Plans Within Plans: Spies and Contracts in Uprising Digital

Uprising is coming June 9th to Dune: Imperium Digital on Steam, Xbox, and mobile platforms as a paid expansion, ready to transform Arrakis into a warzone filled with new opportunities and paths to victory. In our last preview, we walked the reborn board and felt the thunder of the sandworms beneath the sand. Now, we turn to the subtler skills of survival on the desert planet: the Spies that sneak through the shadows, the art of knowing how to pick your battles, and the binding contracts of the mighty CHOAM company.

These systems weave fresh layers of cunning and adaptability into every Agent placement, every card draw, and every clash for dominance. The desert rewards those who move unseen, and knowing how to seize the day when the opportune moment presents itself — whether it’s in service of glorious combat, or turning a profit from the Imperium’s mercantile machine.

Spies: Scheming and Subterfuge in the Imperium

A good hunter always climbs the highest dune before his hunts – he needs to see as far as he can see.

– Jamis

Across the new board stand observation posts: discrete vantage points linked to one or more key locations. Each player begins with three small cylindrical Spies in their supply, waiting to be deployed to said spots. Whenever a card or board space shows the Spy icon, you may place one of your spies onto any unoccupied observation post. There, they will wait. Their real power emerges when you choose to pull them back into the shadows.

When you play an Agent to a board space connected to one of your Spies, two potent abilities await. First, Infiltrate: The ability to visit a board space even if an enemy Agent has already been played there. By recalling a Spy connected to an occupied space, you gain the power to send your Agent there and reap the benefits. Arrakis rewards the patient — Spies will ensure that no opponent can impede your plans to recruit a Swordmaster, obtain some fresh Maker Hooks from Sietch Tabr, or even summon a devastating Heighliner strike.

 

The second Spy ability is Gather Intelligence: When you visit a board space that’s connected to one of your Spies, you may choose to recall them and immediately draw one extra card from your deck. That single extra card can turn a modest turn into a decisive one, allowing you to create new opportunities for yourself without having to rely on the same old spaces for card draws. 

Spies reward strategic thinking — place them on the right posts and you can turn the board into a tactical web of your own design.

Digital Delights: For a hands-on lesson on the art of spycraft, the Eyes of the Imperium challenge will demand quick mastery: at the end of each round, lose 1 Solari if you didn’t send an Agent to a board space you were spying on. This challenge will ensure you waste no time in learning how to best make use of your Spy network on Arrakis.

Battle Icons: Adding New Weight to Conflicts

Let the conflict on Arrakis lead to war – you then bring peace.

– Princess Irulan

The desert favors those with foresight. Placing Spies is one way to create opportunities for yourself in the future, but just as important is knowing when to capitalize on opportunities when they come to you. And in Uprising, that means knowing how to pick your battles. 

The very Conflicts that decide the fate of Arrakis have grown more treacherous in their rewards. Every Conflict card now carries one of three battle icons in its upper corner: the Crysknife, the Ornithopter, or the Desert Mouse, and each player will also begin the game with one of these icons in their player area.

When you claim first place in a Conflict, its corresponding icon will be added to your supply. If, at any moment, you gain two matching icons, they convert into a Victory Point. The icons therefore give every Conflict a new kind of weight: one House may desperately need the next Crysknife-bearing battle to complete a set, while another might be eyeing the Ornithopter Conflicts with hungry eyes, shifting the board’s priorities from game to game and player to player. What looks to your rival to be a minor Conflict with unassuming rewards could be a game-changing turning point for you… or the other way around. For that reason, it pays to be keenly aware of what you — and everyone else — stands to gain from each battle.

Digital Delights: The Unrelenting Blade challenge allows you to gain +1 sword for each of your unmatched battle icons, making you stronger the more you collect. However, at the end of the game, you’ll lose a VP for each one that you haven’t matched, making it an instructive lesson in the risk/reward management that Uprising often calls for.  

Contracts

“I secured a copy of the Harkonnen’s account books. The Harkonnens were taking 10 billion Solaris out of here every year.”

-Thufir Hawat

The CHOAM Company has long moved behind the scenes of the Imperium, its ledgers thicker than any Imperial decree. In Uprising, the CHOAM Module makes those ledgers yours to exploit, should you choose to include it in your games. When the CHOAM Module is active, two contracts lie face up on the board at all times. Whenever you trigger a contract icon (found on certain board spaces that would otherwise grant +2 Solari without the module active) you claim one of those face-up contracts into your supply and immediately replace it with a fresh one.

Each contract is a binding promise to CHOAM: most require you to send an Agent to a named board space, while others may task you with harvesting a certain amount of spice from a specific Maker space. Fulfill the terms, and you reap a one-time reward that can swing the game in your favor: extra troops, Influence, Solari, and more.

Because the available contracts change every game, your opening moves rarely look the same way twice. One game might offer some quick and easy paths to early Solari, while another might incentivize you to hedge your resources early on to visit powerful spaces such as Heighliner or High Council as soon as possible. With CHOAM in play, no two games will ever be alike.

In the digital version of Uprising, the CHOAM module can be toggled during game setup. When it’s checked, contracts will be included in your game, along with cards and Leaders that interact with them. When left unchecked, contract icons on the Uprising board will revert into icons for +2 Solari. Nice and easy!

Digital Delights: It’s mercantile madness in the CHOAM Hunter challenge, where you’ll always take a contract whenever you don’t have any — and then lose a Solari for every turn it goes unfulfilled! How do your strategies change when certain board spaces are littered with extra rewards? You may just learn in this challenge how much of a boon it can be to have CHOAM in your pocketbook.

Uprising: Coming Soon to Dune: Imperium Digital

Spies, contracts, and battle icons together ensure that no two games of Dune: Imperium – Uprising ever feel quite the same. They reward the player who watches, plans, and strikes at the opportune moment while harvesting the economy of Arrakis to their maximum advantage.

But all of these are just tools, and tools are only as powerful as the hands that wield them. In our next preview, we will take a look at some of the nine legendary new Leaders who now vie for the throne of Arrakis, and explore the completely rebuilt Imperium deck that will reshape your deck-building strategies from the ground up.

Dune: Imperium – Uprising is coming to digital on June 9th. Will your House master the shadows? To have front row tickets when the Uprising begins, be sure to Wishlist the game today on Steam.