new stuff, new friends and foes, new enemies, new uh all kinds of new powers. Um, you know, new abilities, the return of some that we hadn't seen for a while. It's another great box of goodness that just continues to cement Aon's End as one of the greatest modern uh board games of all time as far as I'm concerned. And Beyond the Breach just gives me more of what I love and a bunch of new stuff, too. That is the freebie, folks. Thanks so much for watching. Have a very, very nice day. Talk to you later. So long. Bye-bye.