An Overview of the Blackbeak Pursuer | Aeon Trespass: Odyssey (Patreon)

Spoiler Warning: This is a tricky one to write a spoiler warning for, one of Aeon Trespass' exciting elements is all the various elements that are unveiled through play. Some of which might even be missed, as such writing about something like the Blackbeak Pursuer is difficult because it may contain spoilers for things that happen in the campaign. As such this is a spoiler warning for the spoiler warning. After the image of the Blackbeak Pursuer box I'm going to write a second spoiler warning that is more specific about what spoiler (if any) this relates to. If you are curious as to how the gear cards pictured are included, what else may be in the box, the miniature and how it is intended to be used read on.

Spoiler Warning 2: For those of you who have not played Aeon Trespass: Odyssey (ATO) a portion into Cycle 5, this will contain mild spoilers surrounding where this miniature fits into the game. The cards that come with this resin miniature include three that can be used with any Hermesian Pursuer and two that can only be gained during Cycle 5.

You have been warned, twice.

Things can always escalate. There are more things in heaven and earth, Odysseus, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. Now you will witness one of them.

- Unknown

There’s hatred in it, and there is anger. The prey wounded the creature. Severed its arm. Made it run.

That was then.

Now...

Contents:

1x Blackbeak Pursuer Primordial miniature

1x 60 mm Scenic miniature base

1x Tainted Nailbone Gear card

1x Bleeding Vulture Beak Gear card

1x Punctured Trauma card

1x Scarred Trait card

1x Conqueror Strike Signature card

1x Postcard-sized Art card

1x Craft box

The Blackbeak Pursuer is something that comes to fruition during the main storyline of Cycle V. There is a point where the Hermesian Pursuer, despite being slain in an earlier Cycle (usually Cycle II), returns to attack the Argo. This is a shock to the Argonauts because they saw the singular Primordial die, but yet it is still here and attacking them once more. However, the Pursuer is still only a Cycle I/II Primordial and it is now facing powerful titans armed with Cycle IV/V gear. As such the fight is one-sided and results in the Pursuer being dismembered and brutally broken.

You can elect to play this fight here, but you can also skip past it if you so choose because the final result is a forgone conclusion. The Hermesian Pursuer has no chance to win here and due to it being a being that has to be piloted from inside the Primordial (something that is considered unique amongst primordials) the fate of its pilot is in the hands of your Argonauts.

During the story beats associated with the Doom cards for Cycle V there is a decision that can bring back that maimed Hermesian Pursuer as a third chasing entity on top of Titan X and the Nemesis. Except now it has changed, larger and more bulky, its lost arm has regrown into a new form. This is the Blackbeak Pursuer and it comes with some new cards in one of the Cycle V envelopes. This is also not the only way that adversary can arrive, if it does not turn up during that early decision it is guaranteed to arrive a bit further in the doom story portion of the cycle.

No matter how or when this happens, it means that things have somehow managed to escalate even further.

The Miniature

...a cackle echoes. There's hatred in it, and there is anger. The prey wounded the creature. Severed its arm. Made it run. That was then. Now. The bugs have removed its gore. It could squash the bugs, but it hates its prey more. It will take all their arms.

And it will laugh.

The resin miniature that comes in this box accurately represents the Blackbeak as it now looks, while you can use the original Hermesian Pursuer miniature, it is more satisfying to have an accurate representation of the model, especially when it is a bulky, brutish beast like the Blackbeak. It comes in seven parts; the base, the torso/legs/head, two wings and three arms. There are two right arms to choose from, either you can have the new regrown arm which now has a hand and is clasping a spear, or you can stick with the original arm nail. I have chosen the hand which matches the art on the art card.

There is unfortunately a significant structural issue with this resin miniature, the legs of the model are thin and they have to support the rest of the torso, the arms and the wings. It is a lot of stress and weight to put on the miniature and in order to use this on the table it will additional support. This could have been avoided by having the Blackbeak sit or squat on the base, so it had a third point of contact with its rump and a bit of thickening of the nail limbs. That has not happened and as it stands breakage of those legs feels almost inevitable unless it is treated with the utmost care.

If this was a plastic model then there would be a lot less of an issue here as plastic has a lot more flex in it so it can absorb impacts caused by movement during play a lot more easily, also plastic is a less dense material so the weight issue would be greatly reduced.

Perhaps one day in the future we will see the more closely linked releases like the Blackbeak, Cycle specific Titans, Fateseer Titan and the ?????? Titan get a plastic release in a luxury “ATO Upgrade” box that also comes with titan/primordial cards for the updated elements. It would be amazing to see this, but I am not sure it would happen unless there is a lot of interest in such a thing.

I love the design of this Primordial in spite of structural issues in respect to the leg nails.

The Gameplay Content

Part of the gameplay content comes in the Cycle IV/V box inside Envelope β. That provides the bulk of the update, but we also get two new gear cards that can come from critically wounding the arm and beak. These are Cycle V equivalents of the gear cards for the Nail Spear and Pursuer Imperative/Pursuer Ultimatum.

The Tainted Nailbone

This Weapon is very much an upgraded and more powerful iteration of the original Nail Apear. It's packing an impressive attack profile to support this with 5 dice, +4 accuracy, an extra red power dice. It also has Reach 3, Closing 2, Carving 1 to support its offensive capabilities alongside a lot of ambrosia related abilities.

I love how this weapon feels like an evolution of the original one without being a direct copy. This is also a great weapon for “speed freaks” who are players that feel more satisfied in games when they are rolling lots of dice. You're rolling 5 attack dice here and that can result in multiple power dice, so many that it can even trigger the upgrade of power dice from red to black.

The Bleeding Vulture Beak

This Support Gear card is a fair bit different from its predecessor, instead of providing reflex movement this one provides two defensive rerolls, 2 despair, 1 ambrosia token per turn and an immediate gain of 2 ambrosia when your titan reaches 3 Rage while also disabling the Toying Trait. If you can handle that, you get the ability to Provoke plus you can ignore both ignore Feint and Flare responses. This ignore ability is aimed at the Blackbeak Pursuer and Titan X who use the Flare and Feint mechanics. I believe the Dragon of Phobos, Meduketos and Ur-Fleece do not use either mechanic, but I might have missed something there as I'm still not fully familiarised with the Cycle IV and V Primordials. It does feel thematically correct for this gear card to work against those two chasing foes though.

There is also a slight quirk with these gear two cards, you are intended to get them by battling the Blackbeak, however, with the way gaining them is worded:

“If you've started Cycle V, you may gain this [Gear] instead of the Loot [Gear] from Arm Pincer/Stone Beak Hermesian Pursuer BP.”

This wording means you can technically get them from the pre-Blackbeak Hermesian Pursuer fight which is a Cycle V Hermesian Pursuer fight (that's the one that can be skipped if you want.) If you play it out then critical wounds to the listed BP cards technically ticks all the boxes to unlock them.

I'm not sure if I've misunderstood the rules here and I certainly think it is against the spirit of the game experience to play this way, because these are both clearly gear that is intended to come from the Blackbeak battles. Still it is always interesting to see these little areas where the rules might have missed one edge case, I certainly won't be playing it that way because it is not what I want from my game experience.

The Challenge Cards

Finally we have three "challenge" cards, these can be used with either version of the Hermesian if you want to ratchet the difficulty up further beyond the cards that they have normally. They add the Scarred trait which then adds the Punctured Major Trauma to the deck, turns all regular attacks into sequential ones (see the card for more details) and turns the Signature move into Conqueror Strike.

While the new Major Trauma doesn't turn up all the time; changing the regular attacks into sequential ones and changing the signature really has a large impact on the game experience. Both of these versions of the Pursuer can be exceptionally challenging at their respective places in the game and this pushes it further. Given that one of the end states for ATO is an exceptional series of “one shot” boss battles that push you harder and harder this gives even more end game content for facing off against the already formidable Blackbeak. I've not had a lot of time to try it out due to needing to replay cycles and explore more avenues, but I did sit down for a couple of battles and marvel at how these simple changes switched the dynamic of the battle around and added so many new nuances to consider. It'll be quite a while before I successfully beat this one I think and that's just wonderful to me.

Final Thoughts

As the title suggests, this isn't really review because the Blackbeak is now sold out and as far as I can tell it is unlikely to get a recast/re-release. Though if this is the kind of content from Into the Unknown that you are interested in, it is absolutely worth expressing that because having this wonderful miniature and interesting gameplay cards being so limited in availability is something of a shame.

I think the Godform Box is an example of separately released content that can elevate the gaming experience and a version of that for the Blackbeak would be so welcome.