The box makes this look more intimidating than it plays, big components, lots of art, and I went in expecting a heavier lift than what I actually got. Core loop is standard worker placement, but turning your workers into dwellings, which is the primary way you score, also permanently removes them from your available action pool, and that tension between building your engine and starving your own action economy is one of the sharper decision points I’ve hit in this genre lately.

Two player runs clean and quick once you know the icons, though I’ll echo what other owners have said about the Legendary edition specifically, gorgeous wooden resources and extra monsters, but the player boards double as storage lids for your components and take real wear over repeated plays, a design choice I appreciate in theory and wince at slightly in practice. Combat is the weakest link for me, dice driven skirmishes against monsters that can swing hard against careful planning, and on a bad roll night it genuinely undercuts a strategy that felt airtight two turns earlier.

What surprised me is how asymmetric the factions actually feel once you’ve played each one, this isn’t reskinned identical powers, each faction pulls the worker placement chassis in a different direction entirely. Setup and teardown take a real chunk of time given the sheer component count, sorting monster tokens and adventure cards back into their trays isn’t a two minute job, so this lands more as a dedicated game night pick than a spontaneous Tuesday one. For the right table willing to learn its asymmetry properly, this earns a returning spot in rotation, even with combat that occasionally undoes an otherwise clean plan.