Andromeda's Edge

Every single person who has played Dwellings of Eldervale is going to open their mouth about Andromeda’s Edge and say the same sentence, this is Dwellings in space, and yeah, fine, it basically is, same designer, same bones, workers that level up into ships, a tableau you’re building turn over turn, tracks you climb for a payout at the end. What’s different is the dial got turned up, more engine, more layers of upkeep, and I like that trade even when it costs me a longer first game than I wanted.

The box itself deserves its own paragraph. I’ve got the deluxe pledge, and I will say the table presence when this thing is fully set up is genuinely something, moons, modules, little ship minis scattered across a board that actually changes shape as the raiders eat into it. But the insert that’s supposed to organize all of it works against you, not for you, it makes the box bigger than it needs to be and somehow makes teardown slower than a game with half this many components should ever take. My first game, rules read included, ran close to seven hours, and unboxing alone ate a chunk of an evening before a single ship moved.

The regrouping mechanic is the actual heart of it for me, you get an action out of every worker you’ve got instead of one at a time, and that single choice makes the whole thing feel less punishing than Dwellings when the dice turn on you. Combat lets you lose and still walk away with a card and some resources, which takes the sting out of a bad roll in a way a lot of area control games never bother to. Snacks are fine at the table here too, nothing you’re handling that a greasy hand ruins, which matters more than it sounds once a session runs past the two hour mark.

If you already own Dwellings, this isn’t a replacement, it’s the heavier sibling that asks more of you and mostly pays it back.