Aeon's End: The New Age

The original Aeon's End made a fine impression on me because its deckbuilding actually felt like a boss fight, not merely a card game in which your deck improves. The New Age knows exactly what it is building on: new cards, new enemies, and a campaign that does not demand to be consumed in a single weekend.

At its centre, this is deckbuilding put to work against a monster. You build up what you can do while the fight insists that you use those tools well. That is the neat part: the mechanisms do not sit beside the theme as decoration; they give the confrontation the pace and pressure of a proper boss battle.

The progressive story campaign introduces its cards gradually rather than emptying the whole box onto the table at once. Alongside the new enemies, that makes each return feel like a small reveal; our first attempt at the opening monster went badly, and on the second we beat it by the narrowest margin.

I came away very pleased. This is the sort of game I can bring out once a month, continue at my own pace, then put back on the shelf without it feeling neglected. For the solitary player's cave, it is a very decent box and, quietly, an excellent one.