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.

Read the rest of this entry →