Introduction and Themes
This guide is a largely spoiler-free guide that talks about the general mechanics of the Ages Unwound custom campaign made by Olivia Juliet. If you're interested in learning what the campaign's unique mechanics are, and hearing suggestions for investigators and cards that are particularly well suited to the campaign, read on!
In Ages Unwound, the investigators stumble into a fight against a cult trying to unravel reality - and end up getting a trip through time while they're at it!
General Mechanics
Hand Targeting
A number of scenario cards target your hand, forcing you to discard cards at random. Don't rely on combos that require you to hold cards in hand, or events that you expect to replay over and over without any way to recur them or ways to work around losing them. Even assets already in play aren't safe, unless you already have disposable assets out.
High Shrouds, High Health
This campaign isn't afraid of throwing big numbers at you. 4 health enemies in the encounter deck and 6 shroud locations can show up early, and show up relatively often. Make sure you have ways of dealing with both - either through boosting your stats, or saving up big events when needed.
Independent Working
Ages Unwound isn't afraid of forcing your investigators to split up, and has some scenarios where being able to split up and tackle multiple goals at once will be a big help. If you're not playing a flex character, make sure your clue characters can deal with the occasional enemy (even - or especially - if it's via evade). There's also lots of cases where a dedicated fighter being able to help out with clues will be a big boost. Still, a character who can do whatever is needed is great - as long as you can deal with the high difficulty numbers you sometimes hit.
Playing With Actions
As you might expect from a campaign focused around time, Ages Unwound loves to play around with actions. You can gain actions, lose actions, gain bonuses or penalties until the end of your turn, and so on. Being able to interact with actions in some way isn't required, but does add a new, fun dimension - being it cards like Quick Learner and Payday that care how many actions you've taken, or cards that give you extra actions or let you bank actions that you can use when the opportunity arises.
Symbol Tokens - Really Good and Really Bad
Some of the symbol tokens you can get in Ages Unwound have a low penalty, and give you some extra benefit on a success - and you can even do things to earn more of them. Having ways to take advantage of these tokens, or find them more likely in the chaos bag can be a big help. Mystic tech that lets you pick between multiple tokens can be big here, allowing you to trigger these positive effects more often.
It's also worth noting that the bag starts with three skulls in it, and the skulls can get pretty mean late in some scenarios, even becoming -4s and -5s. While characters who dedicate themselves to one stat can get through this, ways to avoid these tokens also help.
Finally, one of the symbols represents an extremely harsh punishment. Ideally, you never run into it, but if you do... having some way to navigate around it will be a huge boon.
Swarming Enemies
Ages Unwound makes use of Swarming enemies, first seen in The Dream-Eaters official campaign. When these enemies spawn, they'll come with copies of themselves using cards from your deck as stand-ins. Having a way to hit multiple enemies at once can be a lot of help here - especially if multiple spawn at once and begin stacking up. Brush off those multi-target cards!
There's other ways to deal with swarm enemies too, though. "Thorns" cards like Guard Dog can deal damage from each enemy that attacks, and when you evade a swarm enemy, you evade the entire stack - allowing evade focused characters to just avoid them, or get the time they need.
XP in the Encounter Deck
12 XP over 6 scenarios are in the encounter deck - and not always on monsters that are particularly challenging. While high player counts will be able to find them easily, low player counts may want to consider ways to dig for Victory enemies.
Deckbuilding Advice
The suggestions below aren't by any means required, or even characters I've necessarily played the campaign through. Rather, these are just observations of characters who might be particularly well suited to the campaign, including things that might not be top tier, but have a very strong synergy with the campaign mechanics.
Suggested Investigators
Daniela Reyes: Daniela's power is great against swarms. She can cancel the damage from an entire stack by evading the first enemy who attacks her - or, if she's got the soak, she can just damage each one that hits her.
Zoey Samaras: When Zoey becomes engaged with a swarm enemy, she gets to draw for each enemy in that swarm - giving her a lot of extra resources, which she can then use on expensive cards like Dynamite Blast.
Amanda Sharpe: Amanda loves playing around in the action economy. She's happy to take turns where she gets less actions to set-up and just put a defensive card beneath her. On turns where she knows she's getting extra actions, she can stack a deduction under her and go to town. It makes her a little more complicated to play, but there's a ton of pay-off.
Joe Diamond: With so many scenarios that are going to force or encourage you to split up, Joe's ability to fight and get clues has never been more crucial. Cards like Working a Hunch and Extensive Research from his hunch deck can help beat high shrouds, and his colts let you pack your hunch deck with them from defeating swarming enemies.
Kymani Jones: Able to handle swarming enemies with ease by discarding them, Kyamni makes a great fighter for dealing with common enemies in the encounter deck who can still pull out a Thieve's Kit to get clues. They may struggle at low player counts, however, due to the sheer number of Victory enemies in the encounter decks - make sure you have some way of killing them, or are working with someone who can.
"Skids" O'Toole: No, really. Both versions of him make some sense here - the normal version can profit off of mechanics that encourage extra actions. The parallel version can make better use of his power on turns where you get bonuses to tests. You'll want to play up his flexibility, but also make sure you get something that lets him really push his numbers like Dirty Fighting early.
Jacqueline Fine: When it comes to token-searching, there's none better - Jaqueline can make good use out of the symbol tokens that give positive effects. There's also a lot of cards that synergize with that strategy, like the upgraded event spells from Fest of Hemlock Vale or Sixth Sense.
Jim Culver: There's three skulls in the bag, and they're able to become fairly nasty. Jim also likes to play token-searching effects, and if you set up right, you might only have to worry about the numbers and not the symbols for him.
Stella Clark: If you want to play around with actions, Stella is a great one to do so with. Quick Learner is a natural take in her, she naturally gets an extra action, and can act independently. She might struggle a bit early due and at some of the high shroud locations, but she'll also have turns where she absolutely goes nuts.
Wendy Adams: Wendy can take Leo De Luca, Quick Learner, and she can use her investigator power to redraw tokens. A lot of what she does directly interacts with the campaign's mechanics in ways that are good for her.
Notable Player Cards
Dynamite / MK 1 Grenades: When you need to deal with swarming enemies, why not deal with all of them at once?
Breach the Door: There's plenty of pivotal climatic locations you need to get all the clues off of, and being able to just drop them to 0 shroud for the team can help easily bring you over the finish line.
Magnifying Glass (1): This upgrade gets a special call-out for completely nullifying one of the potentially nastier asset-destruction encounter cards.
Microscope: In particular, Microscope (4) gets to really build up tokens from swarming enemies - but even base Microscope is good for characters who spend time evading or fighting.
Borrowed Time: If you're going to play around with time, why not go nuts with it? Thematic and useful!
Kicking the Hornet's Nest: With an average of 2 Victory enemies per scenario, Kicking the Hornet's Nest is one of the best ways to ensure you can draw them out to get that XP. It's like Delve too Deep, but it gets you money and a clue, too!
Grotesque Statue: When the chaos bag has tokens that give an extra benefit and tokens that especially hurt you, having some way to pick between the two is ideal. Grotesque Statue is one of the best ways.
Sixth Sense: Sixth Sense has great synergy with all sorts of token effects in the campaign. It lets you pick the shroud off of a lower shroud location if you draw one of the really bad tokens, or rewards you even more if you draw one of the positive tokens with token-selection effects.
Close Call / Dumb Luck: Both these cards can put an evaded (or almost-evaded) enemy back in the encounter deck, giving you a convenient way to deal with a big stack of swarm enemies at once without having to fight through their health.
Quick Learner: If you take this, know you're in for a wild time. The campaign is filled with effects that give you extra actions, letting the difficulty reduction really shine. It's also filled with effects that take away your actions, making the initial penalty all the more killer.
More on Ages Unwound:
Ages Unwound: Spoiler-Light Review