Aeons End: The Descent - Discussion

0:09 some viewers may find the following video disturbing viewer discretion is advised hey everyone welcome back to board games L and today I'm doing a discussion over aon's end The Descent the newest expansion to aon's end and I'm going to go ahead and not beat around the bush and say that this is fantastic if you love aon's end otherwise probably not going to be doing much for you because like all of their other Standalone expansions which this is like you can get this and nothing else um it comes with like you know the Expeditions and nameless and mages and some extra stuff if you get some of the uh like side boxes and that's pretty much it it's really no different than new age or outcasts or well I mean literally funny enough in this one that actually came with a catalog of all the aons and stuff so this is yeah the new one yeah past and future Legacy of well Legacy of

1:19 graveholdings solutely one of my favorite deck builders and this uh just kind of reinforce that again because I just got done finishing the Expedition so this review is kind of going to have spoilers cuz I'm going to go into the four game Expedition and I think they've really hit the nail on the head with these Expeditions cuz as far as I can remember not counting Legacy or Legacy of grave hold all of them are for game missions and that is a really solid uh like bite-sized chunk of like a mini campaign and they've they put enough story into it and enough like ramping of difficulty that it it feels complete by the time you're done and this one is really no exception and honestly the story that they put in this the Aon Zen has never had the most spectacular writing but it also has never had the worst it's always been very serviceable and fits well like I wouldn't it's it's not mediocre um but it's also not really amateur like it's good it's good enough and serviceable for the story that they're trying to tell but with this one they focus kind of on the beginning of grave holds founding and so your main character in

2:50 this is Brahma and Brahma if you played all the other ones is uh the this the leader of grave hold but this this leans into how grave hold was was founded and it's kind of weird that they've gone this way and it almost seems as if they didn't have a story uh they didn't have the plan of a narrative from the beginning because they probably didn't expect the game to be as popular as it is and so they've kind of with each iteration have gone backwards and I don't know where you go from here anymore because past and future was that felt like it was almost the the ending where it's like it goes so far in the past that it's not even really related to anything but it is it has like ramifications of stuff later on and future is so far in the future that I guess that's where they could go so they made past and future as a good buffer of well the past is so far that we can keep going there until we hit that and the future is so far that we can keep doing narrative stuff until we hit that um cuz my I've done a review on a an Aon Zen Legacy and Aon Zen Legacy of grave hold and I've done actually I've done a series on Legacy of grave hold I believe um and I've done a review on past and future which was their most recent review or uh expansion besides this one but this story is more modern like it's not so far in the past like

4:21 past was and past and future uh this is okay what events led to the finding of graval in your fourth battle Expedition is re you know kind of a a really cool throwback that kind of ties in the base game a little bit even though the base game didn't have narrative um it kind of ties in into that imagine if you play this one and then at Le and then you play the base game um so the writing I thought was actually pretty good there was one moment that surprisingly I was I was like this is pretty solid writing maybe it was just a head face or maybe if I'm going toot my own horn it was the way I was reading it uh that I was like damn this is a solid Moment Like good job and everything else is is good like they do enough with the characters and the characters have personalities and stuff but they're not they're not ridden to be fleshed out or anything super well they kind of are um personifications uh but that's not really I mean you're not really coming to an's end for the story however I will say because they've gone backwards instead of being like from here to where War Eternal ended uh you get a lot of cool Throwbacks like one of the characters that you can actually play in here is thxer he's one of the starting four uh uh Mages and I was like I was trying to

5:53 understand his ability because it was worded very weird I actually think it's a misprint and I I was like that's thier like I was looking up hey what like what's ther's ability and then it pulled up the the old thxer and I was like oh is that the same guy well that's kind of cool so you get a lot of Easter egg kind of things that that if you've played all the other ones you know where the story leads and because you're playing a very young Brahma who is at the very beginning of graveholdings it's a different way of telling a story maybe that was their plan from the beginning I would have preferred starting with this and then going forward cuz you have so you have a more Progressive narrative but I guess when they're finally all said and done you could just play it that way although I'm not entirely sure if the narration is exactly in the order of release just backwards um I don't know if you wanted to get the full narrative and do them more Progressive from the beginning now if you would do I think you would probably do maybe it's past and future you play the past portion then you do this one and then maybe it's Legacy of grave hold I don't know if if you just go backwards maybe there's a forum online or something that tells you the order uh of of narrative play if you want to do all the Expeditions but the Expeditions were good so um like I said there's going to

7:23 be spoilers um because I'm going to go I want to talk about all the nameless that you fight and uh then I want to talk about the big module that they add uh to this actually I'll talk about him as I'm going over so we'll start with uh we'll start with Expedition one where you face off against Boop you face off against not that person um the infector and the infector he was he was pretty good like he was your your standard nameless you know it's your Expedition one and he's not going to be too crazy but he essentially has an infection deck and this actually because they made that the Sci-Fi one that I'm totally drawing a blank on a on Zen but sci-fi uh it feels a little bit like that because what he has he has an infection deck and he gives you infections and those stay in play and basically whenever he would unleash he would have c a certain number of Nemesis tokens actually just one one and if he has one he spends it and then every player resolves all the infection cards that they have there was a boss in the Sci-Fi version that pretty much did the the exact same thing so I'm not surprised that they pulled that and put it into here uh and in a two-player game that's very manageable I remember doing that boss in I've done a run through for all of those in that what is that game called Astron

8:55 knits uh Astron knits yeah I think it's Astron Knits and playing solo against that guy just kills you because you're just Ram you're the only one taking those cards and so when they go off you're just taking all the abilities being able to spread them out makes them way more manageable so I like the infected and the new system that comes with this game is the friend and foe module and that is a brilliant module it is I'm amazed it actually has taken them this long to throw that in because there's other modules there's the treasures and the gems and and things that you can throw in to modify your deck even a little bit more but on top of the friends and foes you get banners and so what the friends are is they're an ally they're a side Ally to you with a small deck of cards four cards each for the friend and for the Foe and the banners that you can start with you can spend to help the friend or hurt the Foe and so it's kind of like you have your nameless and you have a little a mini boss or you have your Mages and an ally that isn't a mage they're a regular person who has other abilities and what they did cool with the Expeditions is they've tied in the friend and foe to the main to the story uh but for the for the first one you had Delana the Healer and the foe was the

10:25 Swarm um yes I'm just pulling out the the ones that I need okay and Delana because they they gain charge tokens and they have their own deck and what's cool is the cards have a decision to make on all of them um well maybe not all of them but most of them are hey do this or this and so Delana if she pops off her ability and she can gain charges you can't ever spend either you can't really interact with them directly except through the banner cards uh but they have a turn order card friend and foe when they're drawn you resolve the top card of their deck and then if they ever fill out their charges then they do it and that's really cool so danana is any player or grave hold gains four life very basic but the amazing thing about this game is because it's a module you can either if you find Aon Zen to be way too difficult you can actually play it with just a friend like you could have your number of Mages and a friend and not even bother with a foe um or if you find the game too easy then you can play without a friend and just have a foe so you can kind of you know dictate the the complexity and the difficulty that of the experience and that's on top of the nameless all having increased difficulty setups but I can definitely tell you I am either not good

11:56 enough or this game is so well balanced balanced that I have never felt the need to do an increased difficulty ever but the friends and foes I thought were an exceptional balance it never felt like the having the friend on top of the Mages we were smoking the nameless like having the friend and the foe balanced each other out because we also had to kind of divide and divide and conquer on managing the Foe and just hope that the friend kind of does enough so D's very straightforward and then the Swarm it was they have kind of like their own swarm you know Minions that they that they throw out so they just kind of flood you with more and more broodlings I think is what they were called uh yes broodlings so these were very straightforward but uh a nice intro into the Fred and foe system so I liked I like the infection and these guys were great I'm actually I'll do I'll do a slight ranking there's only four of each um so I'll rank them at the end of this as well so then you go into the coven with Mina and the scavenger so these guys are really cool the coven they have no Health you can't actually kill them uh well you can they're two different cards they're two different minions so to speak and each of them have a certain number of Health

13:26 I think it was 45 and 35 um for the two witches and they each had their own power cards that stayed in play and they would have a certain number of power on them but they introduce these uh barrier cards and if you dealt a certain number of damage to one you would place a barrier on her power card and if you did a certain number of damage to the other one you would put a barrier on them and the more barriers you had on those Powers the less damage they dealt and I thought that was very unique I couldn't really remember any other nameless that were minions in and of themselves and had powers that were tied to them so that you had to cuz one was you had to do two or less damage to put a barrier on and another one you had to do three or more so you kind of had to eventually get higher power cards and spells so you can hit the one for more damage but your Sparks did a you know actually mattered that you could hit them for one to barrier them so they were they were really cool I liked the coven quite a bit and then you have mirina the scholar she focuses on knowledge card or knowledge tokens which knowledge has been I think it was introduced in past and future um her ability she just gains four knowledge but all of her cards require her to spend knowledge and it was you could spend knowledge to draw cards you could spend knowledge to gain gain uh to gain cards from the

14:57 supply um I think that she could be good in I don't think she did very well with the coven if I had to say anything negative about The Descent I felt that the pairing of the friends and the foes the foes paired really well with the nameless but the friends felt like they were kind of disjointed from the nameless um but that could just be because they're so situational Delana the Healer just healing in general is going to be universally good but not that she was bad I don't think any of the nameless were bad and I don't think any of the foes were bad or any of the friends were bad uh just less good for my particular play style so that's Mina and then the scavenger was the player with the lowest life suffers four damage um I don't even really remember what his cards did I just know we kept him in check because any any type of damage that goes after the one with the lowest health is brutal because if you have if if you have the lowest Health then you're always going to be the one targeted so so that's uh that's disgusting third one is the blight and this was Expedition three and out of all of the Expeditions like the coven was balanced infector infector was balanced and the fourth one was balanced he was the only one well it's actually uh Fawn The Alchemist and the corrosion um he was the only one that got smoked it was it what like the from

16:29 the beginning I was I was hm well I guess I think we're going to win narratively uh he didn't actually die like we didn't kill him he was defeated and will eventually come back from the blight but he uh he basically gives people tainted Halos and the tainted Halos were kind of beneficial to to you like it would give you a charge and an ather but it would give the um the blight a nemesis token and let's see yeah and he had BL he had a blighted deck if he had a certain number of Nemesis tokens he would draw from the blighted deck which were unique cards that wen't in the regular in the regular draw pile but the reason why he just got smoked is because of Fawn The Alchemist the friend that you have she has her own deck of cauldron cards which come with like spells in them I think it was six yeah incendiary catalysts that go in in the deck and that's called the C so when she pops off which she's the one that requires the most to do uh she deals damage equal to for each spell in The Cauldron deal damage equal to its cost twice um then destroy a spell in The Cauldron so she's just disgusting like she eventually becomes less and less powerful but you actually have ways to put your spells back into the cauldron so you kind of want to ramp her as quickly as you can because the fact that she just does five six damage uh

18:01 twice is huge and then there's the corrosion which is remove two power tokens from each power in play grave hold suffers five damage um yes I think this was this was the third one maybe the scavenger was with was with fawn I don't remember I don't remember I mean I maybe I thought I had the order down but he's disgusting having oh this was the third one okay scavenger was was actually yeah it was with the coven yeah that's right yeah so then yeah the corrosion so basically cuz power cards are brutal like that's there's a reason why they have a timer on them but having him go off and every Power card comes into play or gets lowered so they're going to happen a lot quicker that can just have a combo that can completely annihilate you so he's very difficult and then the last one for four this one uh is the guy on the cover which is a what I was talking about was a very neat tie-in cuz it is The Wraith and I was looking it up at least on the cover that I can tell is the guy on the cover of the base game and narratively it feels like hey this is your first fight in the base game into aon's end and here he is just more probably more ramped because I don't really remember I think he he did have a rage track and he kind of had the same

19:32 thing he he was brutal like he was the only one in a very long time that I was like am I going to like it we'll lose in two turns if we don't do something or am are we going to win the war of attrition because we were only like three cards away from actually surviving the deck and it was only through brahma's healing ability that we even had a chance but he only has six health and he he's very simple he gains Nemesis tokens if he has four or more at the end of his turn he deals seven damage to grave hold but he has this strike wraith track that every damage you deal to him just moves the track up a certain number of points if it lands on the red it's bad for you if it lands on these yellows you actually get kind of a benefit but once you deal 14 or more damage it lands at the end then you move that to the zero and then de deal of damage to him so effectively he has you know 6 * 14 66 7 78 Health but because you have to manage the damage and the order you're doing to him so you don't always land on the red spots it's it's a lot more interesting than just hitting something with 78 Health he was very difficult he hit hard all the cards that he played just sucked um and then the friend and Foe for for his fight was ad alheim the blacksmith and the

21:03 cultist okay so ad alheim I think he's a very passive friend because he has these forged crystals and forged Sparks which he basically has ways for you to destroy your crystals and Sparks to get these and they're very simple the forg crystals just give you two ather and the Sparks deal two damage they're kind of just slightly buffed he's not flashy um and his ability you can turn up cards up to cost zero three cards up to cost zero back into your hand so he kind of gives you if you have you know the the forge crystals in your discard pile you can pull them back and you'll have a big byy turn so he kind of ramps so you went and got the better cards from the supply a little bit quicker but man it doesn't it doesn't feel good really with him and the cultist he was pretty disgusting cuz he had this volatile pylon minion in the in the game that could never be killed cuz and he had a power card that was never discarded it the volto pylon would build up in health and when the power card hit zero a player would a player or grave hold would take damage equal to the number of Health tokens on that minion minus one so if you just let it gain health over and over then you're just going to get one shot and on top of grave hold taken damage from that The Wraith is dealing a lot of damage too so the cultist probably synergized

22:33 the best with The Wraith I think so that is all of them let's start with the foes on on their abilities uh from my least favorite to uh most favorite uh I'd probably say the scavenger is my least favorite uh mainly because I don't remember him doing much I remember we constantly kept him in check because he's just going to suck for hitting the player with the lowest health for four damage uh then I would probably say the Swarm just because it just adds more minions nothing really wrong with that it it adds yeah it adds unique Minions that you kind of have to manage otherwise you're just going to get overwhelmed by minions uh but it's a good starting one then I would say the corrosion because ramping power off of Power Cards is insanely difficult so but he also has five that he charges he has to get to do that so you have some time that you can get comboed like crazy if you don't deal with him and then the cultist I thought was very unique for having a power and a minion that you had to manage its health and it felt very balanced it felt like if you could just ping and keep the health of that volatile pylon low then it wasn't going to be that big of a deal but he also heals it for a bunch and if you just leave it left alone you're just going to get one shot so those are the foes then we have the friends last is the blacksmith U mainly just because he was kind of there in the final fight

24:05 maybe if I looked back it's it's oh wow I had so many of these forg crystals that they were actually helping me get the cards that I need but and I I mean again that's not bad because if as those crystals just give you two ather and just having those gives you a charge that you might need so I maybe I just because we barely ever used his ability so maybe it was more of the fact that we were using his upgraded cards and not his ability but there were other ones out of these four that we were using both then I'm going to go with mirina the scholar she could be very good the four knowledge tokens that she gains if she pops off her ability she's going to last on her cards a lot longer because they just spend knowledge and giving card draw is very good uh so but that's really all she does she just has these knowledge tokens then you have Delana the Healer I think that just a any player healing for four and Grave hold healing for four with her and Brahma for example you would just have all the heals you would ever need she's universally great but F The Alchemist uh Man hitting hard with with her cards and the fact that you can actually just gain those infused mechanisms which I think cast for uh three damage and you can just gain them she just ramps you so much in power that things just die and that feels great so those are the friends then we got the four nameless um I think I'm going put the blight at the end just

25:35 because in the Expedition we completely cleaned house with him I like that he has those tainted Halos they're kind of cool that they help you at the cost of helping him um and the blighted deck is always nice there's a separate unique deck but we mopped the floor with him so he wasn't really that big of a deal then I'm GNA go with the infector uh very good like starting Expedition nameless but and I mean he can get completely out of control if you just don't cooperate with the infection cards and one person just has to run through five and they just die uh so I like that I didn't like it in Aston knite cuz I played that game solo but here that system just worked way better cuz I played it too and I'm sure it would work great as a two-player and astronut as well then I'm going go with The Wraith I think that him having six Health he's so straightforward uh but him having just six Health but you have to manage the damage you do on this wraith track I think that that's very unique but if the thing is is I'm not entirely sure he's balanced he feels balanc in a four player or in a in a as the fourth final boss but the only reason we beat him is because the person my girlfriend who was playing Brahma she pretty much did nothing but use her ability with the level three treasures and stuff she virtually casted no spells uh played the

27:06 ultimate support character she was Mercy in this because all she did was pop off her ability which is gain four life you suffer two damage if you do grave hold gains for life so she would basically gain two Health to keep grave hold alive and then she had the knitted iron whenever you suffer damage gain a charge so she would kind of be able to get a jump start on her ability but but if someone doesn't really want to play support and they're kind of forced to because they chose to play Brahma which I guess if you chose Brahma for her ability you're choosing to play support but whenever you're not really able to do other cards because you're having to spend all your ather um pumping up your ability it I I don't know how you beat him without uh having a Healer and then the last one is the the coven I just think they were the most unique with the two Min the the two separate bosses kind of that you had to fight as well as their tied Power Cards and that you had to deal a certain number of damage to each of them to weaken those Powers I thought that was that was super unique so that's it that is the pretty much everything for aon's end The Descent the friend and fo system I think is awesome now where do they go from here cuz I also I don't want to talk about like the specific spells the development stuff is back in here swapping was not uh they only focus on development and a lot more spells and stuff focused on if you if well this is prepped and you develop do this but I mean I don't know

28:39 how they do it I do not know how they keep coming up with unique namess unique spells unique Mages and now unique friends and foes it's brilliant like there's so much content for this game at this point so I don't know what the hell they do like it it just feels like they're not running out of any ideas at this point cuz normally whenever you have as many expansions as the as these games do you almost feel when it comes out you're like well okay these these four nameless just feel like slight variations of other nameless and yeah I'm not sitting here playing a onen every day and playing every nameless all the time so I don't know if these four nameless are are similar to ones that they've already made I don't recall but it just feels it just feels fresh every single time I play and there's just more and more content and once you finish the Expedition you open up and you get all the randomizers so you can just play it again and just because you have now these Expeditions that are set off on their own that tell you what to set up you don't even have to you can just run through the Expeditions again with different with different Mages and and go through the whole story so I it feels like they're not done with their storytelling they still it seems

30:10 like they have much more story to tell uh I just all I can say is I'm I mean I I'mma get every expansion that they make and I'm G find my own stor solution but I will say when they're done they better do a big finale probably campaign like another Legacy of grave hold or a legacy maybe not a legacy but another massive campaign to finalize it we're like this is the final aons end thing that we're done and a storage solution Big Box Storage solution with but I mean I'm loving these Expeditions so that's it everyone on a scale of 1 to 10 um I mean it gets a 10 these These are it's my favorite deck builder um and the story was was good this this time around the story is always good I'm just not like always enthralled with it and also cuz I have to read it and at this point I'm just spoiled by Audio narration so maybe that'll be a thing maybe that'll be a when they're finally done they'll do a massive Camp Kickstarter campaign where they add for teller narration to all of their previous stuff so I don't know I don't know what they do I would imagine that they keep keep going backwards that they might be leaning more they could be trying to tie in the past stuff as well as the tie into the future stuff uh and they

31:42 could that would be that' be my guess is that that's the route they're they're going but as far as I'm aware they haven't announced anything on them being this being the last one um so pick your poison honestly out of all the expansions I would actually say get this one because the narration is from the beginning and then kind of go backwards but yeah that's it that's my thoughts on aons and The Descent let me know what you think of it in the comments below other than that like comment share and subscribe and have a wonderful whatever time of day it is for you hey everyone thank you for watching and I really hope that you enjoyed the video if you would like to see more of my content go ahead and click that subscribe button and the bell to be notified whenever I upload any new content if you feel like supporting the channel you can go ahead and click that patreon link to be taken to my patreon and any help is truly appreciated other than that stick around for any any other runr throughs or reviews or cool top t or whatever I feel like putting on other than that like comment share and subscribe and have a wonderful whatever time of day it is for you