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Observe, Feyd-Rautha
Arrakis. Dune. Desert planet. Warner Bros. property.
It’s not every day that a game I genuinely love hits it big in this hobby. I’ve been pleased to watch Paul Dennen’s Dune: Imperium thrive, earning two expansions in Rise of Ix and Immortality. That said, I’ve been as perplexed as anybody at the latest offering. Dune: Imperium — Uprising has a surfeit of subtitles and a questionable provenance, functioning neither as an expansion nor as a totally fresh start for the series. At a glance, it’s not all that far removed from the original game.
Dunc: Immorality
The foremost question about Dune: Imperium: Immorality is one of abundance. Does Imperium really need another expansion? It hasn’t even been a year since Paul Dennen gave Dune: Imperium its first big addition, Rise of Ix. At this rate we’ll soon be juggling expansions for the Honored Matres and Fish Speakers. Talk about power creeps.
Speaking of power creep, have you ever heard of the Tleilaxu?
Slam Dunc
Expansions always make for peculiar reviews. One of the realities of writing about lots of board games is that there’s precious little time to revisit anything. Even the most impressive titles often fall by the wayside. Paul Dennen’s Dune: Imperium proved an exception, reappearing on my table again and again thanks to its smart hybridization of deck-building and worker placement. Now it has a major expansion, Rise of Ix, along with the usual burning questions. What’s changed? Are there new avenues for a house aspirant to pursue greatness? Doth the spice flow?
I’ll say this much: the Dennen who designed Rise of Ix must have played this thing a thousand times, because he understands exactly what makes Dune: Imperium tick.
Arrakis—Dune—Deck-Builder.
Paul Dennen gets deck-building games. More importantly, he gets that deck-building is an under-leveraged mechanism. Wait, you might be saying, aren’t there one billion deck-building games? Yes. More deck-building games than there are grains of sand in the sea. But not all of them are slick hybrid titles like Clank!, which mixed deck-building with just enough beyond-the-deck considerations to make it worthwhile. While the rest of the hobby lags behind Martin Wallace’s multiple experiments in hybrid deck–building, Dennen has been doing one better by taking those lessons and turning them into games you’re actually likely to play.
Dune: Imperium is the best of his offerings yet. Although not necessarily because of the systems Dennen is mixing together.
SPACE-BIFF! 