DUNE: Learning the game (2019 edition)?

Hello FATties... (erm,"Twib-Gees") -

A friend and colleague is keen to get a 6 player game of Dune going Thursday, making use of his prized hand-made wooden board and components.

A couple of players are brand new, but most of the rest (myself included) are in need of a seriousrefresher, and trolling for information revealed a host of possibly questionable, maybe useful rules, strategy, and play guide materials online that span four decades. Never mind all the house rules and variants!

Does anyone have a modern list of rules/how-to/strategy guides? Are there some lingua-franca / tournament rule sets that are considered standard? Suggested rules, options, and faction strategies to get things rolling?

Anything is appreciated, many thanks in advance -

Following this thread.

I'm hosting a session on 5/31.

I don't think there's really any onus here to prep or do anything out of the ordinary. The rules are 4 pages and all faction specific rules are on the player shields. You don't need to exhaustively understand each faction to enjoy the game.

We like to use the optional rules (certainly faction rules) and require an alliance control 4 strongholds instead of 3. We cap alliances at 2.

I've only played a few times, but we've never used the advanced combat or double spice blows.

Oh, we did use a house rule last game. Fremen had a bonus ally ability of allowing their partner to freely resurrect 1 army from the tanks. We liked this as Fremen's natural alliance ability is too situational.

charlest wrote: I don't think there's really any onus here to prep or do anything out of the ordinary. The rules are 4 pages and all faction specific rules are on the player shields. You don't need to exhaustively understand each faction to enjoy the game.

We like to use the optional rules (certainly faction rules) and require an alliance control 4 strongholds instead of 3. We cap alliances at 2.

I've only played a few times, but we've never used the advanced combat or double spice blows.

Oh, we did use a house rule last game. Fremen had a bonus ally ability of allowing their partner to freely resurrect 1 army from the tanks. We liked this as Fremen's natural alliance ability is too situational.

What Charlie said. I've found it's most common to use the basic standard-plus-advanced rules, but to ignore common house rules and expansion rules meant to "repair" something about the game, like double spice blow/spice-for-combat. It's better to find out (or to never find out) that the Fremen are a little tricky to play on a cold run. (Charlie's idea is a good one, though).

The Advanced rules like Karama powers are a must, however, as they provide for a lot of the roleplaying that's folded into the mechanics.

Start with this for your rules for the first game. Then make changes as you see fit. A few good strategy articles around there as well.

www.starbasejeff.com/dune_rules.asp

Given that you have newbies, I'd opt for just the basic rules -- no advanced, no optional. There's enough meat on the basic game's bones that you won't feel as though you're missing anything (and there are enough odd and faction-specific rules that it can already be overwhelming to a first-time player).

The one exception is the common house rule:

A single player requires 3 strongholds to win.
A two-player alliance requires 4.
A three-player alliance requires all 5.

Without this rule, the game will very likely end at the first nexus.

charlest wrote: I don't think there's really any onus here to prep or do anything out of the ordinary. The rules are 4 pages and all faction specific rules are on the player shields. You don't need to exhaustively understand each faction to enjoy the game.

We like to use the optional rules (certainly faction rules) and require an alliance control 4 strongholds instead of 3. We cap alliances at 2.

I've only played a few times, but we've never used the advanced combat or double spice blows.

Oh, we did use a house rule last game. Fremen had a bonus ally ability of allowing their partner to freely resurrect 1 army from the tanks. We liked this as Fremen's natural alliance ability is too situational.

+1 to all.

Thank you all! We’re about to start, I’ll report how it goes

O7

There will of course be photos.

I would endorse the Starbase Jeff document--I've successfully introduced DUNE to two entirely different play groups with it. Don't bother with spice-supported combat and doubled spice blows until you have a small handful of games under your belt.

In light of that, the overall advice I've given in the past (once we dispense with covering each player's unique "this is how I break the basic rules" abilities) is:

1. The game economy tends to be TIGHT. If you use all your spice to buy cards (which you are doing sight-unseen), you may not be able to ship much onto the planet.

2. Stress the extremely slow rate at which players recover dead guys from the Tanks. Dying in large numbers is really bad, and you end up being a de facto observer for several turns. People tend to be familiar with big glorious combats in other games where you can nonetheless get back on your feet in fairly short order. This is not one of those games, so take care when committing big numbers if you don't feel reasonably confident about your chances.