The Dwarf is the card players most often think is broken or bugged. It is neither. It follows one rule that the card text only half explains.
What the card does
A Dwarf is a Rainbow melee troop: 9 units a level, 18 HP and 3 attack each at level 1, slow on its feet. Every year it moves to an adjacent plot by itself. If the plot it moves onto is locked, it gains +50% to all stats and the plot becomes yours.
Those are two different things on one card. The move happens every year no matter what. The bonus happens only on a locked plot. A Dwarf walking between plots you already own is an ordinary weak troop that will not sit still.
Being a Rainbow card, it is in no king's own deck, so no run can count on drawing one. Treat it as a bonus to a plan that already works, and decide where it will walk before you place it.
Why the bonus does not trigger
The bonus needs the Dwarf to step onto a plot that is still locked. Boxing it in so it cannot move gives nothing. Letting it wander across open plots gives nothing. Players who fence a Dwarf in and wait for it to grow are waiting for something that will never happen.
Each step onto a locked plot is +50%, and they multiply. Two locked plots is 2.25 times the starting stats, four is about 5 times. The limit is how many locked plots there are for it to reach, so the bonus is worth the most on a kingdom that has not expanded yet.
This also makes every unlock a choice. A plot you open with 30 gold is a plot the Dwarf can no longer be paid for.
Steering a Dwarf
A Dwarf picks among the adjacent plots it can move to, so you steer it by taking choices away. Fill the open plots around it with cards and the only moves left are onto locked ground.
The cleanest setup starts it on an outer plot of the kingdom, with your own cards behind it and locked plots ahead. Then build behind it each year as it goes. It will walk the outside of the kingdom, opening a plot and taking +50% each time.
Do not put a Dwarf in the middle of an open kingdom. It has too many free plots to choose from there, and it will spend years walking between them for no gain.
Levelling it helps the walk pay more. Each level adds 9 units and x1.25 attack, and the +50% steps apply to whatever the plot has when it moves, so copies are best stacked before it sets off.
Dwarves and Camps
The stat bonus is the smaller half of the card. A Camp gives the plots beside it +2% to all stats whenever a card is placed on an empty plot, and a Dwarf arriving on a plot counts. That means a Dwarf fires every Camp in the kingdom once a year without a card being played.
A single Camp turns that into 2% a year for its neighbours, on top of whatever you play yourself. Several Camps around one strong plot, with a couple of Dwarves walking, is a steady yearly gain that costs nothing after setup. For this use the Dwarf does not need locked plots at all. It needs empty ones, so leave it room.
Level the Camp first if you have to choose. Put the Camps against the plot you are growing, and let the Dwarves walk somewhere else.
Dwarf or Migration
Migration moves a card you choose to an empty adjacent plot and gives it +10% damage and HP. It works only on unlocked plots, costs a card each time, and goes on your best plot.
A Dwarf moves only itself, for free, every year, and it is the one that can enter locked plots. As a King of Nomads the two fit together: Migration grows the Warlord, the Dwarf keeps the Camps firing in the years no Migration is drawn.
For any other king, a Dwarf is worth taking mainly when a Camp is already down or plots are still locked. Without either it is 9 slow units with 3 attack.
Mistakes to avoid
Trapping it. A Dwarf that cannot move is a plain melee unit, and a weak one.
Unlocking everything first. Exploration and the construction pit are good, but each plot they open is one +50% step gone. If a Dwarf is on the board, let it open the outer plots.
Buffing it like a carry. Swords, Shields and enchantments are better spent on the plot your build is about. The Dwarf's stats come from walking, and its value mostly comes from what its walking sets off.
Forgetting it moves. A Dwarf that walks away from a Farm or a Forest stops being fed by it, so do not build support around where it stands this year.
