A cooperative deck-building battle for Gravehold
Aeon's End is a turn-based card battler where you lead a team of breach mages against the Nameless. The final city, Gravehold, is under threat, and the mages fight to hold the line. You start each mage with a deck of 10 cards, with 5 in hand. On your turn you play gems to gain aether, spend that aether on new gems, relics and spells from the market, and open additional breaches to raise your casting power. You can also play relics to help yourself or an ally. Before your turn ends you prep spells to your opened or focused breaches so they are ready to cast on your next turn.
Playing together as a team
Aeon's End supports a team of up to 4 mages fighting cooperatively against one Nameless nemesis. The game can be played solo or with others, and Remote Play Together is available so friends can join in. Each mage brings a unique starting card and a unique ability that charges up during the fight. Kadir, for example, has a gem that heals herself or an ally and an ability that lets an ally dig for and prep spells. Xaxos has a spell that reveals the top card of the turn order deck and an ability that helps allies charge their abilities. The team shares the goal of defeating the nemesis while keeping Gravehold alive.
How the game handles randomness
Aeon's End changes up the usual deck-building rules in two ways. Your deck is never shuffled when it runs out, so the order you discard in is the order you draw again. Plan those discards carefully to set up your later turns. Randomness instead comes from the turn order deck, which is shuffled at the start of each round to decide who plays when. The nemesis might take two turns back to back, or the mages might get four turns in a row to prepare. You also need to watch Gravehold itself: if the city drops to 0 life, the mages lose regardless of their own condition.
What you face and what comes with the game
The core game includes 8 breach mages, 4 Nameless nemeses, and a market built from 27 unique gems, relics and spells. You can take a randomly generated market or build your own during setup. Each nemesis plays differently: Rageborne pushes a frontal assault using the Strike Deck, while the Prince of Gluttons wears you down by devouring player cards from the market. The nemesis deck is assembled before each game from basic and nemesis-specific cards, so the same nemesis will not attack the same way twice. Several DLC packs add more mages, nemeses and player cards, and The New Age introduces the Expedition system.