One of the most epic grand series of books in Science fiction is Frank Herbert’s Dune. Dire Wolf Digital has created a new board game to coincide with the latest version of the story to come to the big screen. While the movie was sadly delayed, the game arrived in time for the holidays!
Dune Imperium is a 1-4 player hybrid deckbuilding and worker placement board game designed by the team who brought us Clank! (another hybrid deckbuilding game.)
Players take on the role of one of the major houses in the Imperium vying for control over the planet Dune or Arrakis. For here on Arrakis is the most powerful commodity in all the universe, the spice melange. For it is with the spice, the spacing guild uses its navigators to fold space, making space travel almost instant. It is said that who controls the spice, controls the universe.
To start, place the board and have each player choose a house they wish to control. Give each player their control cubes, agents, their starting basic cards, and one water token. Next set the Solari, spice, and water tokens aside. Shuffle the non-starting cards and take the top 5 to create the market row. Also take the fold space, Arrakis agents, and The spice must flow reserve cards and set them out.
Each player takes two of their agents and sets their third aside to be their swordmaster. Place the mentat marker on their worker space. Each player takes one of their cubes and places them at the zero space for each factions advancement track. In addition, each player takes 3 cubes and places them in a garrison on the board and their combat tracker in the zero space.
Create the conflict deck using the instructions in the rulebook and shuffle the intrigue cards and place them in a face-down pile.
Place the allegiance counter for each faction in their assigned space on the board. Assign a first player and the game begins.
In Dune Imperium, players are using their agents to take actions to earn victory points (VP) The first player to 10 VP is the winner. Players earn VP by building allegiance to the various factions, winning combats, and increasing their influence and control over the planet. Dune Imperium is played in a series of rounds; a round starts with the active player drawing 5 cards and revealing the conflict for that round.
The conflict offers rewards for both the first and second place winners.
Each card has icons to the various locations on the board or factions. There are 2 types of turns a player may take, an action turn or a reveal turn.
To take an action turn, a player chooses a card from their hand and uses it to send one of their workers to a location on the board. Some locations are free, while some have a cost. A player may only choose a location where they can pay the cost. Simply pay the cost, if any, place an agent at the location, and gain the benefit. Dune Imperium has several locations and costs, and the game comes with a chart detailing each one.
The other type of turn is the Reveal turn. If a player has no more agents to place or does not want to, they take their remaining cards and gain the benefit from the bottom portion; usually, influence to buy cards or swords to increase their combat strength in the conflict.
After all of the players have taken a reveal turn, the conflict begins. Each player who has assigned soldiers to the conflict may play intrigue cards that may boost their combat strength in player order. After all, participants have passed playing any intrigue cards, the player who has the highest strength wins the top reward and the next player the second, and so on. There are detailed rules for rewards with two or less players. All soldiers who participated in the conflict are removed and returned to the players’ general supply and all combat markers are set to zero. The next portion is the maker phase, where each location that an agent was not sent to in the desert, gains 1 spice token. Finally, pass the first player marker and begin a new round. The game ends when either a player reaches 10 VP or the conflict deck is depleted.
As stated earlier, this is a new game for the Dune universe and is not part of the revised version of the original Avalon Hill game.
Dune Imperium contains all of the backstabbing and intrigue that you would expect from this genre. It is full of plots and opportunities for betrayal in a player’s attempt to control the planet, and the spice it provides. One can use brutality and betrayal or can choose honor to win the favor of the natives of this harsh and unforgiving world. All the elements of the world of Dune are here; the mysterious and secretive Bene Gesserit, the spice using space guild, the high council of houses, and the Emperor Shaddam IV and house Corrino with his deadly army of Sardukar.
The game plays fast, and using cards to determine where agents are placed creates shorter turns and little lag time between players. One thing also, even though it has a deckbuilding, with quick turns and a maximum of 10 rounds, there is very little time to focus on deckbuilding in the game. Players usually acquire 1 card per round unless they use a reveal turn and use most of their hand for influence to acquire one expensive card.
I love the dual use of cards, it opens lots of decision making on how to maximize your hand. Agent placement is controlled by cards as well as influence to buy more cards.
I also like how fast the combat is, and the uncertainty of who will win by the use of intrigue cards. Also, while combat is a big part of gaining VP, there are some conflicts early on that a player may choose to not engage in and use the round to build their garrison for a bigger prize later in the game.
As a fan of the IP, I believe, overall, that Dune Imperium is a well-designed game. The theme of the original material is incorporated well into the gameplay, I think that 10 rounds, while quick, is good for a game of this type. And finally, the combination of card play and worker placement is an amazing mechanism that works very well.
I think it is a guaranteed win for gamers who are fans of the source material, and worthy of your consideration.
Written by Ed Carter
