First Impressions of OblivAeon!

Hello, all! I’m not dead!

If you listened to the OblivAeon Part 2 episode of The Letters Page, you might remember that I was heading off on an exchange trip in Japan for six months (though I don’t blame you if you don’t, ha ha!). As a result, my first experiences with OblivAeon have been all this past week. I know that OblivAeon’s kind of old news at this point, but I nevertheless thought it might be fun for me to offer my extremely belated impressions of the expansion.

HEROES!

Of the new heroes, I think my favourite is Akash’Thriya. Something just really clicks with her. I love the Primordial Seeds and the Tree, and I like how her one-shots are all based on accelerating her goal instead of being generic effects. Base > Spirit of the Void for me. Sorry, Void fans, but I like to actually do things in the early game.

The Harpy really confuses me. I understand her mechanic with the Arcane and Avian tokens, but I’m not yet sure what situations call for what focus. Sometimes it seems like there’s barely any benefit to birding out. At time of writing, I’ve only tried her base variant, so maybe the Dark Watch variant fixes my confusion issue.

La Comodora is a mixed bag for me. She certainly has some extremely powerful support effects, but they all felt a little... unfocused? I’ve only played her three times, so maybe I’m just not getting it, but I can’t seem to work out what order I should be playing her cards. Do I go for the equipments first, or draw deep for something like Shipshape? I think I prefer the Black Spot variant, just because it’s satisfying to stack the villain deck and then ditch a nasty card.

I’ve only played Luminary and Lifeline once each, both with their base modes, and I didn’t get a chance to do that much, so I’ll cover them both at once. I like Luminary in theory, but I don’t see how you actually maintain all your devices. Lifeline was fun, for the five minutes I played him before he got wiped off the map by OblivAeon. I especially like his base version’s generic draw support.

OBLIVAEON!

Hoo boy, I’ve tried the big guy four times and gotten defeated every time. The closest I’ve gotten to stopping him was 24 HP on his final form. I think the two hardest things about OblivAeon are the shield and his final form’s extra plays. A lot of the time, it seems nigh impossible to fulfill the shield’s first condition. Once it’s flipped, the condition is often quite easy, but the first side is always just... nasty. Special shout-out to Arc of Unreality for forcing you to jump through hoops and stop you from mounting any sort of meaningful impact on the zone. 

OblivAeon’s final form is fine... except for those extra plays. That 24 HP game I mentioned? The Countdown was at 2 with no Environments left in reserve, and at the end of the last hero’s turn, OblivAeon played Temporal Fractures. Good game, everyone, you lose with no chance of counterplay when one more round would have taken it. I was, well... there was colourful language involved, I’m sorry to say.

ENVIRONMENTS!

Now, I haven’t played a few of the OblivAeon environments yet - specifically, Champion Studios, Fort Adamant, and Mordengrad. This is a consequence of me really enjoying randomised games. I can say, however, that the Nexus of the Void is a really fun environment, with all the shifting and changing biomes. And I love the Slumbering Serpent. When I realised that it dealt the same damage type as Zhu Long, there was an explosion of lore theories. Champion Studios is fun too, but I found some of the conflicts a little annoying. Bottom of the Ninth, in particular, can really screw some combinations over.

And, that’s all from me. I hope that even though this is all old hat, you guys didn’t mind hearing my first-week thoughts this late.

I mean you are here just in time for Oblivaeon to get hyped up for digital. So not QUITE old hat yet.

Welcome back! Glad to hear you had a good time and that you’re getting into OA finally! Here’s a few thoughts on your thoughts!

Birds = damage, pretty much across the board. A lot of her bigger, flashier one-shots, you’ll want to have lots of arcane tokens out for because they require finesse. But half the time, just get Huginn & Muninn out, let yourself go bird and you’ll tear everything up. There are downsides, of course, mostly in the form of collateral damage, but Lillian is the death of a thousand cuts personified. She’s really good at plink damage, so any damage boost on her is amazing.

Dark Watch gives you far more control over the tokens, at the cost of your hand.

For La Comodora, the stuff you want to have is Concordant Helm (taking your draw phase first means you get two cards, for fueling the sustained equipment), Shipshape and Maria Helena’s Plot if at all possible. The funny thing I find about her is that she’s built like a support character, but she works really well if she consistently just supports herself. I mean, you can hand out card draws, but you’d better be taking one of them every turn to keep that Timeless Treasure in play. Sky’s really the limit with her, and I find her capable of doing amazing disgusting things, with enough setup time.

The first time I played Luminary, I was less than impressed, and it was because I had the same thought.

Throw that away. You are not Unity, you are Tachyon: all you care about is cards in your trash. As the former Baron Blade, you’re all about the master plan, and that plan is “Get 15 cards in trash for Doomsday Device”. He’s only got three, but he can search for them with the right cards, not to mention return them to his hand from the trash if they get discarded. So discard from hand, discard from your deck, and let those Devices get blown up because they probably did something useful on their way out: it doesn’t matter to you, because it’s all done in the name of getting you one step closer to achieving your plan.

Hope that helps.

For Luninary just think about the name Disposable Defender and you get a good idea of what he thinks about maintaining Devices in play.  They hopefully serve sole purpose but then he is onto the next thing.   If a particular Device was useful he has means of getting them back.  

For La Comodora I’ve found that Harnessed Anamoly is her best card.   Whether it’s used on another hero or herself it just accelerates setup.   If you are trying to maintain your equipment in play then your best tool is Concordant Helm as it can net you two extra cards a turn between taking your draw phase first to draw two cards instead of one and then the card you get at the end of your turn.  Timeless Treasure basically pays for itself if you choose yourself and Rudder in the Timestream can as well.  Shipshape can help as well but I’ve never found it critical to have out.   

 For the heroes at least you can find guides people have made here https://greaterthangames.com/forum/topic/flamethrower49s-strategy 

Lastly, I don’t think anyone is going to mind you discussing OblivAeon content and honestly once the digital version is released I expect a lot more discussions 

Heck, I haven't even had a chance to pull out my copy. I've gotten the chance to play Luminary a few times(super fun) and tried out a few new enviros, but I have yet to get to play OblivAeon itself. The collector's box is fantastic, don't get me wrong, but it's not exactly travel friendly unless I can get a friend to spare some space in his car trunk.

Like always, most of my play is probably gonna be online, which I really don't have a problem with. I just know the first few games I play are gonna be flaming loses since I haven't had the chance to actually play much of the mode beforehand.

Everything about Luminary strategy is encapsulated in the card "All According to Plan."

What I mean is, first, internalize that attitude: whatever happens, it's all according to plan! Then, that card lets you accelerate the plan!

Update! I beat OblivAeon yesterday!

Not alone, naturally, but I think I contributed a lot. Opening team was Dark Watch Harpy, Mr. Fixer (me), the Hunted Naturalist, K.N.Y.F.E., and Chrono-Ranger.

It really seems like with OblivAeon, if you get the slightest hint of a bad start, you just can’t recover at all. We lucked out and got The Primary Objective as a shield, which meant we could actually put in work to flip it quickly. On top of that, OblivAeon never actually hit anyone on that first stage - we got Abyss Stares Back, Temporal Fractures, and Focus of Power, so everyone was on reasonable health to stop the Scions and Aeon Men from getting out of control.

My first hero got El Mejor Legado and the T-Rex Bot before getting taken out by Sanction after a nasty environment turn, so I switched to Termi-Nation Unity, who lasted the entire rest of the game. Holy crap, the T-Rex Bot is legit so good. It plus Legado just tore through everything, and since I was playing TN Unity, if it died, I could just bring it back the next time I used a power. It got even dumber when Expatriette (who came in to replace DW Harpy and use the Infinity Cannon) got Cursor. The game basically became “Unity sits back and lets her army of robots eat OblivAeon”.

Surprisingly, though, MVP for the entire thing was Freedom Six Bunker. I will be honest and say that Bunker is my least favourite hero (that I have major experience with - I might find one of the OblivAeon heroes a bit less fun as I play them more) in the entire game, and F6 Bunker is a variant I’m not fond of unless it’s a specific circumstance. But wow. We brought in Bunker shortly after OblivAeon KOed Naturalist and moved to the other Battle Zone, with the intention of getting rid of the Focus of Power and then sacrificing him for someone else, and he managed to survive quite literally until the last round of the game. He got A Brother’s Sacrifice and the OblivAeon Shard. The Shard really came in handy when there were sixteen Devastation Tokens (it’s complicated), allowing Bunker to just wipe Scions off the map, and A Brother’s Sacrifice let everyone stay alive through an environment destruction in the very last round. Really turned around my opinion of Bunker, I’m starting to see how he fits into things.

Finishing blow was kinda underwhelming, to be honest. Ra came in to replace Bunker, and used a buffed Fire Blast to knock off OblivAeon’s last 6 HP (no Voss).

So that was really difficult, but I must be a masochist, because I want to do it again.

Solid game! :D I think, more than anything, the Shields really determine the course of the game, and Primary Objective is the easiest one to flip. I know Jeremy and John from Handelabra, when they first debuted digital Oblivaeon, got the shield that summons Borr, and they were well into the second phase before they finally got rid of it. Stuff like that is near unrecoverable.

I think my least favourite shield is the one that summons Progeny and hurts you whenever you move to OblivAeon’s zone. That, or whatever the shield is that insta-kills on the flipside.

La Comodora took several games for my best friend to really grok her, but now he loves her, and we all love watching him play her. She is, to me, a 3, without any single hesitation. Anything that even has the potential to disrupt the overall flow of a turn/game (Concordant Helm) by giving a player control of when they take their individual phases is a level of complexity many 3's can't claim. Especially little tricks like taking draw first to take advantage of a base rule. There's just nothing about her that is middling, in terms of effects she creates and possibilities she has to consider. Having said that, she is awesome and fun, even from my more limited experience.

Our group has only managed four games, and we've only won one. He is no pushover. Loved reading your thoughts and game summaries!