Aeon's End: New Age is the most recent stand alone expansion of the Aeon's End series. This is my first game of this series. Aeon's End: New Age is a cooperative deck-building campaign game. You play Breach Mages that fight a Nemesis that attack your city of Gravehold.

Aeon’s End: The New Age was designed by Kevin Riley and it’s published by Action Phase Games and Indie Boards & Cards.

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Gameplay

When you start out, you have the choice of four different Breach Mages with their own player mat, 4 breaches for each, set of starter cards for their deck and hand. You have 9 choices in the supply to purchase to add to your deck. You can purchase Gems, Spells, and relics. You start with simple spells and crystals that provide 1 aether which is the currency of the game. Gems provide more aether. Spells has effects like damaging the Nemesis or its minions but needs to be placed on an open breach and cast on the next turn. Relics has effects that are instant unlike spells.

You fight a Nemesis that attacks the city of Gravehold. Each Nemesis is unique. The Nemesis has its own deck of cards which will have minions, power effects and attacks. It also has other abilities. The starting Nemesis is Maggoth and it has a nest card where maggots tiles are placed. When the Nest card fills up, the battle is lost. When Maggoth or its minions reduce Gravehold's 30 hit points to 0, the battle is lost. And when all Breach Mages are exhausted where they are reduced to 0 hit points, the game is lost. It is quite a challenge to defeat a Nemesis. 

When you discard to your discard pile after use, you can choose the order of how you discard because you don't shuffle the deck when you run out of cards. You just flip the deck over. You will learn strategies on preparing your deck by discarding cards in a certain order during your turn.

Another thing to note about Aeon's End is the Turn Deck. You don't know who's turn is next. The deck is made of 2 cards for each player and 2 cards for the Nemesis. You have the option of adding Wildcards to it. But the Nemesis could have 2 turns in a row which can be devastating. Or Player one can have two turns in a row and turn the tide.

Expedition System

This game introduces the Expedition System where you play a story and fight 4 Nemesis. Story is told through a special Expedition Deck. After each battle, you unlock new content that are in sealed envelopes like new Mages, New Nemesis to fight and new decks for the supply. Also You get treasure cards to add to your deck for each Mage for the whole Expedition. It makes your deck more unique.  

Also the Nemesis deck gets new and more challenging cards  and makes it more difficult as the Expedition continues. You can still play the game without playing the Expedition Mode, but the Expedition is more fun as you unlock more content rather than open everything all at once. And even after revealing all content after finishing the Expedition, you can still play more Expeditions and customize your Mages for more replayability. 

This is a very challenging game. I probably fought the first Nemesis 8 times before I was able to defeat it. The defeats weren't frustrating at all. I took it more of a challenge and kept changing tactics. The story of the Expedition System isn't bad, but nothing real special. It is just the variety of supply cards and Breach mages that make this game very replayable. 

The art is very well done The design of the player mats and cards are clean and not confusing. The overall look of the game is consistent and has very good color palette. The colors go well together. 

Overall I recommend this game and am looking to add more expansions in the future.