Session - Dwellings of Eldervale [PB]

3rd January 2021 (Sunday)

Game(s) Played:

My brother finally showed up to play the much awaited… …

Session – Dwellings of Eldervale

Game: Dwellings of Eldervale
Designer: Luke Laurie
Players: 1 – 5 Players
Playing Time: 90 minutes (This Play: 150 minutes)
Main Mechanisms: Area Majority / Influence, Dice Rolling, Modular Board, Variable Player Powers, Worker Placement

Player(s):

Dwellings of Eldervale is an epic worker placement game set in a once lost magical world. Giant elemental monsters roam while dragons, wizards and warriors battle for dominance over 8 elemental realms. Players control unique factions seeking to adventure, battle, grow in power and ultimately dwell Eldervale, shaping it to their vision. In the end, the players with the most elemental dominance among the multiple paths to victory will reign over Eldervale.

Surprisingly Padawan Minigeek decided to join us, she may not have the tactical chops yet but knew how to play the game enough that she did not need any handholding.

Your PLAYERS!!!

Moses picked the Pride of Bastet, a beetle riding species of cats that specialized in avoiding battle when it wants to, as well as temporarily charming opponent's units when forced into battle. Padawan Minigeek decided to go with the Atlanteans again, a race that gains glory in production rather than battle. I picked the Wardens of Evenmarch who are centaurs that have zero boundaries, having a "everybody's lawn is my lawn" attitude towards real estate.

So this is my third play of Dwellings of Eldervale. My first two plays were with the Padawans, it’s not that they don’t make good companions but it's nice to have someone to butt heads with & discuss plays of the game with.

Padawan Minigeek went around the realms collecting resource tiles and trading them in for resources immediately, building up a tidy sum of resources in her player tray. Moses and I didn't pay much attention to her, Moses was hunting for double resource tiles whilst I was looking for prime realm estate to dwell in, but the Order realms which were my priority were located in terrible parts of town.

what Padawan Minigeek was aiming for soon became apparent, as she summoned her Units turn after turn after turn and soon had her whole army out on the board, which basically solves her resource problems without really needing to build an adventure card engine. I think Moses was trying to build an adventure card engine, it ended up in the form of a monstrous single card engine called Relentless Storm. I did try to snipe his warrior unit to prevent him from activating it but he polymorphed his warrior for his dragon, the sneaky fella. On my end, I fell into the trap of overdwelling, which resulted in me going into a kind of recession where I needed to rebuild my base of units back up to start gaining resources again. The realms came out in a rush towards the end because there was a rush for adventure cards by Moses and myself, and of course Padawan Minigeek, who was in it more to reveal new monsters in order to beat them with her massive army of "passive" Atlanteans.

As such the end came quickly and suddenly, perhaps a bit too suddenly for Moses, which makes me think that he would prefer to play with the Oracle realm added to the game. It did feel a bit short to me as well, mostly because Padawan Minigeek was aggressively dungeon hunting, and I have yet to experience building any sort of production engine with the adventure cards thus far. So, based on the dwellings and adventure cards I had, it seemed obvious that I would be the clear winner and I was.

I think it's nice to show a little bit of the Players in a boardgame timelapse video

So here's what I learned from this play of Dwellings of Eldervale, starting the preliminary "Play Better" section for this game:

TIP #1 – Double resource tiles are scarce and actually very strong

So you only get 4 double resource tokens per elemental colour

I mean the math speaks for itself, you are getting 100% more resources and if you slot this into an adventure card, you are quite literally compounding the gains you get every time your regroup your units. Powerful adventure cards cost a tonne of resources and every gain you can squeak out over your opponents will count. I suspect if the game had gone on longer, Moses would have been able to utilize Relentless Storm more than once and purchase more adventure cards, and things could have turned out differently at the end.

TIP #2 – Remember you can regroup early

Don't let your adventure cards collect cobwebs

It was on my last turn that I realized I was short of resources to build another dwelling OR one step too far away to build a dwelling on a cheaper costing realm. Either way I was stuck with a meaningless final turn. Working backwards I realized that if I had regrouped earlier instead of waiting to place all my units, I could have planned the final few turns much better. I guess when you get into the groove of the turns, you forget that there is no rule saying that you can't regroup your units without placing all of them out on to the board first.

TIP #3 – Keep an eye on everything

Sometimes it DOES feel like you need many eyeballs on the board

Just like any other heavy eurogame with all sorts of rule bending powers, it is easy to lose track of all the various abilities, spells, adventure cards that you have. Try to arrange your play area in such a way that you can easily glance through all the active abilities and spells you have that can impact a particularly moment in the game, use markers if necessary I suppose. For example, Moses never used his 'Drawn To The Light' ability and I actually forgot to claim the completion of a quest card which felt like a punch in the gut.

TIP #4 – DWELLINGS + ADVENTURE CARDS

It's all about real estate

So the name of the game is not just for show. At this point in time, I don't see any other strategy you could employ that would beat an opponent who is focusing on dwellings and adventure cards. Defeating monsters should be viewed as more akin to kicking a pebble out of your path whilst you're on your way to the market to make a killing in VPs, instead of imagining some grandiose monster hunt battle with black dragon scale armour as the spoils. I guess there is a possibility of dominating a particularly battle crazed monster and whooping anyone who dares to place a unit on the board but I have thankfully not come across this scenario yet.

Results Of Game(s)

WINNER – Justin "Centaurs poop everywhere" (55 Points)
2nd – Moses "CATS RIDING BEETLES?!?!?!" (49 Points)
3rd – Padawan Minigeek "Monster, monster, come out, come out wherever you are" (29 Points)

Your winna!

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Until next time, keep calm and play better!