Cities Untold: Elven Tradingpost - Rumor Mill

It'll come out when we hit $3m, but here's what we know now.

We got some information on the Elven Tradingpost District at the $3m mark. Not specific details but a few pictures were released today. Since it’s new I feel like I want to discuss it ahead of time.

First off the new pieces, which will be part of an Elven Facades pack at the $3m Stretch Goal point, include two facades and one biscuit insert. I’m actually not sure if the biscuit insert is limited to biscuits as it may be able to use paired pegs as it is shown vertically on a corner post in the build. These are pretty cool looking pieces but they do feel pretty blocky. I’d assume this is necessary in order to have them not just fall apart.

Interestingly, I’m not a huge fan of the paint decision on these as I feel like they would be more impressive in Gold, Silver, or Bronze and the style pushes more heavily in a high elf style than a wood elf style. If I pick these up there’s a good chance I would hold off on exactly how to paint them until high town. I also think these won’t look very good on fieldstone or ashlar buildings as they are currently designed.

The overall build seems to be some kind of open air combination of a Lumberbaron Lodge and the Downtown Dockside. It sits on what looks like a single battleboard with a single set of seawalls but comes with three terrain trays and a docks set, widows walk, and possibly a balcony set as well (or just a bunch of extra stairs). This makes the only district that has all three of these sets which are really shining starsof what in this KS. Beyond that it’s a bunch of rustic wood including using a wood floor as a dock.

I can’t tell everything that is going on from the picture but it looks like a wizard’s hat is being used on a bay window in the fron tthere. This also has a pretty limited overall amount of roofing for the size of the build and makes more use of wood floors as roofs. Similar to my concerns about lumberbaron’s lodge, this feels like a real beast to use on the table if combat goes both inside and outside and is all happening at once. This isn’t really avoidable for big single building builds but it is worth considering. The other concern I have here is the ability to break this into smaller buildings is pretty limited by a low number of roofs. It looks like this only has one full roof set and possibly a poet’s nook with roof.

What I like about this build is that it gives you a mix of plenty of the new rustic wood with the seawalls and scaffolding to do more with. But I can’t consider this more impressive than the Downtown Dockside. Personally I’m more drawn to this than the Lumberbarron’s lodge but that’s probably a personal preference towards the playable outside area, extensive scaffolding, and inclusion of the seawalls set. Pretty much everything in this build that isn’t on the elevated platform is something I’m already interested in buying.

If you do pick this up I’d consider grabbing a significant number of more roofs to make smaller buildings on your table. There’s probably a good six to eight floors here and you only have roofs for two.

I’ll be publishing my full district rankings after this is released tomorrow but right now I’d put it at number three, better than Lumberbarons (although they’re very close in ranking) but worse than Inn to the Pit. If you want to know what comes in first, you’ll have to wait until it my rankings are released.