Dune: Imperium

What makes this game its own thing

This is not a deck-builder and a worker placement game bolted together. To send an Agent you must play a card, and the icons on that card decide which spaces it can reach. So «which cards you buy» is the same question as «where you can go».

• You start with 2 Agents and can buy a third at the Swordmaster space.
• Even when someone hits 10 victory points, the round is played out in full before the game ends. The last Conflict is always live.
• The Conflict Deck holds 10 cards, so the game runs at most 10 rounds.

Components

Setup

1. 1Lay out the board. Put the Mentat on its space and the 4 Alliance tokens on the marked areas of the Faction Influence tracks.
2. 2Sort the Conflict cards by their backs and stack them face down: 4 Conflict III at the bottom, 5 Conflict II above them, 1 Conflict I on top. Return the unused Conflict cards to the box without looking at them.
3. 3Shuffle the Intrigue Deck and the Imperium Deck, then deal 5 cards face up to form the Imperium Row. Put the Reserve cards beside it in three stacks.
4. 4Each player takes a Leader and shuffles their 10-card starting deck.
5. 5Each player puts 2 Agents on their Leader and the third (the Swordmaster) next to the board.
6. 6Put your Score marker on the Score track — the 1 space in a 4-player game, the 0 space otherwise. Put your Combat marker on 0 of the Combat track.
7. 7Put 4 cubes on the bottom space of each of the four Influence tracks. Of the remaining 12 cubes, 3 go into your garrison and 9 stay in your supply.
8. 8Each player takes 1 water. Solari, spice, and the remaining water form the bank. Determine a first player at random.

The five phases of a round

Agent turn — the card decides the space

1. 1Play one card from your hand face up in front of you.
2. 2Choose one Agent icon on that card and send an Agent to an unoccupied space whose upper-left icon matches.
3. 3Pay any cost or meet any requirement of the space first. If you cannot pay, you cannot go there.
4. 4Resolve the space's effects and the card's Agent box in any order. If it is a Faction space, also advance your cube one space on that Influence track.

The 22 board spaces

Troops — three places they can be

A troop cube moves between your supply, your garrison, and the Conflict. Where it sits changes your strength completely, so mixing these three up breaks the rules wholesale.

• Each troop in the Conflict is worth 2 strength. Troops in your garrison or supply count for nothing.
• Losing a troop sends it to your supply. Retreating moves it from the Conflict to your garrison. They are not the same thing.
• However many troops you recruit at a non-Combat space (Rally Troops, Conspire and the like), none of them can be deployed that turn.
• When a Conflict card is revealed for a space you control, the defensive bonus lets you deploy one troop from your supply straight into the Conflict.

Reveal turn — persuasion and strength

1. 1Reveal Cards — put every card left in your hand face up in front of you, kept separate from the cards you played on Agent turns.
2. 2Resolve Reveal Effects — only the Reveal boxes of the cards you just revealed. The Reveal boxes of cards played earlier are lost.
3. 3Set Strength — total your troops in the Conflict and your swords, then move your Combat marker.
4. 4Clean Up — put every card in front of you into your discard pile.

• Besides the 5 cards in the Row, the Reserve cards «Arrakis Liaison» and «The Spice Must Flow» can also be bought with persuasion.
• «Foldspace» cards cannot be bought — they come only from the board space of the same name.
• Acquired cards go to your discard pile, so you cannot use them this round. They join your deck when you reshuffle.
• Some cards carry an Acquire effect. It fires once, at the moment you buy the card, and never again when you later play it.

The Combat phase — rewards and ties

First comes the chance to play Combat Intrigue cards, starting with the First Player and going clockwise among those with at least one troop in the Conflict. Passing once does not lock you out, and Combat is only resolved once everyone passes consecutively.

• Once rewards are handed out, all troops go from the Conflict back to their owners' supplies and every Combat marker resets to 0.
• A Conflict card such as «Siege of Arrakeen» awards control: put your Control marker on the flag below that space, replacing any opponent's marker there.
• A control bonus pays out whenever anyone sends an Agent there, yourself included. Arrakeen and Carthag give 1 Solari, Imperial Basin gives 1 spice.

Faction Influence and Alliances

The Emperor, the Spacing Guild, the Bene Gesserit, and the Fremen each have an Influence track. Sending an Agent to one of that Faction's spaces gains 1 Influence, and card effects move you up (and sometimes down) as well.

• «Gain 2 Influence» means 2 with one Faction. You cannot split it across two Factions.
• Sietch Tabr is the only space with an Influence requirement: 2 or more with the Fremen.
• If you fall below 4 and climb back, you can earn that space's bonus again. Unusual, but the rules allow it.

Intrigue cards

Intrigue cards never join your deck. You keep them face down and play them when you choose — you may look at your own at any time, and they are revealed only as you play them. That is why no Conflict is settled until it is over.

• They come mainly from three spaces — Carthag, Conspire, and Secrets — and from cards showing the Intrigue icon.
• «Secrets» and the Steal Intrigue effect take one random card from each opponent holding 4 or more Intrigue cards. Hoarding makes you a target.
• A played Intrigue card goes face up to the discard pile beside the Intrigue Deck.

Makers and Recall

Makers is the phase where spice piles up in the desert. Check the three spaces with a Maker icon — The Great Flat, Hagga Basin, and Imperial Basin — and put 1 spice from the bank on each one that has no Agent. It stacks on top of whatever accumulated in earlier rounds.

Recall is where you check for the end of the game. If it has not ended, return the Mentat to its space, recall your Agents to your Leader, pass the First Player marker clockwise, and start a new round.

Where victory points come from

Ending the game

1. 1In phase 5, Recall, the game ends if anyone is at 10 or more victory points or the Conflict Deck is empty.
2. 2Everyone may play and resolve their Endgame Intrigue cards.
3. 3Whoever has the most victory points wins.
4. 4Ties are broken by spice, then Solari, then water, then garrisoned troops.

Strategy that falls straight out of the rules

• Buy the Swordmaster (8 Solari) early. You get the third Agent the same round you buy it, so its value is the number of rounds left.
• High Council (5 Solari) pays 2 persuasion every round for the rest of the game. Its value is highest when many rounds remain.
• The 4 Conflict III cards are the last 4 rounds and carry the biggest rewards. Saving troops and Intrigue cards for them usually pays.
• Set your strength as late as you can. Delaying your Reveal turn lets you see opponents' Combat markers before deciding how many troops to commit.
• A cheap second place often beats an expensive first. Troops return to your supply after Combat and must be recruited all over again.
• Water is the bottleneck on spice harvesting. The Fremen side of the board (Stillsuits, Sietch Tabr, Heighliner) is how you get it.
• The Bene Gesserit give you trashing. Cutting weak starting cards makes your strong cards come around more often.
• Every card you buy thickens your deck and makes the icon you need harder to draw. «What can I buy?» matters as much as «where can I no longer go?».

Solo and two-player — House Hagal

The 31 House Hagal cards drive automated opponents, called Rivals. A Rival takes Agent turns but never Reveal turns, and it ignores a space's normal costs and effects entirely — it gets only what the revealed House Hagal card shows.

• Whenever a Rival goes to a Combat space it deploys up to 2 troops from its garrison, even if the card recruited none.
• In the Combat phase, reveal one House Hagal card per Rival and advance its Combat marker by the number of swords at the bottom.
• For two players, remove the three Arrakeen cards marked «1P»; for solo, remove every card marked «2P» (the Reshuffle card and three Arrakeen cards).
• Solo difficulty comes in three levels — Mercenary, Sardaukar, and Mentat — changing Rival starting troops, when their Swordmasters appear, and the cost of the Mentat space (2 → 5 Solari).

Expansions and the standalone

Rules people get wrong

History and editions

Deck-building and worker placement had been combined before. What people keep citing here is that a hand of five cards limits where you can go and what you can buy at the same time. Play a card and you get the space, but you give up the persuasion printed on it — and that single choice repeats five times a round.