Aeon Trespass: Odyssey (ATO) by Lawnor

WARNING!  The pics below contain heavy spoilers of the maps.  Do not look closely at them.  They are for my benefit later

I finally finished all the available content last week!  It only took me about a year.  30 fights in C3, 32 fights in C2, and at least 25 fights in C1.  Wave 2 (C4+5) are hopefully shipping Q2, as of last weeks update, so I hope to get started on this soon.  I may detour to KDM briefly while waiting for delivery and painting up what I need to get started on cycle 4.

Cycle 2 was all about being outclassed and struggling to overcome overwhelming odds.  Cycle 3 drops that (To some extent. It’s still hard.  More on that later), and instead focuses on time travel.  The land is stuck in a series of time loops, and now so are you.  One of the monsters will switch you to a timeline you’re already dead in, if you don’t move fast enough.  This mechanic is interesting, and a fun challenge once you get used to it, but I found, especially early on, that it was far too easy to pull the wrong card at the wrong time and just erase all your titans.  That was a horrible experience and lead to me embracing my own Heroic Mode rules, which I’ll come to soon.

This game has always taken up a lot of space.  I have it set up with the battle board taking up a whole 6×4 table, and the world map and tech cards filling up a desk.  C3 laughed at that.  You think it’s got a world map?  A single world map?  Pah!  I ended up with 4, over 3 different time periods.  I pulled out a 2×4 board and rested it on a spare bed, and even then I had trouble fitting my extra maps on in.  I then had guests stay over in that spare room a few times.  They kept having to step over my map board, and avoid my map desk.  It must have been odd for them.

The game is hard and has issues, but I enjoyed it once I tweaked the rules a little.  Cycle 3 really blew my socks off though.  The finale for C3, the cliffhanger for Wave 1 was truly epic.  It was a moment that stands out for me.  One of my high points in gaming from the past few years.  I cannot discuss it because Spoilers, but it was really well done, and really special.  It makes me really excited to see where the story is going, and how they are going to change the game going forward.  I really wish I could talk about it.  I was buzzing for a couple of days.  11/10 would recommend.  If you don’t mind playing a long hard game to get there.

Hero Mode

I’ve worked my way through two cycles, occasionally bending the rules because of negative play experiences and the game being pitched far harsher than I want, i.e. They don’t mind if you wipe and start again from the very beginning.  Not terrible if you can play the whole thing in a month or two.  Soul destroying if you lose nine months of progress and you’ve still got 9 more months to go even if you’d survived.  I don’t mind a hard game, but I want a game I can complete before the heat death of the universe.  I’ve other things I want to get done.

Cycle 3 added in some new mechanics for its fights that meant I could die instantly regardless of my health, and I decided this was just too much.  Time to dial it back a notch and make it so I stood a chance and enjoyed myself.  I tweaked rules as I played the cycle and I’m calling it my hero mode.  I’m formalising it here for the benefit of others.  Losing a Titan isn’t too bad.  Losing 1-2 every fight (minimum 1 fight every 5ish days, often 2-3), and then taking 9 days to grow back a replacement, and you can only grow one from each generation at a time quickly leads to you running on Dreamwalkers only, and they seem to be terrible once the cycle gets going.  At least that’s the impression C2 gave me.  This will lead to an attrition loss pretty quickly.

Maybe none of this would be needed if I was smarter.  Maybe none of this would be needed if I wasn’t playing solo and I could keep track of everything better, and had a second opinion on rules I might be playing wrong.

1: Lesser Toying (Stolen from the Hermesian Persuer.  Some people play full Toying at all times).  All Primordials roll 1 less dice to hit, and you ignore the first increase in Danger from them evolving.  Minimum roll of 1 dice.

2: If you reveal an instant death card before you’ve even had a chance to make a choice, put it back in the deck and draw again.

3: You can spend Fate to shuffle and redraw Obols.  You can spend Fate to reroll an Awakening test.

4: All instant death cards and effects force an Obol draw instead.  If this is a phased effect that has a Obol draw option a stage below (ie for one successful hit, draw an obol, for two you die instantly), add an extra “You Died Horribly card” and draw.

5: Argo Abilities and powers like that, that grant a very limited number of uses in a fight can be applied after you roll the dice.  Argo Trireme Abilities do not count against your AA limit, but you can only ever bring one.

6: Rerolls: Rerolls from Spiral or Black tokens are a separate thing from generic rerolls, so those dice can be rerolled for each of those effects.  Black tokens can also be spent to apply their Break token effect without rerolling that dice.

7: Sisyphean Tokens can be spent to redo any instance of RNG, even after you’ve seen how it all plays out.  If this is a card draw, shuffle the old card back in the deck before drawing again.  Time is limited.  Why redo the whole fight, when you just want a redo of the last disaster?

8: Argo Fate.  If you’re going to reduce yours and your characters would know this (i.e. they can see a fight about to happen), feel free to ignore the voyage sequence briefly and spend any fate you want to make use of this change.  Fate is so limited.  Don’t waste it.

9: Spending Fate to gain nodes or train titans.  Mark it on the timeline, but don’t pick who or what is getting the benefit until the time comes.  It’s no fun when they’re dead or retired by the time it comes up.

10: Argo Bred.  This isn’t a balance rule.  This is just about me hating this term.  In the rules “Argo Bred” refers to Non-Dreamwalkers, whether they were bred on the Argo or not.  Titans who were bred on the Argo do not count as Argo Bred.  This drives me crazy.  I play that any titan bred on the Argo is Argo bred, along with the Non-Dreamwalkers.

11: When you spend fate to reroll any dice you can chose to just add 1 to it instead.  This will never make it count as a critical.

12: Loot gained by critical hits.  I did not play with this rule, but I’m very tempted for C4.  The first time you encounter a monster go through its BP deck.  Make a list of every card with loot that can be gained by critting it.  Every time you wound that card put a tally by its name.  Every time you roll to hit that card, add the number of tallies to your roll.  If it is 10+, it counts as a crit, but only for the purposes of earning that item.  You gain no other crit effects, unless you rolled a natural crit normally.

13: Memnos Nodes.  When earning nodes, I don’t distinguish.  Anything that can gain you a Memnos Node could also gain you a Fated Memnos node

14: If you would gain a titan or a resources from an icon on the world map, but you are already at max, leave a token there.  if you end up back there later (You won’t) you can collect it then.  I recommend printing your own tokens for everything.

15: Once you max out your Argo knowledge through Inwards Odyssey, keep track of extra gains.  Every extra point you scored can b cashed in during the following Onwards Odyssey to extend the timeline by one, or can be spent instead of an Argo Fate.  You can still use all your tech and abilities during the onwards Odyssey to grow new titans, train them up, and improve your Argonauts etc.

Hypertime Oracle:

1: The timefront does not advance faster as he evolves.
2: If you retreat the timeline beyond the board edge, keep track of these spaces and knock them off of it’s next advance

Harpy:

1: The Bleed effect that happens at the start of the each fight shouldn’t trigger any negative rules you might have about gaining more bleed tokens.  Dying, or being pushed to the brink of death before the fight starts is no fun.

If I remember more, I’ll come back and update

Once again, SPOILER ALERT: Do not look closely at these following pics.  They are for my benefit so I can restore my map once Onwards Odyssey arrives.