Aeon’s End Game Review

I lost my first 15 games of Aeon’s End, the revered 2016 cooperative deck-builder from design team Kevin Riley, Nick Little, and Jenny Iglesias. I am not proud of that, but I think it’s important for you to know because it immediately tells you two things: Aeon’s End is hard, and Aeon’s End is compelling. There’s an argument to be made that it also tells you that I am bad at Aeon’s End, but that’s a matter of opinion.

Aeon’s End Is Hard

At first, I didn’t see much of a difference between Aeon’s End and a host of other cooperative deck-builders. It doesn’t make significant changes to the design space, at least not at first glance. You cast spells to deal damage to baddies and spend money to upgrade your deck. It seemed to me that we’d been here before.

Like many coop games of its kind, the entirety of Aeon’s End is focused around a big ol’ baddie. As Breach Mages, you fight one of the Nameless, come to destroy the city of Gravehold. You would think that the residents of Gravehold would have known they were courting disaster when they named the city “Gravehold,” but here we are.

The Nameless are vicious, and varied in their tactics. The Carapace Queen—they do, in fact, have names—floods the…

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