Eschaton Review – Armageddon is coming

As I have spent more and more time perusing the tabletop area at PAX over the past few years, one booth has always caught my eye. Adorned with black curtains and decorated with skulls, this booth belonged to Archon Games. Finally, at this year’s PAX West, my curiosity got the best of me, and I sat down to try out a demo of their cult-management deck-building and area control game, Eschaton. In no time at all, I was sending my cultists out to spread the good word of my cult. My deck was bustling with relics, followers, and more, and I was sold on the game. It made such an impact on me that I even featured the game in my highlight piece (found here). Alas, my campaign of cultish supremacy was cut short due to my schedule, but thanks to the folks at Archon Games sending me a copy, I could finally complete my domination and prove my worth to the Dark One.

Game Info:

• Players: 2-6 (best at 4)
• Time: 60-180 mins.
• Designers: Diha, Petras Vaznelis, Adam Watts
• Artists: Tracy Burnham, Diha, Adam Watts
• Publisher: Archon Games

What comes in the box:

• Rulebook
• 1 Realm Map
• 204 Conclave cards
• 90 Arcana cards
• 23 Event cards
• 11 Omen cards
• 1 Armaggedon card
• 6 Reference cards
• 6 sets of 25 colored cubes
• 13 Plague tokens
• 18 Curse tokens
• 4 Territory Dominance tokens
• 6 Deck Playmats
• 6 Sacrificial Pyre Playmats

At its core, Eschaton is a deck-building game mixed with area control, where each player strives to spread the influence of their cult across the land before Armageddon occurs. Starting with similar decks, you’ll play cards and spend resources to purchase new cards, sacrifice relics, and wage war in an effort to have the most favor with the Dark One when the end times come and Armageddon begins. In other words, Eschaton is a lovely, cheery game—perfect for the holidays!

In terms of the deck-building aspect, players will construct their decks from two pools of cards: the Conclave and the Arcana deck. The Conclave is where most of your new cards will come from and serves as a shop full of 14 new types of cultists you can acquire, as well as powers such as Plague and Curse that you can cast. This store will feel familiar to anyone who has played Dominion (considered one of, if not the first, deck-building games), where all the options are presented to you and are available until they run out. Some powers, like March, can be picked as many times as players want. Each card has an associated cost that a player will need to pay using Influence, along with various stats that will aid its owner when drawn—from being able to play cultists on the map to earning influence and more. It’s standard deck-building fare if you’re familiar with the genre.

The other pool of cards, the Arcana Deck, will compose far less of your active deck but is just as important. It contains relics that buff you, special demonic creature cards to add to your deck, Aura cards that provide ongoing bonuses, and more. Pulling from the deck requires the use of the “Divination” trait on a card and is more random, though there are ways to improve your pull chances. I enjoyed having two different sources to acquire cards from. It adds strategic depth to the game—do you focus on building influence to buy more from the Conclave or invest heavily in the Arcana deck for its relics and boons?

One way Eschaton deviates from deck-building norms is how it handles removing cards from your deck, referred to as “sacrificing” in this game. While other deck builders typically offer ways to remove cards, Eschaton is the first I’ve found that lets you remove a card whenever you wish, without requiring another special mechanic or card to trigger the effect. In fact, sacrificing specific cards—known as Relics—grants additional bonuses for the rest of the game, such as a passive increase to a stat or extra uses of a specific action. I really enjoyed this tweak. It made optimizing my deck much easier, which is one of the goals in a deck builder. The bonuses are just icing on the cake.

The other half of Eschaton involves area control, with players vying to spread their cult throughout the region on the game board. Cards with points in Aggression let you add or move cubes representing your cultists or remove members of an opposing cult. Holding a location on the map, done by having the most cubes in a spot, grants points at the end of the game, and some locations provide bonuses that can make all the difference in the long run. I enjoyed the inclusion of area control in Eschaton, but I wish there was more depth to it—especially when dealing with other cults. Taking out an opponent’s cultists feels anticlimactic since it’s resolved simply by removing cubes at a rate of one per point of Aggression, with no dice rolls or opposing actions.

All of this effort—building your deck and holding territory—aims to earn the most victory points when the “Armageddon” card is drawn from Eschaton’s event deck. There are numerous ways to score points; hoarding Thrall cards bought from the Enclave, securing land, or sacrificing relics are all options available to you, but perhaps the most lucrative method is completing objectives on Omen cards, drawn at the start of each round. Eschaton also offers fun variants, including one emphasizing holding territory, making the game more area-control-focused. There’s a surprising amount of depth packed into a relatively small box.

Most of my gripes with Eschaton aren’t about gameplay but its approachability and accessibility. Perhaps my biggest issue is the cryptic symbols used to denote card actions. Actions like Zeal (depicted as a chain), Divination (a book), or Influence (a stack of bricks or gold bars) may make thematic sense but aren’t intuitive for new players or those returning after a break. Aggression, denoted as clashing swords, is clearer. While this confusion clears up after a few rounds, I wish the game included clearer symbols or player aids explaining them.

The Conclave store of cards can also become unwieldy. With 18 card types, laying them out nearly doubles the game’s footprint. An additional mat or board—even a folded piece of paper—would help organize things. A 3D-printed card holder or an insert like Dominion’s, which organizes and labels cards, would speed up setup and streamline play.

Lastly, players who sleeve their cards should note that Eschaton’s insert isn’t accommodating. Sleeved cards stick out of the insert, risking damage. I mitigated this by placing the game board under the insert and leaving some slots partially empty to allow cards to lean slightly, but it’s not perfect.

Deck-building and area control are two of my favorite board game genres, and Eschaton merges them into a fun and strategic package I’ve become smitten with. While the dark aesthetic may turn some off, I found it striking—it’s what first grabbed my attention at PAX. It’s an aesthetic and theme that my collection is lacking in. For those seeking more depth or asymmetrical gameplay, Archon Games offers the Sigils of Ruin expansion, and a cooperative expansion, Iconoclasm, is coming next year! As someone who loves asymmetrical cults and more abilities, I’m eager to explore Sigils of Ruin and can’t wait to see what Iconoclasm has in store. In the meantime, Eschaton—and all its culty goodness—has earned a place on my game shelf. I highly recommend it to any fan of deck-building games.

 

This copy of Eschaton was provided to us by its publisher, Archon Games.