Earlier in the week I had an epiphany whilst walking upstairs!

“Why if I’d rather play Dune Imperium every time when given a choice over Lost Ruins of Arnak should I keep Lost Ruins in my collection?”

I even shared this insight on Instagram (which then pumped it out to the other “big” two social media platforms).

Now don’t get me wrong, I really like Lost Ruins. It’s just I like Imperium more. I’ll still happily play Lost Ruins.

This is Inis all over again for me. I enjoyed Inis. But there were three games in my collection that I’d rather play over it if given a choice. So I sold it on.

Was this the time to do the same with Lost Ruins?

Naturally I got some blow back from those that preferred Lost Ruins over Imperium. But their opinion on the matter was undermined considerably by the fact they liked “not a game” Barenpark.

But it was Diego’s reply that sealed Lost Ruins fate in my collection. All he said was if I did decide to sell it he was interested.

So we chatted at work about the game. I came up with an asking price I thought was fair for the base game and expansion that I was selling to a friend. I don’t like ripping friends off. Diego agreed with the price, and a deal was struck.

That little bit of business was concluded at last nights fortnightly meet up. Where goods were exchanged for cash.

We split into three tables. Jonathan leading one of them with Pandemic. And Diego had the other with Potion Explosion (a game I’d like to try).

The game I was playing and with who was decided earlier in the week on our discord server.

Dune Imperium with the newly released first expansion The Rise of Ix was our main game of the evening.

We played with three of the new leaders (you can see who played which below).

Wow! I loved Dune Imperium before. But this expansion. Wow!

First off more intrigue cards, more leaders, more conflict cards, more Imperium cards, and for solo/2 players more House Hagal cards. More variety on that side is so so welcome with any expansion. Plus we definitely got to see some of the new cards during the game.

I liked my leader Tessia Vernius. To make use of her ability I really did have to progress on all the influence tracks.

An early tech tile had an end game scoring where I could get a victory point if I had at least 3 influence on all four influence tracks. So I leant heavily into progressing up the influence tracks. That victory point might be the difference between winning and losing. Scores are so tight in this game.

By leaning so heavily into the influence tracks I managed to get 3 out of the 4 faction alliances. Taking into account the earlier victory points for getting 2 influence on a track, 7 points of my final score came from the influence tracks.

Below you can see the 9th rounds conflict card that gave me the final 2 victory points needed to trigger the end of the game. If Julie hadn’t accidentally blocked me with her final action I would have had enough spice to get another victory point. But that’s being greedy.

I do feel that these new leaders you have to lean heavily into their abilities. For example I don’t think Julie was aggressive enough and winning enough combats. She was the first to get a dreadnought but didn’t get the second. I think only one of her victory points was from combat!

I love the new interstellar shipping spot. What a great addition. Plus it makes getting Solari much much harder by removing the sell spice action. So getting the third agent/swordsman is much more of an effort to do. Still necessary but harder. Plus to get the more powerful action spot you need 2 influence with the spacing guild. Making the influence track more important.

I like the tech tiles. I ended up with 3 in the end. One early one as I said above synergised really well with my leader.

Dreadnoughts very cool. I like what they bring to the table for combat. Probably the lesser of the three new changes to the game. But still pretty good.

Our game made it 9 rounds before I grabbed victory and control of Arrakis.

I really like what Rise of Ix brings to Dune Imperium. Can’t wait to play it again. I’d love to try the new Epic game variant in the rulebook. Plus using the official Direwolf app there are two further variants! to try.

After my glorious victory Diego’s table and ours joined together to play Perudo.

It was fun to get this to the table again. It was “too noisy” for our previous hosts. No such restriction here.

In the end it came down to a head to head showdown between Diego and myself. My two dice to his one. Then it was one a piece. But for once I was able to pull off a win. Historically if memory doesn’t fail me, more often than not I’ve lost more than I’ve won in these stand offs.

Back to back wins! It truly was a good evenings gaming for me. So I called it a day while I was ahead! Plus I’d told mum I’d be back by about 9:30pm.

No photos from Jonathan, however we do have a new photographic correspondent from last night and now proud owner of Lost Ruins of Arnak, Diego!