Another Friday write off.

However thanks to Dave Saturday was saved.

We met up at the community centre to play Dune Imperium Uprising.

Yes it was a two player game. So we used the Dire Wolf app to act as the second player. It’s a quicker and easier to run version of the House Hagal deck. And also why there are no photos in this post.

Naturally we played with the optional CHOAM module. I can’t see why you wouldn’t. It adds no overhead to the game play. Just a little to the setup. Which is shuffling the contract tiles, and adding four cards to the Imperium deck.

We also carried over the house atomics token as a house rule.

Usually I like to make a note of our leaders and share them here. But I forgot to do that yesterday.

Our rival that the House Hagal deck was driving was Rabban Harkonnen. He was one of the recommended streamlined leaders. Which means in a two player game the players have less to do running the rival. Something I thought was ideal for our first play.

This was only the second time I’ve played a two player game of Dune Imperium. It’s fine with the House Hagal “third player”. But I’d much prefer real players.

Also during setup each player gets a random objective card (a new addition to the game which I’ll talk about later).

Playing Uprising had a feeling of both being familiar and unfamiliar at the same time.

The flow of the game, of a turn, were the familiar bits. That hasn’t changed at all.

The game board had that dual feeling of looking familiar but not. The board spaces have had a major overhaul. Water is even harder to get. There are more spaces on the board that require two influence in a particular faction before they can be used. Plus the cost of using one or two of the spaces has gone up or been added. Naturally the benefits have been adjusted/tweaked on some, or even changed totally to support some of the additions to the game. We also have

The mentat has gone. It has been replaced by being able to recall an agent from one of your other spaces on the board.

Other board changes I like are the space for buying the swordsman (aka third agent) once a player has bought a swordsman it then becomes slightly cheaper for all the other players. I think of this as a little catch up mechanism. They also tweaked the high council space. Once you have claimed your seat at the table you can now revisit the space on subsequent turns and get a benefit instead (I forget what it is exactly). I like this as it’s turned a space that once visited is then dead on the board to one that can be useful later on.

I like the addition of the makers/worms, and the shield wall. Having a worm (in your forces) in a combat that you win gains you double benefits. I also like that the shield wall negates their use in combat until it has been destroyed.

I also felt it was harder to gain influence with the various factions because there were less cards with their icons on. Those cards were a premium and ones I tried to but to increase my chances of using those spaces.

The spies are an interesting new addition. They also seem very powerful allowing you to use a space regardless of if an opponents agent is on it. Or you can draw a card.

Although I didn’t get or complete any CHOAM contracts (Dave did) which cost me a victory point at the end for an end game scoring on an intrigue card. I did like their addition.

The objectives and completing them by matching symbols on combat cards you win gains you a victory point is a nice new source of rare victory points. Well the first time. But after that pairs of combat cards with matching symbols gain you a victory point. So combat becomes a way to gain additional victory points, and a way to deny opponents. Obviously knowing that you need to win a combat to deny an opponent that cards symbol adds new tension to combat.

Overall I loved the new bits that Uprising adds to the game.

I want to play the game a few more times before adding in the expansions or using some of the base game cards. That’s a nice thing about Uprising that the expansions can be used with it.

Sadly Dave beat me by a point in the end.

It looks like my only gaming for December was this session with Dave. A big thank you to Dave.