Dwellings of Eldervale

One thing that I know about myself is that I do like "kitchen sink" Euros that have a wild variety of mechanics together, so long as they all work well together. I've briefly mentioned that regarding Edge of Darkness back in my article on Unstoppable. In fact, a lot of innovative games that I've found to enjoy a lot are these hybrid mash-ups, the big ones being worker placement and deck building with Lost Ruins of Arnak or Dune: Imperium being examples of that.

A hybrid game of genres and mechanics

For Dwellings of Eldervale, its a pretty crazy mash up between Euro game and "Ameritrash". You use tactical worker placement across a randomly generated map of hexagonal tiles to grab resources, take actions, and even do PvP and PvE battles. Each faction has unique abilities for certain workers, and there are different worker types too: from Warriors that can start fights, Wizards that can teleport across the map, and mighty strong Dragons that can fly wreack havoc in battle.

Your end goal is to either develop six dwellings in total or have all the realm tiles of Eldervale revealed. What's interesting here is that by creating a dwelling you permanently lose one of your basic workers. The cadence for when people can send workers out to Eldervale versus retrieve them will surely get out of sync from other players, creating an interesting risk assessment of when to go for a certain objective or location.

One thing that designer Luke Laurie really did well with the worker placement trope is that retrieving your workers is a very meaningful action. In other worker placement games, typically your retrieve turn is a non-event and is effectively a "pass" turn. Here, Dwelllings rewards you as for each unit you bring back you can use them to activate cards for resources, actions and other benefits. It's an impactful decision point because you can take a retrieve turn at any point, you don't have to use all of your workers. It also weighs in on battles too, as units that lose battle get sent to The Underworld - gaining you swords as a resource but you won't get to use them for activating your tableau when you retrive them.

Peace is never an option

Speaking of battles it is an area of contention for this game with how swingy the outcome can be, however I really enjoy it for that reason - I think its smart that every battle has a risk of an upset outcome versus being predictable and decisive. This is the Ameritrash aspect that people will love or hate about it. There are cards that you can use for instant effects, some of which can even change the tide of battle. But I think it allows for exciting storytelling moments - that you can have a lone warrior out there fending off an army, is crazy fun in terms of giving a feeling of "winning against all odds". Something that I think most games can't really capture and usually avoid through design.

And here's the thing, you will want to go to battle. In some ways, this direct player interaction allows for meaningful choice to prevent players from making dwellings and pusing them out of position. Or sometimes you just have no better option because of your own placement, as when you're sending out workers you have to place them relative to where you've already placed. You can find yourself stuck between a rock and a hard place: do you go one direction and fight a monster, or do you go another direction and have to face off with another player?

The good thing is that battles aren't a complete loss, since you gain resources for units sent to The Underworld. Plus swords can be used during battles to give you more dice than you'd have based on unit strength alone, so that means that you can be more of a threat in future battles. I think that helps mitigate the negative feeling that usually comes from loss in direct PvP events. It may have messed up with your plans but it doesn't throw you out of the game.

The magic of multipliers

But even for its Ameritrash aspect, its a Euro through and through, and you will be fighting for victory points at the end of the day. Battles alone won't get you the win, although there are benefits and a specific glory track associated with it. No, the majority of your points are going to come from how well you did with the Elemental Board, building dwellings and getting cards of the associated elements. At the start, your faction already gives you a leg up with the element you're affiliated with, nudging you in one direction, but it'll be fully up to you the direction you go.

As the name of the game implies, a lot of your success depends on getting as many dwellings as possible:

• You get points when you create dwellings
• You go up the Elemental track associated with the realm of the dwelling
• How many adventure cards you can score at the end of the game is baesd on how many dwellings you created
• It's an end game trigger

Going up on the Element track is a race as there's a benefit for reaching the top first. It's worth focusing on Elements that you're building up throughtout the game. It also means that it's not immediately obvious who is in the lead during the game as you'd have to do a lot of calculation to see what the end game points would become. Not to mention there are end of game scoring cards that can definitely give boosts to your score.

Engaging across player count

The game allows for playing up to five players at a time. While downtime can definitely increase with the number of players, the fact that you can join in on battles that happen adjacent to your units means that you can jump in and duke it out if you want between turns. Or you're just interested to see how the result will be as it may change your plans for your turn, for better or for worse. Plus, the high excitement of battles gets everyone hyped up and interested.

And of course, I have to applaud the highly robust solo mode. Not only does it let you focus more on your own turns, it gives the info up front for what the Ghost opponent can do. This really empowers the player to choose calcualted risks or make decisions to avoid unwanted outcomes and manipulate the Ghost in manageable ways.

An evergreen Top 10 game for me

To think one of my favorite games of all time I could have completely skipped over it because I judged the box cover to be "too much". Just based on the name and cover for some reason it just didn't immediately click for me that this would be a game for me. I even watched a live playthrough of the game and my initial thought was "yeah, that's okay I guess". I think at the time I was just already backing a lot of campaigns so I didn't really give it too much attention.

It wasn't until I listened to reviews and specifically how it had high scores from The Dice Tower, most notably a 10 from Mike DeLisio, that I realized that I missed out. I had to go on a wait list from the publisher for more deluxe copies, making sure I got everything that I could of this game.

This is a game that I will always be happy to play. It currently is the 4th place for most logged plays so far. I marvel at how well designed it is, for all its different parts it comes together into a wonderfully cohesive game that is a joy to play. I will say its successor, Andromeda's Edge, does make positive improvements over Dwellings of Eldervale, but they're distinct enough to both have space in my library.