Dune: Imperium Review - A SU&SD Dust-Up

there’s no zealot like a convert, :stuck_out_tongue:

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I’ve only ever played Dominion online when “games in a browser” first became a thing (it is weird it feels as if Dominion has to be older than 2008 but that’s how young it is). I played it so much I eventually stopped. That was before a lot of the expansions came out, since then I haven’t touched it except I recently played a couple of games online again to remind myself what it is like. I’d still play. It’s fine. But I am more of a tactics (as opposed to longterm strategy) person and so random markets that keep me on my toes are more my thing.

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“The wormiest spots on the dessert planet June.”

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Ah, random markets. They, like any other mechanic, serve a purpose. And they can be used or misused.

I think of games like Star Realms or Jaipur that deploy them excellently. The decks offer comparably less card variety, meaning cards are just variations on a theme. But also means the randomness of the market doesn’t lead to a volatile game state. In Star Realms (Colony Wars and Frontiers), you also have good ways to clear and move the market, to effectively increase the size of the offering on your turn and tweak it toward your liking. In Jaipur, the game is built around the limitation so it’s a feature and not a bug.

I’ve also seen it deployed poorly. Take Space Base, which I love, but you have 12 slots on your board, so at least 12 meaningfully different types of cards, but only six cards offered at any price point. There often just isn’t what you need, and there is no way to clear a stagnant market (enter house rules). Nations at lower player counts also has too small a market for the different types of cards in the game, mirroring Ava’s complaint that you sometimes just can’t do what you want to do.

But here’s what it does do: thrill. So a open market deckbuilder like Dominion is cerebral and strategic. And when you combo hits, you get one emotion - satisfaction. It’s hard to say that Dominion would ever thrill or excite.

But take Star Realms - when that Hive Queen flips and you have the cash in hand, and you’re just wondering if it’s still going to be there on your turn? When you don’t have the cash in hand and you have to decide to scrap it from the market or wait, hoping they don’t have the cash either? Or worse yet, when you can’t scrap or buy it, and everyone at the table is staring at it wondering who is going to blink first? That’s thrill. And you can’t get that in Dominion or Trains.

Separately, I don’t know if Dune uses or misuses it.
Thirdly, while entertaining, was that a bad review? I don’t think Matt ever really said what he liked about the game. He talked rules, then discussed what he and everyone else didn’t like about it in detail. Then said it has colorful components and he had fun…?

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I would say the market implementation of Dune could be better.

But I haven’t played all that much. For comparison, it took me about 20 to 25 games of Hardback to find a strategy I deployed in my last game that won me the game through market manipulation (I think it did, I won with 80 over 44 points). But then I think Hardback is a great example of a well-implemented random market (as stated above).

So the Dune market stack has only 67 cards over all. 12 of these are unique cards representing important characters from the books like Duncon Idaho, Lady Jessica, Chani etc. Some of these are associated with one of the 4 factions. These are the cards you really want. They are powerful and have interesting and often unique effects that can make your game. If the Kwissatz Haderach is a balanced card is a discussion in itself… The rest of the cards are distributed somewhat unevenly among the four factions plus 15 neutral cards. A lot of these cards exist twice but even among the “lesser” cards there are a few unique offerings. I think it really helps to know what exists to be able to know which to buy and where to go from there.

There is a small static portion of the market with a Verlegenheitskarte if nothing else fits to improve your influence. And there is a VP card (like the tomes in Clank!).

Sadly, there are no cards that interact directly with the market (as the red suit does in Star Realms or the blue suit in Hardback). There are no rules in place to deal with a bad offering of the market.

Overall—I think—this is a game in which you want a small deck that does exactly what you want and you want to cycle through it quickly to get to you few key cards. On the way to this deck you may have to buy a few fillers you need to get rid of again. There is a reasonable number of opportunities to deconstruct your deck or draw additional cards so that in turn mitigates market choices a little bit.

As stated above, I prefer random markets that allow the player some interaction with the market besides buying cards. On the other hand the number of cards here is so small that I feel it is entirely possible in a 4 player game to buy/trash all the cards. (as in Rocketmen where the offering of cards to buy is even smaller).

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