Last night saw the first monthly meet up since global stuff kicked off.
It was looking like the trend set by the fortnightly Friday sessions of being well attended was going to continue. However we ended up with half the numbers expected turning up. Life changes plans, and the assumption was it had indeed changed the plans of those unable to attend.
However it can not be said we did not give a socially suitable amount of time for them to arrive before starting to play Dune Imperium.
I know it’s hitting the table a lot at the moment. However Marcin (a new member) had wanted to try the game as it was on his list of games to get. And who am I to disappoint?
So after a run through of the rules, the battle for Arrakis commenced.
Once again I played Duke Leto. I like the powers of the character, that discount makes a big difference. It allowed me on round three to get the extra agent and the seat on the high council. Jonathan likes playing Paul.
In this game despite having the solari to get the extra agent and on the high council in the first round I didn’t get the cards to do either in the second round. So that round ended up being a setup round.
I was also pretty slow in getting started on the score track. However I made up for that and soon caught up.
I did manage to get some good extra card draw going during the game. So I was pleased with that.
In one of the stage 3 conflict rounds near the end I did play an intrigue card to help Jonathan win the conflict against Marcin, and get me third place. It didn’t matter at that point if Jonathan got two victory points. But it did if Marcin got them as he would have been a point away from victory.
Our game nearly had me winning in round 9 but I couldn’t scrape out that extra victory point to do so. Which meant for the majority of the last round there was a three way tie for first place until Marcin bought a Spice Must Flow Card in his reveal stage to get the winning point.
In that final round I managed to avoid Jonathan stealing a victory point from me, and failed to return the favour. Which felt good to deny him that. Would have been better to have flipped his plan on him and to have won. That would have been a sweet sweet victory. But sadly in this reality it never happened.
It was another fun evening of gaming. Looking forward to the next club night. And a big big thank you to our hosts for the evening The Luxe cinema.
Not quite sure what happened to those who mentioned that they would be attending. It certainly threw a spanner in the works for our starting time, meaning we had a fairly late finish. I just wish those that couldn’t make it, for whatever reason, would have given us a heads up, which would have saved us waiting for them to arrive.
I’m not a huge fan of Dune Imperium, although for a sci-fi game, it’s pretty good (love the worker placement aspect, but not as keen on the deckbuilding). As I get older, I find my taste in games gravitating towards family-style medium weight games, that are easy to get to the table, not much in the way of rules overheads, and have a quicker playtime. That said, my three games of DI have been quite enjoyable.
Just been reading the design dairies for the expansion. Wow! Is all I’m going to say. But glad I preordered it.
I would assume that the deckbuilding side of Lost Ruins is also a draw back for you.
Yes, same for Arnak. As you know, it is a mechanic that I do not really enjoy all that much. Arnak is better just for pure theme, although I do acknowledge the problems that you mentioned last night, which hopefully the expansion might fix.