Dune Imperium is my favourite game from 2020. Its mix of deck-building and worker placement spoke to my soul, and as a board game, it felt complete. It had everything I wanted and more. This is why I was worried about the introduction of this new expansion: Dune Imperium: Rise of Ix.
Direwolf must have felt my anxiety halfway across the world because they’ve released a design diary outlining the changes going into the expansion. Alongside the introduction of a new faction – the Ix – a mountain of other new changes.
Let’s see what’s changed.
The Dreadnought!
The Dreadnought is a new type of warrior counting as three soldiers, and more importantly, it cannot die. Throughout the game, you’ll be able to craft two of these bad boys.
When a Dreadnought is victorious in battle, it can take over a board space for the next round. There are no specifics around what “take over” means, but it sounds powerful enough to ruin someone’s day.
More importantly, Dreadnoughts give you permanence in The Conflict. Currently, once you put soldiers into The Conflict it’s bloody hard for you to get a force together for the next round. The Dreadnought is going to change this dynamic by allowing you a sizable force every round, and it’s going to be the primary weapon in the arms race for controlling The Conflict.
This looks to be a nice change, giving a boost to pure military strategies, and providing a counter to those blasted intrigue cards which allowed people surprise wins out of nowhere.
Rise of Ix introduces tech tiles
You can spend your spice to buy Tech Tiles. These stay in front of you throughout the game, granting powerful abilities. We’ll have to wait to see the full effect these abilities will have on the game, but this is the most concerning aspect of the expansion. Dune Imperium is already a highly volatile game, with its market deck and deck-building mechanics.
Although, it provides you with a good opportunity to spend your spice.
Of the Tech Tiles shown, some can generate victory points. Meaning these tiles will be another avenue for victory points. Opening up new strategies and increasing the pressure of the victory point race.
Move your freighter up and down the CHOAM Track
The last change is the CHOAM track and the introduction of freighters. This track replaces the current spice trading spaces with a more thematic trading track. Allowing you to move your freighter up like rungs on a ladder. However, you only get the benefit of the track when you remove your freighter. Giving you the rewards from your current rung, and all previous rungs.
The benefits include getting a large chunk of Solari and getting troops into the garrison. Both could be vital for how you expect to play out the current round thereby creating a lot of tough decisions between waiting for more bonuses or getting the benefits right now.
The subtler effect of this track is the removal of the best place to spend your spice. This will consequently make Solari harder to come by and free up your spice to spend on more lucrative things, like Tech Tiles.
Faith restored
This design diary was an exciting read, and I’m eager to get my hands on this expansion. All of the changes make sense, and it feels like they’re both shaking things up, but keeping it relatively the same. My main concern with all these new systems is whether there will be too much going on for you to keep track of. However, they’ve put in significant effort to ensure there will be the same number of worker placement spots on the board.
Otherwise, everything else looks great and this could make a fantastic game even more fantastic. For my money, it’s going to come down to the balancing of the Tech Tiles in determining whether this is a great expansion or a straight-up stinker.
What are your thoughts on the expansion so far? Is this too much change? Or are you excited about everything?
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