Aeon's End: War Eternal

Standard setup: follow each mat for a five-card starting hand, ordered five-card deck and breach arrangement. Each mage starts with 10 life and Gravehold with 30. Mix the selected nemesis’s cards with player-count basic cards within each tier, then stack tiers 1, 2 and 3 in order. Supply normally contains three gems, two relics and four spells.

Turn order: standard 2–4-player play uses four player cards and two nemesis cards. Two players have two cards each; three have one each plus a wild assigned jointly; four have one each. Draw a card to select each turn, shuffling this discard only when a new card is needed and its deck is empty. Single-mage setup is separate.

Player turns have casting, main and draw phases. You may cast prepared spells in open breaches and must cast those in closed breaches. Discard each cast spell to its owner’s pile before resolving it. A spell normally damages only one target, without freely splitting excess damage between enemies.

In the main phase, play gems/relics, gain cards or charges, focus/open breaches, prepare spells and resolve applicable prepared or TO DISCARD effects in any order and as often as legal. Normally each breach holds one spell; two Link spells may share a breach. Explicit card exceptions take priority.

Resources and breaches: gained cards immediately enter your discard pile. Unspent aether expires at turn end and cannot simply be given to allies. Pay 2 aether for one of your charges; use a full ability at its stated time and clear its charges. Focusing rotates a closed breach and permits preparation that turn; opening makes it permanently open for future preparation.

Draw: put played gems and relics atop your discard in chosen order, retain unplayed cards and draw up to five. Do not discard your entire hand automatically. When a draw/reveal lacks enough cards, take what remains then flip the discard pile over as the new deck, without shuffling or rearranging. You may not freely inspect the deck.

Nemesis turns: resolve existing minions and powers oldest first, applying persistent effects and reducing power counters until zero triggers resolution/discard. Then draw one card. Attacks resolve immediately; new minions/powers resolve immediate text but wait until later nemesis turns for persistent/countdown effects. An empty deck that must draw instead Unleashes three times.

Exhaustion: at zero life, Unleash twice, destroy one of your breaches and discard its prepared spell, then lose all charges. Keep taking turns but cannot heal. Subsequent damage, including excess from the initial exhausting hit, deals double to Gravehold. Lowest-life targeting looks for a non-exhausted player.

Victory and solo: zero nemesis life wins immediately; an empty nemesis deck with no minions or powers in play wins at any turn end. With 2–4 players, everyone exhausted or zero city life loses, alongside nemesis-specific loss conditions. True solo uses three player cards and two nemesis cards and treats you as your own ally; under this 2017 book, exhaustion alone does not lose true solo.