Weekly Trash - Dune

The obligatory Dune thread. Never played it, but its often mentioned as a pinnacle of Ameritrash. Why?

Never played it neither.

Got it, never played it. Waiting for the first oppertunity.

Why? Because it is the best game ever published, duh!

No other game matches up better with my criteria for what makes a game great. The mechanics are straight from the theme, the narrative is strong, there's direct and constant player interaction, variety, drama, intrigue...and the design is still very modern in almost every way. It's just...perfect.

The only hitch is that is strictly a six player game.

I played once 20 damn years ago. I was the Freeman and pulled off the win after about 6 hours. I've got to get this on the table at WBC this year.

Played it for the first time a few months ago and loved loved loved it. We actually cracked it open late on a Saturday night, after a bunch of us headed over to my friend's apartment after a TI3 game.

One guy had played it several years ago, but the rest of us were newbies. I was Atreides and having a blast. Through some shrewd memory and a profitable alliance, I managed to orchestrate a las gun-shield explosion, since I knew that the Bene Gesserit (my only real competition) would almost certainly try to ace my leader in a huge battle. Fortunately, though we both lost like 10 guys, I had enough left in other areas to sweep into the last Sietch I needed to pull off a joint victory with the Emperor, whose money gave me better use of the prescience power.

The mechanics really defy elegant. I'd recommend finding a more clear set of rules, though, since just trying to make sense of the ones that come standard was a bit hard, especially after a few beers and at 11 at night. Still, I'm hoping to get another game of it in, starting a bit earlier. I have a sense that the 2 and a half or 3 hours our game took was an exception to the standard length of it.

Believe the hype.

So is this game about sand or something?

hacksword wrote:

So is this game about sand or something?

And cinnamon, I think.

I've never played it, though I'd love to. I may print and cut it all out someday.

"There's a whole planet of cinnamon out there and only I can get at it!"

"Ladies and gentleman, I think you'll believe me when I say that I am a cinnamon man."

"I eat your cinnamon...I eat it up!"

The narrative IS strong with this one.

Where else can you have an epic battle for the final sietch and yell, "TREACHERY!" when your opponent plays his leader that is in your pay; only to have your CUNNINGPLAN! foiled when you reveal your leader and he yells the same thing.

Final score: Lots o' dead mooks along with both leaders sent to the 'tanks.

Then, you have to start scrambling for backup plans since the CUNNINGPLAN! was destroyed so brilliantly.

I put off reading any of the Dune sequel books until last year, which might be why I wasn't enjoying Dune quite as much as my friends back in the old days. But I did enjoy the game, and we played it from time to time for several years. In the last 20 years, I think have played Dune just once, because I only know one guy around here who owns a copy. And he makes us play with all the add-on games, like the duelling one and the spice harvest one. I think that those expansions add too much complexity for not enough additional fun.

Have it - but never have enough players to play it. The only time one of my groups got it out to try I was sick !!!!
I'm getting old .... running out of time ....

Shellhead wrote:

I put off reading any of the Dune sequel books until last year, which might be why I wasn't enjoying Dune quite as much as my friends back in the old days. But I did enjoy the game, and we played it from time to time for several years.

The game seems to cover the first two books: Dune and Dune Messiah. Even though there is a bit of a time gap between them, the factions and characters in both books are in the game.

Great game. Possibly my favourite of all time. It just captures the struggle for Dune perfectly.

Needing six is a problem though. Recently we were wondering if you could play it with three. A lot of the problems with less than the full complement seem to be that either alliances form that overpower the other players or that there can be power vacuums after large battles where factions are depleted of fighting capability and so do not have enough reinforcements available to stop a win.

Our idea for playing with three would be to have each player playing two factions that are in a forced alliance that can never be changed. This would remove some of the fun of the shifting, treacherous, oppurtunistic nature of the alliances but I think would prevent the horrible grinding instability of the game with less than six factions. However, it would be important to get the alliances right. Any suggestions for this. I think something like Fremen/Bene Geserit, Guild/Harkonnen, Emperor/Atreides. The last one sounds like it might be the best but I am not sure you could ever expect perfect symmetry.

Citadel wrote:

I think something like Fremen/Bene Geserit, Guild/Harkonnen, Emperor/Atreides. The last one sounds like it might be the best but I am not sure you could ever expect perfect symmetry.

I've never played the game, but thematically I'd go with something like this so the three houses are opponents.

Atreides/Fremen
Emperor/Bene Geserit
Harkonnen/Guild