Prince of Gluttons is supposed to be the strongest nemesis in the Aeon’s End core box. The first time I sat down across from it, my honest reaction was: “Something this strong… can we actually win?”
I’ve been testing every nemesis I can get my hands on, and this guide should raise your win rate noticeably — not just against the Prince, but against everything else I’ve covered so far too. Normally I break these guides down tier by tier, but this time I’m going to give you everything in one go.
Why This Nemesis Wrecked Me
Once you’ve sat with the Prince for a game or two, three things become obvious about why it’s so dangerous.
It fields an unusual number of minions. Every single Tier 2 nemesis card is a Minion. That’s not a typo — the entire tier.
Its Unleash effect eats your supply. When the Prince Unleashes, it Devours cards straight out of the supply piles and stacks them on the devoured pile. Every card it eats is a card that’s now missing from the game, and that shortage comes back to bite you later — as damage to your players or to Gravehold once a pile runs dry.
Its minions devour cards too. Every minion up through Tier 2 attacks by either Devouring a card or dealing damage — so you’re not just fighting the Unleash effect, you’re fighting nearly every card the Prince plays.
The Core Insight
Put those three problems together and the answer becomes pretty clear: you can’t out-defend a nemesis whose entire win condition is starving the supply. You have to end it before the supply does. For four-mage games, the baseline plan is:
- Don’t let cards get Devoured
- Taking Attack-type nemesis cards is unavoidable — accept it
- Trash Power cards whenever you can
- Kill minions whenever you can
- Don’t count on Phaedraxa’s or Adelheim’s charge abilities coming online
Team & Card Priorities
4-Mage Play — Why Bench Adelheim and Phaedraxa?
The concrete plan for four-mage games:
- Run three attackers (it’s fine to leave Phaedraxa and Adelheim out)
- Get your high-cost spell early
- It’s fine to gain cards to power yourselves up — just don’t go out of your way to pull from the devoured pile
Why leave Adelheim and Phaedraxa out: minion attacks devour cards rather than hitting players or Gravehold directly, so the moments where their charge abilities would actually matter barely come up. With this many minions on the table, you need to lean harder into offense than usual, and Phaedraxa is already down a breach, which puts her at a slight disadvantage here.
That’s why rushing Chaos Arc so you can start dropping minions immediately swings the game hard in your favor. Stack Chaos Arc with Planar Insight and you can put out a stable 10-12 damage per turn. I used to pick up Feral Lightning as my third spell, but grabbing any of the three options below works too.
Stacking Chaos Arc and Planar Insight
Acquire in this order:
- V’riswood Amber
- Chaos Arc
- Flexing Dagger and Spectral Echo, or Burning Opal
- V’riswood Amber
- Burning Opal, or Planar Insight
- Planar Insight (if you couldn’t gain a card by turn 5)
Once you’ve picked up both Chaos Arc and Planar Insight and opened three breaches, the rest of the game gets a lot easier. Kadir, Jian, Lash, and Mist all work well as your attackers.
For healing, Brama is a solid pick (assuming Essence Theft isn’t in the supply). Brama starts by stacking Diamond Cluster, then switches to picking up spells to add support damage.
When Do You Use Focusing Orb to Heal Gravehold?
Maybe never — you might beat the Prince without ever cracking it open (and even if you do, it’ll only be once or twice).
2-Mage Play — Kadir and Jian
Kadir and Jian are the strongest pairing for two-mage games. Use Kadir’s charge ability during Jian’s main phase, then follow up with Jian’s own charge ability. Eventually, if you can set two copies of Chaos Arc in Breach II or III, with two spells set in each of the neighboring breaches, you’re looking at serious damage.
Supply Picks (2-Mage)
Gems
- Jade — 2 Ether
- V’riswood Amber — 3 Ether
- Burning Opal — 5 Ether
It seems best to let Jade be what gets devoured — so avoid picking it up when you can.
Relics
- Flexing Dagger — 2 Ether
- Bottled Vortex — 3 Ether
Since Planar Insight’s damage scales with how many breaches you’ve opened, grab Flexing Dagger early to open them fast. The Prince doesn’t hit Gravehold much, so skip Focusing Orb entirely.
Spells
- Phoenix Flame — 3 Ether
- Planar Insight — 6 Ether
- Chaos Arc — 6 Ether
- Arcane Nexus — 7 Ether
Both mages should pick up Chaos Arc and Planar Insight. Having Burning Opal in hand makes it easier to hit that 6-Ether mark. Aim to eventually pick up Arcane Nexus and build toward stacking charge by playing two gems in a turn.
The Turning Point
Honestly, the turning point wasn’t one dramatic clash — it was realizing the Prince only looks unbeatable if you keep playing it like every other nemesis. The moment I stopped worrying about protecting the supply and started racing to Chaos Arc so I could just start killing minions outright, that “can we actually win this?” feeling from game one flipped into something closer to confidence.
Takeaways
- The Prince wins by starving the supply, not by hitting you — so speed matters more than defense
- Rush Chaos Arc; stacking it with Planar Insight gets you to a stable 10-12 damage
- In 4-mage games, push to three attackers instead of the usual two — Adelheim’s and Phaedraxa’s charge abilities rarely get to shine here
- In 2-mage games, Kadir and Jian is the strongest pairing
- Skip Jade when you can, and don’t plan around Focusing Orb — you can likely win without ever cracking it open, or use it once or twice at most
This time, it really was “the best defense is a good offense.”
See you next time!
Once you’ve beaten Prince of Gluttons, go try the other nemeses in the expansions too — just note that The Nameless doesn’t come with a nemesis of its own.
Tested in both 4-mage and 2-mage configurations — the same “don’t feed the pile, out-damage it instead” logic holds either way.
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