Dwar7s: The Lost Tribes - Review
Player Age: 13+
Player Count: 1 - 4 Players
Time to Play: 45 - 60 Minutes
Game Artist & Designer: Luís Brueh
Year Published: 2022
Disclaimer: A review copy for the game was provided by the publisher.
Introductions:
Dwar7s: The Lost Tribes is a unique expansion as it contains expansion material for all three released Dwar7s games. This comes in the form of three asymmetrical tribes. As I only have Dwar7s Winter, I will be focusing this review on the expansion for Dwar7s Winter.
Tribes:
There are three tribes that create asymmetrical characters for all released Draw7s games. In Dwar7s Winter, they add unique starting cards and legendary class characters that can be created by playing this card and spending two gold, swapping out any one generic character for an improved one.
Ogres:
The ogres are great at filling the board with other ogres. These ogres are then discarded to provide three resources of one type at a time. Each of the instruments contain one starting card that allows you to spawn on a certain location type, and a way to sacrifice one of your ogres from a location type to generate three resources.
The specific legendary classes for this tribe are the Ogre King, Alchemist, and Baby Dragon.
Ogre King:
The Ogre King is my favourite ogre. Firstly, he can be placed on a turn as a free action, allowing you to deploy four ogres every turn (three from the usual deploy action). He also has a second trick up his sleeve where he can produce a new disaster and push a monster back by one zone. This is great if you are controlling disasters well but are getting swarmed by the monsters.
Alchemist:
The Alchemist is great for a player that has good resource production. Any time you produce resources in a location the Alchemist is in, whether it is the alchemist producing or an ogre, any of those resources can be changed to a different resource type, including gold.
Baby Dragon:
A baby dragon has the ability to ignore monster attacks when in the same location as a monster.
Half-Blood:
The Half-Blood tribe is the perfect tribe for keeping monsters at bay. They have the ability for any half-blood to be able to attack the monsters when in an adjacent location rather than the same one. This will still cause them to be discarded after attacking. Their starting cards allow them to generate gold easily to allow for easier upgrading to the legendary classes.
The Baby Dragon is inclued as a legendary class in this tribe and there are two new legendary classes; the Half-Blood King and the Mighty Troll.
Half-Blood King:
Like the Ogre king, this troop can be placed on the board for free. Their secondary action will allow their strength to be increased by 1 per each half-blood in their location and adjacent location. He, alone, can defeat the monster if you have your troops spread out effectively. The one negative is that this effect is only active on your turn, so the half-blood King is not so useful helping others.
Mighty Troll:
The Mighty Troll allows the player to spend two gold to increase its strength by one when tackling monsters and encounters. As encounters only cost two troops to defeat, this means the Mighty Troll will have enough strength for any encounter as long as you have the necessary gold.
Crystal Dwarves:
These dwarves have great resource production with two cards focused on producing the three resources (ignoring money).
The other focus they have is different legendary classes. They can upgrade to the alchemist and baby dragon, as well as the restless king, rescuer, and peace keeper.
Restless King:
Unlike the other kings, he cannot be played for free each turn. Instead, he doesn't get discarded upon resolving disasters and monsters. Once he is on the board, he stays there.
Rescuer and Peace Keeper:
The rescuer and peace keeper are very similar and they both focus on producing. The rescuer can produce on locations that contain disasters and the peace keeper does the same in locations with monsters.
Breach Disasters:
Unlike the base game, these new disasters affect the walls themselves and also come with some differences which makes them more advanced to defeat. When a monster spawns on the location affected by this disaster they immediately move off and get closer to the castle. Additionally, when defeating the disaster an ability will activate that will either spawn an extra monster, remove one of your cards from the game, or advance a monster closer to the castle. Lastly, as you cannot move onto the walls, the disasters are resolved from adjacent locations.
Fortified Defenses:
A new mechanism has been added by using components from Dwar7s Spring. If a player has two troops adjacent to a wall they can remove them (back to the player board) as a free action to create a watchtower or citadel. The watchtower will add one troop to any battle in the location adjacent to it. The citadel will reduce a monster or disaster cost by two resources. Each wall section can only contain one building, no matter the colour.
Final Thoughts:
- The fortified defences are great, especially if you have a turn that doesn't require or allow you to remove a monster or disaster.
- Unique concept on sharing components to expand multiple games.
- As it builds off previously expanded content, some of the expansion content I couldn't use without other expansion content.
This is an easy addition to the base game of Dwar7s Winter. The tribes add asymmetric starts to each player, and since you only add a maximum of seven cards to your deck per game, the asymmetrical characters greatly increase variability. The breach disasters are a great addition if you want the game to be more challenging as they speed up the enemy onslaught, as well as produce extra challenges when resolving them. Also, the fortified defences gives the players a wider array of options at their disposal when they choose to equip the walls, making monsters or disasters easier, which is especially great if you have multiple ways of producing troops. Dwar7s: Lost Tribes is an easy addition for anyone who is a fan of the base game, and I'm sure is even better for the players with a large Dwar7s collection.
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