Dune: Imperium – Uprising Design Diary 1

August 17, 2023

Since we announced Dune: Imperium – Uprising at Gen Con, we’ve seen a lot of questions and a lot of speculation about what exactly it means to say that the game is “a stand-alone expansion.” We’ll have a lot more to talk about there as we head towards a pre-order period this fall, but today I’m excited to talk about how we arrived at this path, and what it means for Dune: Imperium fans.

In mid-2022, as we began brainstorming ideas for the next product in the Dune: Imperium line, I realized that the product line faced a big choice. Rise of Ix had been out in the wild for six months, and Immortality was done and preparing for release. These two expansions explored the wider universe of Dune, but now it was time to prepare for a product that would celebrate Dune Part 2, due in theaters in late 2023.

Player reception for Rise of Ix had been incredibly positive. And even as we announced Immortality and spoiled some its contents, some players questioned whether the game would become too complex… too “bloated.” We had discussed this potential issue when developing Immortality and were aware of the potential problem, but ultimately we felt confident that Immortality hit the mark (and players seemed to agree).

We knew that challenge wasn’t going to go away. On one hand, as fans of the IP, we wanted to celebrate Dune Part 2 in a big way, and get the opportunity to play with new parts of the story. On the other hand, we at Dire Wolf are just as excited about, and concerned and protective of, the quality of the Dune: Imperium experience as many players are. We faced a cross-roads: we could have released a very small, additive expansion with just enough content to represent Dune Part 2, but without a lot of game-changing mechanics . Or we could release a big expansion and find a way for it to work with the existing game.

A new card from Uprising that captures the spirit of our product development decision

The path that felt most natural to me was to replace the game board with a new one. After all, it’s the path we chose with Clank! expansions. If you want to play with the Sunken Treasures expansion, you set aside the base game board and substitute in one of the water-based maps. Similarly, with Dune: Imperium, I felt that replacing rather than adding was a key to being able to craft a product that would excite veterans of the game with fresh new gameplay without overcomplicating the resulting experience.

Replacing the main board also presented a natural opportunity to have this product work as a standalone that could be friendly for players new to Dune: Imperium, something that would have made no sense for Rise of Ix and Immortality.

Once these ideas became official goals for the design, I had a very interesting challenge ahead of me. I wanted to add some surprising new twists for veteran Dune: Imperium players, but I also didn’t want to overspend the complexity budget for new players. New board mechanics had to be interesting and exciting, yet as elegant as possible. The new board can be more complex than the base game’s board in order to introduce new ideas, but new mechanics should preferably be thematic so that learning them feels like a natural part of the epic story of Dune.

Because the board mechanics of Uprising are indeed somewhat more complex than the base Dune: Imperium board mechanics, I decided to lower or cap complexity in a few ways:

1. Drop the Mentat mechanic. (we replicated the Mentat mechanic in a different way.)

2. Drop Foldspace cards and icon.

3. Lower the average complexity of Imperium cards in the Uprising deck, relative to the base game.

4. Contracts, one of the new mechanics in Uprising, is completely modular and can be replaced by something much simpler for new players. (We’ll go into this in more detail in a separate design article.)

With the design strategy settled, let’s talk about why we’re excited about the new board. First, at a high level, a new board in a worker placement game simply provides a huge opportunity for discovery. Old tried-and-true patterns either don’t exist or may not work the same way. For example, most straightforward way to get water used to be visiting the Fremen at the Stillsuits space. Now, the Fremen aren’t so keen to provide water, but the same effect now lives at the Spacing Guild, at the new Deliver Supplies board space.

After hundreds of games of base Dune: Imperium, more variety of options (and a wider range for the Fremen) is a change I personally appreciate. In Uprising, Fremen board spaces aren’t necessarily going to light your world on fire (although it should be said that both their board spaces are quite good for deck building!) but they do get you on a path to visit Sietch Tabr, which is a more critical location than it was in the base game. Now, your first visit to Sietch Tabr provides you with Maker Hooks, which then allow you to call sand worms into battle. But that’s a whole topic unto itself, so I’ll also follow up on that with another design article.

Just as Sietch Tabr is a critical board space unlocked by Fremen politics, there are two other board spaces that are unlocked by two other factions. One is Shipping, unlocked by having two Influence with the Spacing Guild. This board space is quite straightforward and if you have three spice and two Influence with the Guild, you can increase both economic and political wherewithal. This can make the Guild a solid first choice in your political decisions, as it can lead to more overall politics in the long-term.

Imperial Privilege is the third board space that is unlocked by wielding political power; this one by maintaining a good relationship with the Emperor. This is the board space that is essentially a “new Mentat” because it is functionally similar to the original game’s Mentat. Some of the icons that this board space provides have been seen before: there’s a simple card draw, and (seen first in Immortality) the ability to trash an Intrigue card to draw a new Intrigue card. The new icon with the white up arrow inside an agent silhouette simply means: return another Agent (not the one you used this turn) to your Leader.

Similar to the Mentat, this allows you to send an additional Agent and play an additional card this round, as well as providing the often critical ability to delay your combat decisions until you’ve scouted your opponent’s pursuits. As an aside, you could argue that this is a significant nerf to Ilban Richese (who players have recently discovered to be one of the more powerful leaders in the Dune: Imperium universe). On the other hand, the new Gather Support board space is a reasonable early game option for the Count.

And that’s it. Those are the three influence-based board spaces on the new Uprising game board. Never mind that there are four fac…

But wait, there’s a woman in my office using a strange and powerful Voice commanding me to tell you something. I was going to hold this information back until another time, but she is commanding me to type that while there is no board space that is unlocked by attaining two Influence with Bene Gesserit, there is a different type of reward for befriending the Sisterhood. You see, there is a new reserve card, replacing Arrakis Liaison that starts at about the same power level as Arrakis Liaison, but it gets better if you’ve made inroads with the Bene Gesserit. It’s called Prepare the Way.

Whew, that was weird, but she’s gone now…

One of my favorite things about the four faction unlocks is how it makes you reconsider previous political tactics. A common tactic in the base Dune: Imperium game is to aim for an early faction alliance to “scare off” any potential challengers there, essentially securing that victory point for yourself. You can still do that in Uprising, but it comes with more of a cost in that you will unlock other faction benefits later compared to a route where you took a more balanced approach to distributing your influence. And this tends to create more exciting alliance battles in the late game.

Lastly, I can wrap up this design article by telling you a few more things about Uprising:

1. All of the existing Leaders from Dune: Imperium are compatible with Uprising, along with the vast majority of cards, so you can incorporate all of your favorite elements from the original game.

2. The entirely-new Imperium deck consists of 65 cards (plus 4 more if you are using what we call the CHOAM Module, the built-in mini-expansion that we recommend you not use until you’re familiar with the game).

3. The entirely-new Intrigue deck consists of 40 cards (plus 4 more for the CHOAM Module).

4. The entirely-new Conflict deck also consists of 16 cards.

There’s a lot more to talk about coming in Dune: Imperium – Uprising, and I’ll write again soon. For now, I’ll leave you with a preview of some of the new cards on the way when the uprising begins this fall!