Aeon Trespass: Odyssey - Example Battle: First Hekaton Fight (Patreon)

This article is for the purposes of demonstrating how a battle flows in AT:O. In the interest of keeping the experience as spoiler light as possible and keeping the length of the article to a reasonable size. I have chosen to cover the first Hekaton fight, which is against a Level 0 Hekaton. If you want to see how the fight flows against a higher level Hekaton, check out One-stop Coop Shop's fight or Marcin & Konrad playing over here.

 I also recommend watching TWIST Gaming this evening at 8PM Eastern Time (or the VOD tomorrow) if you want to see the first fight played live! Misplays and death is almost guaranteed!

As always with these kind of things, this isn't a 'this is how the game is played, rules breakdown' it's more about the flow of a fight so you can see a snapshot of the system and understand how it works, get a feel for the way the game escalates, the mounting threat of the Triskellion system and the potential opportunities that occur tactically during the turns.

Here is the set up for the first Primordial fight, which takes place in the Argo itself, between a weakened Hekaton and your newly awakened Argonauts controlling their titans.

The Titans are always set into these four fixed positions, but you can choose which titan goes where. That does actually matter because while the four Dreamwalker Titans are almost identical, they all have a different second ability. Solon deals more damage at high rage, Herodotus can taunt, Ulyssea has the ability to choose what BP they have hit when close to death and Philoctera is great at providing support with her Expose ability.

Here is the breakdown of the Titan sheet:

This is what the Primordial Dashboard currently looks like, it's going to be updated for the full game.

The AI Deck contains all the Level I AI cards and the BP Deck contains all the Level I BP Cards. This will change during the battle.  Also included is the Titan's Routine action, which it will do if it cannot find a target and its signature move, which some AI and BP call for it to do.

The Hekaton is an aggressive, simplistic Primordial, so a lot of the time it just looks for the nearest titan and smashes them. However, if it is left to its own devices without a target then it's Idle Hands routine will result in it attacking the Argo. The Argo has only 5 hull points and if it loses all of them, the campaign is a failure. So you absolutely do not want to leave the Hekaton unattended. 

The Level 0 Hekaton is the weakest Primordial in the Prelude, being the easiest to hit, slowest and having the least wounds.

At higher ranks you can see that the Hekaton becomes harder to hit, takes more wounds, gains special traits and can even have its AT Field (Toughness) increased. In the full game these tables will climb up to level 9.

Outside of their Titan Sheet, each player will also need to use their Triskellion to track various things.

Note in the printed version, Life is now on the bottom and called Danger while Kratos is on the left and called Rage.  

Rage increases each time you attack, and as it rises you gain access to more and more abilities on the Titan sheet, plus you also get to do more and more things on the Kratos table, such as reroll dice, leave openings/breaks or even push the primordial about. These Kratos tables can be changed during the campaign by learning new styles.

Danger directly translates into the Life points of your titan (hence its original name), as it increases you will take heavier and heavier trauma (see the Danger table for the various thresholds). Trauma is not always bad, but you start to risk your Titan dying when you are at Trauma II and it becomes a lot more likely at trauma III.

Fate is a bit different, it's a resource that you can spend to reroll some dice. Increasing your chances of hitting or not being hit; or even as part of the cost of activating your abilities! However, there are costs to doing this, some things that the Primordials do punishes higher Fate Titans a bit extra.

However, the downside of each of these dials is that they only go to 9 and once you are at 9 some terrible things start to happen. At >9 Rage your Titan is lost forever, dead. At Danger >9 you are very close to death and at >9 Fate you have to draw Moiros cards that can do really awful things to you.

Finally, here is the steps of an attack:

In the Primordial's turn they will draw an AI card and perform the actions on it, while during the Titan's turn they will activate in any order they choose and move + activate (usually attack). This part is similar to other games in the genre. I'm not going to go into huge detail here as the rulebook should be released in full soon.

Now you have an idea of how things flow and some basic information, we'll move into the battle! Here's my setup and the first action.

As you can see, the Primordial gets to go first here and it's going to choose the 'Priority target'. Which is represented by this symbol:

The Priority Target is the titan with the highest rage, it also allows you to figure out who is targeted in all other cases (it's the first applicable titan clockwise from the Priority Target). The Priority Target changes when a Titan exceeds the rage of the current Priority Target holder.

Initially Philoctera has the Priority Target.

So the Hekaton barrels forward and delivers a Smash at her.

It's a single dice attack, so Philoctera's player rolls one dice to try and evade it (if they had 3+ Fate it would have been 2 dice). A 7 is not good enough, but at this early stage they decide not to reroll.  So they are hit for 2 Danger and draw a Trauma I!

A Counter Push! Philoctera shoves the Primordial back a step and moves with it, then the post trauma text triggers and she is knocked back 4 spaces.

This is her Triskellion after that attack.

Solon takes the first attack of the battle, swinging with his fists:

He (and all the Titans here) get to roll 2 dice when attacking, they hit on a 7+ (Hekaton's To Hit) and each hit will generate 1 Red Dice, which is added to the Red Dice these titans generate on a hit normally.

Unfortunately, Solon misses with both dice, but Ulyssea goes right after him and scores a hit!

In fact, as it's a 0 (10) she's potentially going to get a critical wound, if she can manage to wound the BP. 

She hits the Mighty Fist and if she can manage to wound we'll make the Hekaton easier to wound. But sadly she rolls just 1 break and 2x potentials. As this is the first successful attack in the game there's nothing to use with those potentials, so this BP is discarded with no effect.

After the attack, because she is at Rage 1, she gets to perform the first part of the Kratos table. Leaving either 1x opening or 1x break in the Kratos pool.

She leaves a Break.

It's worth noting that because Solon was the first one to attack in this initial round, he hit Rage 1 first and now has the Priority Token, but that's not going to last.

Philoctera goes next, because she is at A2 (Danger 2) she gains a Fate and activates Rush moving back to the Hekaton and getting an extra Red Dice!

That's 3 breaks along with 1 extra in the pool, so she dominates the AT Field and scores the first wound of the battle. When the titan is wounded it reacts with a pushback and signature move. But more importantly the AI and BP decks 'Escalate'. Changing the makeup of both the AI and BP decks by adding tougher cards that contain tougher, more vital locations and more powerful moves.

Herodotus goes last in the turn and manages a mighty critical wound against the 'One of a Hundred' BP. This means he ends up at Rage 3 on the conclusion of the attack and becomes the new Priority target.  Again the AI and BP decks escalate, removing another L1 AI card and shuffling in an L2 AI and BP card into their respective decks.

Herodotus is now Rage 3 and as the highest rage gains the Priority token.

The Hektaon's turn comes around and it decides to go with the 'Cold Open' move.

As you can see, despite Herodotus being the Priority Target, it's Philoctera that is going to be targeted here because she matches the first condition. If she had been out of the front zone, then Herodotus would have been the target choice.

Philoctera takes a beating despite spending a reroll on the evasion and draws a Trauma I card.

She's knocked down!

Bit of a rough situation for her here, she will be missing her entire next turn. But this has created an opportunity for Herodotus!

As we can see, once his next attack has concluded he will gain access to the Kratos 4 tier, which includes a pushback. He can potentially shove the Hekaton into the pillar it's next to.

Boom. That's a wound and the pushback is going to happen. Poor Philoctera is going to get crashed into by the Hekaton as well, but that's just going to displace her a space here. Other Primordials may not be so kind.

As you can see, there's a chance to weaken the Hekaton's AT field, or even deal a wound!

WOMP WOMP. A 2. Nothing happens.

This is where the Hekaton's dashboard is after this attack, there's a II BP location, but Herodotus has left 2x breaks for the next Titan, so their odds are better. 

And it turns out to really matter. Ulyssea goes next and hits the bone plates with a critical wound.

She even manages the 5 breaks thanks to those two potentials and gains the Shieldblade card!

As you can see, this piece of a Hekaton is more accurate and significantly harder hitting than just fists. It also provides the ability to block. But it's a very slow weapon, it exhausts when you use it (you have to spend your activation to un-exhaust). So it only works every other turn.

The titan Escalates and a III AI card lands on top of the deck, someone is in for a bad time.

It's going to be a Backbreaker onto Herodotus. Nasty

As you can see, if your fate is too high here, you're dead. But even if you don't die you have to draw a Trauma III (Grave Wound).  Poor old Herodotus takes a beating.

He ends up in a state of Dread from that crushing blow, reeling and now only able to attack from behind. But now it's time for the Titans to retaliate. Ulyssea is up first with her newfound weapon.

The Hekaton takes its 5th wound and becomes unable to Pushback anymore. It's in a really bad state at this point and it just needs to be put out of its misery. Philoctera moves around to the Rear (no bonuses for doing this, it just helps Herodotus if he needs to attack) and gets stuck in.

That's a III BP location there, Philoctera's going to need a pinch of fortune and those two break tokens if she's going to make it.

There was never a doubt. She smashes the Hekaton's 'One of a Hundred' with a devastating roll and sends it tumbling, lifeless to the floor of the Argo's chamber. 

However, Herodotus is still under the effects of Dread and will have to draw a Fated Mnemos card in the aftermath...

And that's it, an entire prelude fight. The later Primordials are a lot more durable than this first Hekaton, it barely gets to start rolling on its more dangerous actions before it runs out of wounds. Also the Hekaton is in essence the 'training primordials' it's more simplistic and basic in its aggression when compared to other Primordials so bare that in mind. Likewise terrain becomes more complex further on, with locations you can search or cities you should try and protect.

Death kills a Titan rather than the Argonaut the player is using, and while that is an issue, you should have more titans in reserve unless you're killing them off recklessly. Also outside of the first fight, you often have a 'retreat' option (usually lose 2x titans). This means you can cut your losses, protect 2 of your titans from dying and just suffer the defeat conditions. There's some great mitigation there. 

Likewise gear, alternative Danger/Kratos Tables, Mnemos abilities, training and similar can increase your tactical options a lot more, and as these primordials can reach level 9, you're going to need all of it! Enjoy!

You can check out Aeon Trespass: Odyssey's kickstarter via this referral link! (There's no benefits to me, it just helps the ITU team).