I hadn’t played Dwellings of Eldervale before this one landed on my table, so I came at it without the direct comparison everyone else in my group kept making, and I think that actually helped. what I got was a dense, satisfying stack of systems, worker placement for resources, tactics cards for combat and diplomacy, faction powers that genuinely change how a given game plays out, all of it building toward an endgame scoring push that felt earned rather than arbitrary.

the commerce track needs a caution label, though. I watched a player max out the level two vault in one game and pull something close to seventy points purely from banked resources, and it swung the final scores so hard that the rest of us felt like we’d been playing a different, smaller game the whole time. that’s the kind of scoring imbalance that doesn’t ruin a single session but starts to nag at you once you notice it happening more than once.

the insert is a genuine sore spot. I’ve seen it called super awkward, actively making setup harder rather than easier, and I agree completely, I ended up bagging components myself rather than fighting the molded tray every session. that’s a real cost on a game this component heavy, setup and teardown were already going to take real time and a bad insert just taxes it further.

turn pacing varies more than I expected too, some turns resolve in seconds, place a ship, grab a moon, and others cascade into ten minute chains of upgrades and battles. I didn’t mind this once I knew to expect it, but a new player at the table can find the quiet turns feel like a “wasted” go compared to the big ones.

four stars. it’s more serious and more strategic than its predecessor at the cost of some of that game’s looseness, and if you like your euro with real teeth in the combat, this delivers.