Old Chestnut Review: Dune Imperium Uprising

The game I am going to review today is not necessarily a lost classic. It's a relatively recent manufactured boardgame. The original incarnation came out in 2020, entitled Dune: Imperium. It was riding the wave of the coming two-part big screen depiction of Frank Herbert's classic science fiction masterpiece novel, Dune.

I suppose for full disclosure, I do have a minor theme bias on this game. I do love the original Dune novels. I discovered them in college. The first four are phenomenal. Frank Herbert for the last two, unfortunately, began cranking them out for the money. The last two are mediocre, and not nearly the philosophical masterpieces that the first four are. God Emperor of Dune is truly one of the great politically mind bending science fiction masterpieces of all time. Frank Herbert died before finishing the 7th novel, which was supposed to end the series. 

 As a side note, his son, along with Kevin J. Anderson, took up the Dune mantle, and wrote several prequel trilogies based on his father's work. The first trilogy, the House trilogy, takes place in the few years leading up to the main Dune novel and fallows three of the major houses. Those are pretty good. They do give a lot of political backstory to the Dune novel. After that, he and Anderson wrote another trilogy that took place 1000 years before Dune in what was called the Butlerian Jihad. It was basically a war against the thinking machines who were enslaving the human race. It's by far the best of Brian Anderson's Dune prequels. He wrote some other ones over the years, including a two part Dune 7 that were not particularly good. His stuff after Dune 7 was all drabble.

So, being well versed in the entire Dune series, I put off buying Dune: Imperium for a long time. Games based on excellent novels are almost always a disappointment. But, someone gifted me Dune: Imperium Uprising for Christmas, so I finally had a reason to play it. 

Now, Dune: Imperium and Dune: Imperium Uprising are basically the same game. Uprising came out in 2023 and is basically a redo of the original game with a few new mechanics and some new artwork based on the movie. If really only need to buy one, unless you are a true Superfan and want both. Both are excellent games. Regular Imperium is a little less strategic, but still a very good game. Before I get into the differences, let me go over the basic description of both games.

Imperium is a straight up worker placement game. It runs over up to ten rounds. Ideally, it's played with 3 or 4 players, but there is a solo mode with an AI bot for two characters. The AI isn't bad, but if you are playing solo, it's almost better to play three handed, but that's just my opinion. Basically, you choose to be one of the leaders of one of the great houses to control Dune and the space the spice. To win, one of the players has to score ten victory points. In Uprising, there are several ways a few more victory points can be scored once the 10 point endgame is triggered, so if you play your cards right, you can actually pass the player who hits 10 and squeak out a victory. In the original Imperium, that's much harder to do, as whomever hits 10 victory points first is pretty much guaranteed a win. Each leader has a strength and a weakness, which adds some flavor to the strategy. 

There are several ways to score victory points. You can either make alliances with some of the factions. 
There is also a unique conflict battle card turned every round. At the end of every round, if you have deployed the most troops, you win various prizes, some of which are a victory point or two. You are also drafting cards, and sometimes various cards allow you to gain a victory point on the sly. 

Upon first playing, it would not seem to be too many different boxes that you can move workers to, so it would not seem that complex, but the game is much more strategic than it appears. Looks can be deceiving. If you add one of the expansions like Rise of Ix or Bloodlines, it adds a whole other level of complexity as well. 

The big difference between Uprising and original Imperium is the addition of two different mechanics: Sandworms and Spies. Oddly, there is no real mention of the sandwords in the original game. Uprising allows for the training and use of sandworms in the final round battles, which is a major upgrade to the original game. If you can bring a sandworm into battle and win the round, you double the rewards on the rounds battle card. The sandworms in themselves is the reason I would recommend Uprising over regular Imperium. 

Now, having said that, there is a second mechanic added to Uprising. Spies is this bizarre mechanic that I don't particularly care for. Players can place spies on observation posts to gain strategic advantages, such as sending agents to connected spaces or drawing cards when recalling spies. It's sort of an odd mechanic that adds another layer. You either like spies or you don't, but if you are playing solo, you can just choose to not play the spies as house rules like original Imperium. I think the Sandworms outweigh the quirky Spies mechanic addition.

I have to admit the first few play throughts of Uprising did not particularly enthuse me, but as I learned to subtle strategies, it really grew on me as a game. It is certainly a worker placement game. It that mechanic does not enthuse you, you will probably not care for the game. There is no dice chucking like a dungeon crawler. It's more like a political worker placement game of chess than a boss battler. But, if that makes you interested, I think it's actually a pretty good capture of the Dune political chess match that often went into the novels. 

It's a fun game. I would give it 3.5 out of 5 Sandworms. I can see if going up to a 4 if I can add the expansions. Rise of Ix is really good. I have yet to try Immortality or Bloodlines yet.