Aristeia!

By my fifth game—and with my opponent only on their third—I feel confident enough to say that Aristeia! has plenty of substance. It has depth, it has pace, and it delivers an enjoyable play experience that, in the right circumstances, I find just as good as, perhaps even better than, Shadespire.

Its central appeal for me is its immediacy: I open the box, choose a scenario, we draft, and then the punches start flying. That path from setup to confrontation feels clean and satisfying, without requiring me to bring a whole extra layer of off-table preparation with me.

It does lose the deckbuilding element that Shadespire has, of course. In exchange, interaction comes through choosing characters in the draft and through how each scenario shifts the situation, before we arrive at the inevitable clash on the table. For modern days, when nobody has any time(tm), that ability to simply jump in and play is a genuine virtue.

The recent addition of Smoke & Mirrors made the experience even more interesting: this was the first appearance of the expansion's characters in my games, and I liked them quite a lot precisely because they changed the situation somewhat. Aristeia! therefore feels like that rare box you can simply open, set up, and fully enjoy, without feeling that you have missed half the game because you did not do your homework beforehand.