Episode 27 - Dune: Imperium

In this very special episode we’re celebrating our 1 year anniversary!!! What better way to do that with ANOTHER giveaway!! Listen to our episode to find out all the ways you can enter, for FREE! What are we giving away you ask? Well, we’re giving away a copy of today’s episode: Dune: Imperium!! Tune in to also hear us totally butcher words and phrases from Frank Herbert’s masterpiece series and which one of us played as a spice addict!

Transcript

Rachel: 0:13

Hello and welcome. I'm Rachel. I'm Jake. And we're so bored. The Podcast where each episode we take a close look at a tabletop game and discuss our personal experiences with said game to help answer the question, Will this cure our boredom?

Jake: 0:28

That's right, we look at the mechanics complexity and replayability in a game to determine if it's the perfect alternative to say, well, putting away the multiple weeks of laundry that have been piling up in your closet because you've just been too lazy to put it away so far. But now you can't find any of your underwear no matter how much you dig. So you guess you just have to put it away and hope all the underwear hasn't been eaten by your puppy.

Rachel: 0:52

We have one dog who eats clothes, and particularly, she really likes Jake's underwear.

Jake: 0:59

She likes my underwear. She likes jackets.

Rachel: 1:02

She's eaten several pairs of my pajama pants.

Jake: 1:04

Yep, she's eaten some of mine. And she's eaten T shirts.

Rachel: 1:07

So clothes or food,

Jake: 1:09

clothes are food. Apparently. Just as a reminder, again, I am streaming on Twitch semi regularly, my schedule changes each week. So that is up to date on my Twitch page. And the Schedule page is up to date each week that you can find me on Twitch at Naughty Dog 541. That's NAU GH, T Y D o c 541. And I'm very excited because I just started streaming Elden ring. It came out last week. And it's amazing.

Rachel: 1:37

And I'm very excited because it's our one year anniversary. So our first episode released on March 2 2021. And well today's March 1 2020. Yo, boy beta. I'm so happy and excited. It feels so long and yet so short all at the same time.

Jake: 2:05

Yeah, I totally get that feeling. I feel like it was a lifetime ago that we started this podcast. But at the same time, I don't know where the time is gone. Yet. When we started this podcast, I was in Tucson, I was living in Tucson.

Rachel: 2:19

Oh man. And if you go back and listen to those first episodes, the audio quality is definitely worse. I apologize for that. Like you can hear traffic in the background. And I think we've definitely figured out how better to remove sounds and also how better to just set ourselves up to not have sounds in the background. So definitely better quality, and hopefully other things. Hopefully it's smoother and easier to listen to. And hopefully we've kind of got it all figured out. I don't know You tell me.

Jake: 2:49

But in celebration of our one year anniversary, we are doing another giveaway that I've been very excited about actually, we're gonna give away the game that we're talking about in this episode. Now the link to this giveaway is going to be accessible from our Facebook page. We will be making a post about it on Instagram as well and it will take place on gleam. It's the platform that we like to use, there's going to be multiple ways to enter all of them free. And we're giving away a copy of Dune Imperium, which I'm very excited about because this game is a highly rated game in the board game community. On board game geeks website is consistently in the top 20 games, and it's actually relatively new. It was published by direwolf in 2020. It was designed by Paul Denon, with art by Clay Brooks role Ramos and Nate storm. And if any of you aren't familiar with Dune, well, that makes two of us I'm not super familiar with it, I want to be I want to be more interested in it. I tried to read the books, and it is just really hard to read the bugs.

Rachel: 3:54

I also tried to read the book, and I'm sorry, like, I guess it's more surprising the Jeep couldn't get into it because I'm very picky about my space fantasies anyway. But I started reading it and I was like, this is just Star Wars. And I'm sure someone is gonna yell at me and be like, but dude came out first,

Jake: 4:12

it did come out first. And it's not Star Wars. It's just the problem I had with it was I was reading it and they throw all these words at you. Like a lot of the words are based off of Arabic or in that nature. And they expect you to know what these terms are, even though they haven't really explained them yet. And they use multiple in a sentence. And then multiple sentences in the paragraph have these words and I have no idea what's going on. And I'm completely lost. So I really need to go watch the movies for what I'm saying. And then I'll read the book.

Rachel: 4:43

But yeah, I mean, it's kind of cool because this review is coming to you from the perspective of two people who don't really know the dune universe. Jake was a little bit more familiar with it than I was. I have no background on this. And so I went into the game like kind of intentionally without looking anything up and wanted to see how the game stands? Like, from that perspective on its own? Is it a solid game? Or does it really rely on your like nostalgia of the dune universe? And spoiler alert, it does stand on its own. It's a good game.

Jake: 5:19

All I really know about Dune is this, I know what the gums are bar is I know what's in the box. And I know that Paula tradies is the key throughout hotrock. Yep, that that's the word. You know, that's what he is. But so I'm really excited about this game, because I have a lot of praise for it. Like Rachel said, despite not really knowing a whole lot about dune itself. It is an asymmetric starting game with deck building elements and worker placement. And it is chef's kiss ma beautiful. As we said, this is an asymmetric start game, each player is going to get to either choose or be randomly assigned, depending on how you want to play a character from the dune universe. They each have their own unique powers throughout the game, one that can be used at all times. And the other that is kind of a more special one. Typically, that is activated when you use a specific card from your starting deck.

Rachel: 6:15

Yeah, and I think we'll talk in more detail about specific characters and who we played in our experiences section.

Jake: 6:23

Yeah, and I think there are eight to 10. In the base game,

Rachel: 6:26

there's a decent number to select from what I read in the rulebook is that there's two per house.

Jake: 6:32

Yeah, and some of them are what's to say more useful than others?

Rachel: 6:37

Definitely. Alright, so getting into like the rules in the setup, like so many other games, your goal is to get the most victory points, you get victory points by doing various numbers of things, you know, winning conflicts or gaining influence with factions that are associated with the dune universe. So let's talk about some of the factions. I'm describing some of the worker placement slots here for these factions. But I'm not going into super detail or I'm trying not to go into super detail here. So I've got the emperor, he will give you Solari which is the currency of the universe. It's, you know, your gold or your money. And then he will allow you to trade spice for troops solare and intrigue cards, which are just kind of helpful throughout the game. Then we have the spacing guild, they will give you a space fold card that lets you move a worker anywhere before trashing it. And we'll talk a little bit more about what that means and how that works. When we get into the actual like cards and deck building elements of this. They will also let you trade spice for a large number of troops and water. Then you've got the Bene Gesserit.

Jake: 7:49

all right. That is right. Bene Gesserit. it's an s not a Z Bene.

Rachel: 7:55

Gesserit, sorry. So we did our best to look up how to pronounce a lot of these things. But I'm sorry if something gets mispronounced I'm trying real

Jake: 8:05

hard. We will mispronounce words. And I apologize.

Rachel: 8:09

So the Bene Gesserit they will give you intrigue cards, or let you trade spice so that you can trash one card from like your discard or your hand and then draw two new cards from your from the top of your deck. And then the last faction is the Fremen which will give you water

Jake: 8:27

which is actually your sweat. But yes, it's true, you drink it,

Rachel: 8:31

and they will also let you trade water for troops. So that's kind of a rundown of what the factions do for you.

Jake: 8:38

And those are all worker placement slots within those factions. There are other worker placement slots on the board. The lance RAD is the green slots. These let you trade solare for troops, extra workers persuasion to buy new cards, you can also use it to buy a temporary agent for the next round. There are populated areas these are the blue worker placement slots. These allow you to pick up troops intrigue cards, draw cards from your deck or to get some water. Some of these spaces are contested areas that you actually fight over for control throughout the game in different phases of combat. And then there are desert slots these are where you get your spice and the other thing I know about Dune is the spice must flow I suppose flow spice must flow and then there is a chome slot CHOAM the combine honnete ober advancer mercantiles. I believe that's how it said, this allows you to sell your spice for Solari.

Rachel: 9:39

Yes. Okay. So those are like the spots that appear on the board. And then you know, the other aspect of this game is deck building. So if you've played Clank or you've listened to our episode on Clank, I feel like the deck building is very similar to that. And I mean, that's partly because it was also developed by direwolf. But if you haven't played that game or haven't listened to that episode, we're gonna explain it again here. So everyone starts with the same deck of 10 cards. And when you gain new cards, which you can purchase with persuasion, when you gain new cards, they are added to your discard pile and shuffled into your new deck when you run out of cards, the anatomy of a card. So basically, in the upper left corner, you'll have the title like Queen sat hotrock, that's the title of a card. Underneath that you may have an associated faction that that goes with, I don't remember if that card is associated with a particular faction, not all cards are associated with factions, but some are and some have effects that are dependent on having other cards within the same faction or of a specific faction. And so that just means like, Hey, if you have more friend cards that you're playing with right now, like in your hand, then this card might have an extra powerful effect or something, yes, over in the right corner, you'll have a little blue diamond, that is the cost of the card in persuasion. So there's a market of these cards that can be purchased five at any time, and you will always have to have a certain amount of persuasion to purchase them. And each card has its own unique cost for that there may also be something underneath the persuasion cost that describes any kind of immediate benefit that is gained. So that might describe like you get a victory point or you gain more influence in a particular faction or something like that when you obtain the card. And then over back on the left side, we've got in the middle, there's various numbers of symbols. And these are lined up with the worker placement slots that are on the board. And so this is describing where you can place your worker with this card based on you know, what is shown there. And so it might have faction symbols, or the yellow, green or blue symbols describing the other worker placement slots. And then at the bottom part of the card, it's actually divided into two sections. So you've got the gray section in the blue section. And the gray section is what you use or what gets activated if you use this card to place a worker. And then the blue section is what happens if the card is still in your hand after you're done placing all your workers and you go to the reveal step, which we'll talk more about in a second as well.

Jake: 12:34

And this is what I've found is really interesting about this game is that it's a deck building card. But the cards have two different ways that you can use them, which is really interesting. And the way that you can build your deck to build off of these different effects. You can use the same card two different ways. Or if another card says you can trash your card. Now you have a third way to use this card if you need to. It's really cool. Yeah. So when when you're building your deck, you need to consider a couple things when you're purchasing the card. Where will this card allow you to place your workers? Do you need other cards of the same faction or another faction to get the required full effect of the bonus effect. There's also the persuasion and combat power that you can use or secondary effects for the reveal step. Those are all things that need to be considered when building your deck. So it's not just like quick where it's, Hey, you do this on this turn, or this is what you can get by using this card, it's a little more in depth. And I really liked that.

Rachel: 13:30

Yeah, and I wouldn't even say that that's an exhaustive list of everything that needs to be considered. That was some of the highlights, and particularly where it allows you to place your workers, it's something important that I think I always forget, I'm always looking at what the bottom effects are for placing your workers or for revealing it at the end. But I forgot to look at where you can actually place your workers. And then I ended up having a lopsided deck that doesn't allow me to go visit one particular faction or something like that. It makes it difficult to gain influence and gain victory points in that way. And so that's something important to remember. So a player turn unfolds in this manner. First, you reveal the conflict. So this is a deck of 10 cards that's constructed at the beginning of the game that describes basically what you're fighting over for that round. So if you deploy any troops to the conflicts, the person who ends up having the most power, there's a first place prize, a second place prize and a third place if you have four players. And so you'll reveal that conflict card at the very beginning of the round. And people can see like what they have the potential of gaining if they decide to join the conflict. And then you've got the player turn, which starts with you drawing five cards from your deck. And then it's divided into two phases, which we already kind of talked about. So you've got the agent phase, and that's where you go and you place your workers. And then you've got the reveal phase, which is when you're done placing workers either when you run out or If you decide that you don't want to place any more workers, you can go to the reveal. But once you do the reveal, you can't go back and do an agent phase reveal is the last thing you do. So you just go around the table taking one of these turns until everybody has done their reveal. Yes. So on an agent turn, you play a card from your hands, and you move a worker to one of the slots that is described over in like the middle left side of the card, you'll gain the rewards from that worker placement slot and gain any rewards that are in the gray section at the bottom of that card. And then when you do your reveal turn, you will gain the reward that is in the blue section

Jake: 15:43

of any cards remaining in your hand that you have not used for agents.

Rachel: 15:48

Yes. So you start out the game with only two agents and you draw five cards. So if you place both of your agents somewhere, you'll have three cards left for the reveal

Jake: 16:01

turn that potentially have revealed bonuses, they may or may not not all cards do. Yes. So the combat that is taking place during the round is measured by troops that are being deployed to conflict areas or conflict areas, troops can be played to this area, if somebody places a worker in the worker placement slots of one of the contested areas, there are three, any troops recruited this round and up to two from the garrison can be deployed on this turn. So as long as you have somebody in a contested area, if your next turn or any turn after that, before you reveal is putting a worker in a worker placement slot that allows you to gain troops, you can also deploy all of those troops to the conflict as well, or you can put them in your garrison up to you. Yes, during the reveal turn you calculate the number of combat powers as two for each cube, which is in the combat area for each player, and one for each sword in the blue section of the revealed guard. So that's the bonus combat power in the reveal. So at the beginning of the combat phase, players can play any number of intrigue cards to add to their combat power. Oh, first, second, and third place are calculated. Once everybody has played the entry cards, you only do Third, if you have four people in the game, like Rachel said earlier, otherwise, this is first and second. Combat can award a lot of different things. It can award victory points control of a contested area influence with a faction different resources, and sometimes it can get multiple things.

Rachel: 17:34

Yeah. And I found that as you go through the game, the later and later conflict cards end up having better and better rewards. So the first couple cards are probably not going to give you victory points. But as you're getting later, okay, yeah, you're getting victory points, maybe even two victory points for winning combat. So it's really worth it to participate in that, because that's one of the main ways that you receive victory points, yes. Okay. After combat, you have the makers phase, which is where the sandworms produce extra spice that goes on any desert slots that don't have an agent on them. And so that's from the player turn phase where you were placing agents, those are still there. And so they only go on slots where agents don't exist. And then it's the recall phase, you know, you'll go in, you'll check in see if the end game has been triggered, which is by running on a conflict cards, or if someone has reached 10 victory points. And if that hasn't happened, then everyone takes their workers back clears the troops and prepares for the next round, then it just goes like that.

Jake: 18:43

Yeah, and as we said, the goal of the game is to have 10 victory points and the most at the end of the game. Because once you get to 10, you finished the round that somebody got 10 in. And there are different end of game entry cards or ways that you can actually earn more than 10 victory points at the end of the game. So you can trigger the end of the game. But somebody else during that final turn could actually end up having more points than you and you losing. Yes. So it's kind of interesting that way, I really like that. And that'll kind of lead into our experiences with the game actually. Because there are lots of things I like about this game. That being one of them.

Rachel: 19:23

Yeah. Okay, I want to start out with saying something and then we can talk about all the great things that Jake has to say,

Jake: 19:30

oh, no, you, you're gonna you're gonna talk crap about this awesome game.

Rachel: 19:34

No, I'm not. I want to share a story. So almost a year ago, I did an analysis on what are the top games that people would be interested in listening to a podcast episode about,

Jake: 19:50

oh, I know what story you're telling.

Rachel: 19:54

I did this through Facebook polls, and I did several iterations of it and then I put off The data into an Excel spreadsheet like a nerd. And I made a graph of what are like the top 10 games that people are interested in. And that largely drove our first one, I don't know, 15 episodes, I would say. So even back then, dune Imperium was number three on that list. And ever since then Jake has been trying to get me to play this game. I was so against it, I didn't want to have anything to do with it, I figured that it would require that I have an interest in the world in the movie in the in the book, you know, and I wasn't, I wasn't looking forward to an experience that's like really heavily reliant on me like knowing about that world. I wasn't excited about that. And so it's taken almost a year for Jake to convince me that we need to play this game. And I'm really glad that he was persistent. And he did, because this actually stands up on its own really well. You don't need to know anything about the dune world, you don't need to know the background. The rulebook gives you a very, very basic understanding of some of the concepts for like the factions. But you don't need that either.

Jake: 21:16

Rachel has a great point here. But she is wrong about one thing you do need to know one thing, the spice must flow rice must flow. That's what you have to know. Okay. But other than that, no, you don't need to know anything about dune.

Rachel: 21:33

Yeah. So I mean, the point that I'm saying is, is that I was wrong about this game I had incorrectly, you know, assumed something about it, and about the requirements in order to have fun with it. And I think that's probably why this game is still in the BGG, like top 20 list, it's been that way for a year, well, actually probably longer since it came out, I'm guessing, but because you can just enjoy it without knowing anything about it.

Jake: 22:02

And it is a very well put together game, I think it is awesome. So one of the things I kind of talked about a little bit is this play on deck build, it's a kind of a spin on it, because every other deck building game I've ever played is you get the card, and you can use it one way, pretty much. That's it text on the card has one way to use it. This has two and three. And sometimes four ways that you can use this card because of how they all interact with each other with the different factions. So like the Bene Gesserit cards requiring another one or from a card requiring another friend card to get another effect. Or you can trash this card to get an effect on this other card. Or you can try to get new cards from one of the worker placement slots. Or you can actually use it as an agent card or you can use it in the reveal. There's a lot of different ways that you can use these cards. It's not just this is it, this is what it does for you. Most of the time. There's a couple that are that way, pretty much we didn't really talk about it. They're called reserve cards. These are three cards that are always the same. They are the Arachis agents are the rackets liaison, they are the fold space, and then they are the spice must flow cards. They always have the same effect. But they're always available at the market. But I really liked that aspect that you're not locked into how you're going to use this card necessarily. You have options.

Rachel: 23:24

Yeah. And I mean, I wouldn't. Well, I guess I would agree that those only have one way really of being used,

Jake: 23:31

the spice must flow, you can trash it if you need to. Because you already got the victory point for so that's the other thing that the spice must flow is an expensive card, it's nine persuasion. But when you buy it, you immediately get a victory report. And if it comes back up in your deck at the reveal, you get to spice or you can trash it, you already have the victory point get rid of it. Actually, I

Rachel: 23:51

wonder about that. Because other aspects of the game though, say that if you lose this, then you lose the victory points. So like, for example, the influence that you gain with the different factions. If you reach to influence with them, you gain a victory point. But if you ever go below two, you lose that victory points.

Jake: 24:11

I agree with that. Like that makes sense. And that's what is outlined. But I think if you're going to be able to spend nine persuasion in one turn to purchase this card, because that's a lot of persuasion. You keep the victory point. That's what I think. Okay, that's how I would play it.

Rachel: 24:28

I'm just saying that I would maybe double check that, but that's fine.

Jake: 24:32

Another really cool thing I like about this game is it can change drastically in one turn, like you can be one turn away from winning, and somebody trailing three, four points behind and the next turn you lose. So in the two games that we've played, it has happened that in one turn, a player has gained four victory points in a single round,

Rachel: 24:56

which is significant when you're talking about only 10 victory points. totals needed, right?

Jake: 25:02

Like that's, that's really significant. First, Rachel did it in our first game, because I triggered the end of game scenario, got the 10. And she was at five. And she almost got her fifth, She almost got five in one turn, it was so close.

Rachel: 25:18

Yeah, I was like two spice away from getting a fifth victory point. In that turn. I think if I had two more, I would have had an influence card that I could have triggered to give me another victory point. And then I actually would have won because I had another influence card that said that I would have 10 extra spice at the end of the game. And we would have been tied at 10 points. And so spice would have broken the tie and I would have won. Yes. So it was very like tense at the end, like, Oh, who's gonna win this?

Jake: 25:54

Yeah. And then the second game we played. So the first game we played with two people in the atomica. But we played Rachel and I together, and then the game itself. And then for the second game, we played with four people. And I was at six victory points, and another person was at seven. And on the ninth turn, because there's only 10 rounds. The ninth turn, I was able to get four victory points by raising my influence with three factions and then purchasing a spiciness flow card with all my stuff at the end, because I had built this deck that allowed me to just continue drawing cards into my hand, so it would be able to buy a crap ton at the end. But also in that second game, I was playing as Helen Ricci's. And she is so broken her constant ability is that on the green and blue worker placement slots, it doesn't matter if somebody else is there not I can just go there.

Rachel: 26:50

Yeah. And that, that is so huge, because there are green and blue worker placement slots that give you four troops, which is significant, that give you solare and allow you to draw cards and allow you to like participate in the conflict, when normally that's limited to three, there's only three conflict spaces. But technically Jake can go somewhere that someone else has already been. So now we've got four people participating in the conflict. Mm hmm.

Jake: 27:18

And then when I'm also able to just continue getting four troops even if somebody else has been there. Yeah, it's broken. It was way Opie, she's my favorite. She's gonna be my girl,

Rachel: 27:31

you know. And it's funny, because we're just sitting at a table, like finishing up our dinner getting ready to play the game. And Jake is flipping through all the people and he's like, Whoa, I want to play this chick. And I'm like, okay, okay, well, I think since we're playing with some new people that we should shuffle and do a randomized assignment of who we're playing. And then somehow

Jake: 27:53

I want to give a disclaimer. Disclaimer, I was the last one to select my character. And, yes, the card was bent, but you were holding the bent corner in your thumbs like. So how would I know?

Rachel: 28:10

So Jake, got this one guard that he wanted.

Jake: 28:15

And she paid off big time. She's awesome. She's my favorite. I will play whenever I can. And Jake one, so I have won both of the games I've played. So unfortunately, I'll never be able to play this game again.

Rachel: 28:28

Yeah, I can't risk losing that win streak. Now. Since we're talking about the characters that we were playing, I wanted to talk about my character that I played in the first game, which was Baron Harkonnen. And he was way more useful than the person who was playing in my second game, which was Countess Arianna Thorvald. So Baron Harkonnen, his just kind of natural all the time ability was the if you place four troops in a single turn, you get increased influence with two factions that you selected at the beginning of the game, which is pretty Opie, if you can manage to do that, like, all you really need to do is there's two different worker placement slots that allow you to place four troops or more in a single turn, that's all you need, is to go to one of those spots, and then you automatically trigger this ability, which increases your influence with the two selected factions.

Jake: 29:26

And see that's not even necessarily true that there's only the two slots that do it. Because there's multiple slots that give you two workers. And then there are cards that when you use as an agent, you are then able to get two more troops out of it. Right. That would still I mean, that even opens up more if you build your deck that way.

Rachel: 29:43

Yes. I'm just saying. Yeah, there's two definite ways very easily to do that.

Jake: 29:48

Yeah. It's so like I said, this game, the way that the cards work together and how they integrate together. It's just it's so well done.

Rachel: 29:58

And then you know his other abilities. that's triggered by his signet ring in your starting deck is that he can pay once a lottery to pick up an entry card, which I found that the entry cards are incredibly useful. They can give you resources, they can give you influence, they can give you extra combat power, or like extra bonuses that you get for winning a combat, or they can give you extra things happening at the end of the game. Very useful. And so I really liked his abilities, as opposed to count as Arianna, her abilities were, she's like a spice addict, I guess. Okay, someone's gonna tell me about how, yes, this is part of the lore. But the way that that plays out in mechanics in the game is that when you go to a place to harvest spice, you automatically take one away, you just don't get it. And instead, you get to draw a card. So I know that there's a way to build a deck around that. I just wasn't prepared to build a deck that is all about drawing more cards. And like, that's typically how Jake plays or like both of the games that we've played, Jake, I feel like has done a good job of building a deck like that. But I just, I guess I wasn't prepared to do that. And I couldn't quite make it work for me. And so I didn't make like full use of that. And it just ended up being really annoying that it was harder for me to collect spice. And then her signet ring just gives her a free water. Yep, which is, you know, that's nice. But it's easy to get water from the front end. So I don't know, it just it wasn't nearly as useful as Baron Harkonnen. And so if I have anything negative to say about this game, it's just that the characters aren't completely balanced. You know, there's definite advantages to choosing one character over another to play.

Jake: 31:44

Yeah. And in my first playthrough, I was playing as lado a tradies. And his ability was, whenever I went to a worker placement slot, one of the green ones that costs a Laurie, I just paid one less. And that was nice. And his signet ring was I can spend one spice to gain one influence with a faction where another player has more influence than I do, which is kind of cool. But in that game, I think I only ended up using it once, maybe twice. But I use that spending one less solare a lot. So yes, there are definitely starting characters that are more useful than others, at least on the surface, I don't know I have only played the two games, I'm sure that there are different ways that you can use them. As far as building your deck around them. The one that I am actually really interested in is count Ibn Ricci's, his card or his character allows him to whenever you pay for the cost on a work replacement slot with solare, you also draw a card. So I mean, that's, that's nice. So you're getting your your agent card back, really

Rachel: 32:52

and see like I like that better than like the one that I had, where I don't get a spice like, in my case, I was sacrificing something to be able to draw card in the one that you're describing, you're doing something that you already would have been doing anyway and gaining a card in addition to that, like it's clearly a better benefit. So yeah,

Jake: 33:11

for I think for her, it's beneficial to gain water. So there are three slots that give you the the spice, three desert slots, and one of them is free. One of them cost one water, one of them cost two water, they each give you one, two, and three respectively, plus any bonuses that are on there, obviously, the more expensive one gives you more spice, I think for you, it would be beneficial to completely ignore the one that is free and only go on the ones that cost you one water or two water. That way, you're still getting spice out of it. But you're also getting a card back.

Rachel: 33:44

Yeah, the only problem with that is that those two slots are not conflicted areas. And so I can't deploy troops to the conflict if I go to one of those spots. Whereas if I go to the one that's free, I can deploy troops to the conflict.

Jake: 34:00

So I understand. But there are also other worker placement slots that

Rachel: 34:04

yeah, that just makes it an extra worker, like, you know, you only have a very limited number of workers anyway. And so I know it's a big deal to have to deploy one to be able to get spice and one to be able to go to the conflict. And then that leaves you maybe one to get troops versus one that gets you spice and allows you to deploy stuff. So the conflict, right, like when you have so few people, it's really important to try it and maximize all the things that you're trying to do.

Jake: 34:33

Yeah, so you only start with the two agents, you can you can get yourself a third, there is a way to get a temporary fourth one that you get for one round. But yet you are super limited on actual workers to place. It's both punishing, but also it makes it feel fair that if you won, you won, and that is as I've said before, I like that feeling. So I grass. I mean, we've talked a lot about this game and how much I think it's amazing. There is actually an add on for this game and expansion rise of Ix, I believe, or Ix or Ix. It's aI Ix, I don't know,

Rachel: 35:12

excuse me, that's rise of nine.

Jake: 35:14

No, that no, but it is new. As of this year, it was released in 2022. So it adds three new houses for a total of six new leaders to start as all with unique abilities, and adds new technology from the Planet Ix. And these are cards with permanent effects that are purchased with spice. So for example, there's a market of I think, two or three cards that are available at any given time, with a workplace with slot there to purchase them. And some of the effects are, if you win a combat, you gain a water or you get an extra card at the start of your round. Or if you have multiple spice must flow cards, you get more victory points at the end of the game. So they seem pretty useful. The only thing that I don't necessarily like about them is that their face up so that anybody can see what you purchase, especially for the ones like at the end of the game, if you have more spice must flow cards, you get more victory points, then people are going to try to prevent you from getting those. So I wish that you could put them face down. And then when you put your work or placement slot, you can look at them. I'm not telling you, buddy, that would be nice. But that could be a house rule. Anyways, there are also Dreadnought that are deployed for aerial control. I think this allows you to harvest from areas. So instead of having a worker to place at like the desert, if you have your Dreadnought there, you can actually just get spice for the next turn is what I think that is I wasn't able to find a lot on that. And that's kind of what I was reading. And then there are infiltrators. And the only thing I was able to find is this is so that you can outmaneuver your opponents. No idea what that means. But that's what the flavor text says in the synopsis for the expansion. It does also add what it calls a new challenging mode for the game as if it wasn't challenging enough. So it comes with a harder version.

Rachel: 37:06

That sounds like this adds quite a lot. Like this is a pretty good expansion.

Jake: 37:10

It does. And it's I mean, we'll get to the ratings on it. But it's it's highly rated. Definitely sounds worth checking out. I mean, I want to I don't have this game yet. But I want this game. And you're gonna want this game to after this episode. And you'll be able to get this game free if you keep listening.

Rachel: 37:26

Alright, so let's talk about Board Game Geek. We've already mentioned it a couple times, I think that this is very highly rated on Board Game Geek, you know, it's in there like top 20 list. And it's has been for quite a while just looking at the actual ratings on the game. There are 17,000 reviews and an average rating of 8.33. That's pretty high, especially something that's got that many reviewers and has been out for a couple years at this point, you know, so I feel like it's kind of been through the wringer. And it's come out standing really good on the other side.

Jake: 38:00

Yeah, this game is very highly rated. And as I said in the beginning of the episode, it's consistently in the top 20 slots for the top games on Board Game Geek. As of recording, it's at the number 16 slot of all games on the BoardGameGeek website. So this is rated the number 16 game of them all.

Rachel: 38:20

And going back to the poll that I took last year, you know, it was number three on that list for things that people would be interested in.

Jake: 38:27

And that's just people who told us that's not even like, Yeah, we didn't go to the mall and do a Family Feud style, kind of

Rachel: 38:35

the base game is currently selling on Amazon for 50 US dollars, which is not bad.

Jake: 38:41

I believe that is actually the same on their website as well. direwolf digital,

Rachel: 38:46

and then the rise of IX or rise of nine is what I'm going with expansion is rated at 8.88. But that doesn't only have 500 reviews. However, that just came out earlier this year.

Jake: 39:00

Yeah, this year, it's a 2022 release.

Rachel: 39:02

Okay, so this has been out for like maximum two months.

Jake: 39:07

Exactly. And it's, it has 500 reviews.

Rachel: 39:10

So I'm sure that the number of reviews will increase, although as we typically see, expansions don't usually get as many as the base game. So that mansion is also $50, which it sounds like it's worth it based on everything that it adds to the game. I would definitely be excited to check it out. It would be really cool if I don't know we're local board game store decided to suddenly be stocking this because that's where we went and we played the original. So that'd be cool if that just kind of showed up there was available to us, but I don't know. We'll see. Yeah. Or maybe we'll just end up buying it.

Jake: 39:47

I'm gonna end up buying and

Rachel: 39:49

moving on. Let's talk about our rating section. So first, we have easy versus difficult. This is talking about how easy is it for you to pick up the game? How easy are the rules to understand? Do you have to constantly be going back and looking things up and clarifying. So I would read this a little bit more difficult than I think the last several games we've been reviewing. And part of that is going to go into the next section about how complex it is. I feel like the rules are written well, and they do try to head off any confusion. The rulebook has a clarification section, which I don't know if I've ever seen that before. Maybe like, similar to an FAQ section, I guess. But you know, they're calling out specific things that they know people get confused about or have questions about. And they're giving a little bit more detail about, you know, specific person powers or factions, or whatever. So there's several things that are listed there as clarifications. And then there are also additional sheets that come with the game one to describe like the solo and the two player rules, and then another one to basically describe all of the different symbols and terminologies that you might find out a card, because there are a lot Yeah, to help kind of expand on the understanding of what that means. Going

Jake: 41:18

back to the like the rules real quick in their frequently asked section or the clarification. Something I wanted to give an example of was Rachel's power for Countess Ariana, because the power is whenever she gains whenever a harvest, whenever you harvest spice, you take one less, so we didn't know what that applied to, because there are cards that in the reveal or in the agent effects that give you spice, we didn't know, I'm gonna go back to one more thing I do know about dune spice is harvested, it's actually a byproduct of the larval stage of the sandworms. So it has to be harvested. So that just means you get it right, like you get the spice so we weren't sure if that's what that means is from anytime you get it, or those specific worker placement slots, and it is in there, it says for specifically, it's those worker placement slots, all of the spice that you get is not harvested, it's just game.

Rachel: 42:15

Yeah. And then this kind of goes into something that I was gonna say, I don't think it's actually in the clarification section like about my character, I think it's on the other sheet about like terminology and stuff on the cards that describes what harvesting is. So we spent a couple of minutes flipping through the rulebook and going through all these different pages, saying, like, I know, I saw this somewhere, you know, just trying to remember where exactly, and so that definitely does, I feel like add to the difficulty a little bit, just the fact that it's like, Ah, I know this is in here somewhere, I just can't find it. Yeah, so I'm gonna give it I'm gonna give it a six.

Jake: 42:57

Yeah, I'm just gonna give it a six and a half a seven on difficulty. Yeah, the next reading that we like to use is simple versus complex. If you're not sure what that means, or how that's different from easy versus difficult. The example we like to use is chess. Chess is an easy game in the sense that there are a limited number of pieces, and they make very specific moves, they don't change. But it's a very complex game in the amount of strategy that's brought to it. Some of the things that we use to dictate how complex a game is, how to use the mechanics to win, are there multiple viable strategies to win, how many moving pieces are going on? At the same time, I'm going to say this games are very complex. I agree, I would give this probably an eight. Honestly,

Rachel: 43:39

that's actually what I was thinking as an eight. I feel like there are a lot of different strategies that go into like how you use your character power, how you build your deck, what kind of slots, you focus on working. It's a lot more complex than just a straight up deck builder, because of all these added components and different ways of using the card, which is cool, because that means that there's a lot of different ways that you can go about winning, right, you can build two different completely strategies, and they can both be viable. Absolutely. Which I love that, you know, I love kind of finding my own way in a board game, and figuring out how I would do it rather than the way that like the game says I'm supposed to do it.

Jake: 44:27

Yeah, I think that you know, just off the top of my head like when to focus on factions and getting the reputation when to focus on combat, when to focus on regaining resources, when to focus on gaining new resources like your new worker for the worker placement slot, the permanent persuasion power, when to harvest by, like there are so many different things to manage, when to do them when not to do them. And you can make an entirely different strategy each game if you want to do and still do well

Rachel: 44:59

actually I'll give an example that I feel like is really good and like unique to this game. And that's choosing whether or not to use all of your workers, because it costs a card for you to place a worker, it might be beneficial for you to not use all your workers one turn, so that you can gain the reveal effects on a card instead. And in the second game that we played, I actually ended up doing that very early on, because I was having trouble with just getting enough persuasion to buy new cards from my deck that were actually helpful and useful, I would consistently finish the round with only like two persuasion, and that was not getting the anything that I needed. And so I decided to only play one of my workers that round, and save the persuasion that I had, so that I could actually buy something useful. Not only does that, you know, give me the extra persuasion, but because I'm skipping my second agent turn, I'm revealing before everybody else, and that gives me a first pick first buy of cards from the market, and ensures that I can get what I'm looking for.

Jake: 46:07

Right, it really behooves you to look very critically at what you're doing and when you're doing it. So I think this game is one of the more complex games we've gone over, if not the most complex. Yeah, that we've reviewed so far, that we've reviewed. So far, we haven't done dominant species.

Rachel: 46:25

Yeah, I agree. Eight. All right, our last rating section is rote versus random. So this is what elements of the game are randomized and make for a unique playing experience each time you play the game. So we're talking about deck builder. Obviously, there's lots of shuffled cards, you always start out with the same deck. But then what's available in the market is pretty randomized, like there's a pretty large selection of cards that are available in the market. And you know, only five of them are available for purchase at a time plus the three that Jake had mentioned earlier that are always there and available. Yeah. So that's pretty randomized, you know, you've got randomized conflict cards, which the last four cards of the conflict are, there's always the same four cards, but they might be in a different order just for the last four slots.

Jake: 47:16

So really only about half the conflict cards are randomized.

Rachel: 47:19

Yeah. And then you got the intrigue cards, and you've got the shuffle. Like if you choose to shuffle how you assign the characters that you're playing. So there is potentially quite a lot of randomization. And yet at the same time, because you have control over what cards that you're purchasing and placing in your deck, it can also be very controlled randomization, you know, inexperienced deck builder will tell you that it's not beneficial to put 500 cards in your deck, because that reduces the chances of you getting that one super powerful card that you really need.

Jake: 47:54

I agree, you know, I feel like this does have some randomized elements to it definitely randomized. But at the same time, I don't feel like it's overwhelmingly random to the point where I lose because of the cards. And really, that's all the today's randomized is the cards and their order. Unless, of course, you do choose to do the randomized character selection at the beginning. I like that. I do like doing that. That way, you're not always relying on this. This one particular strategy behooves you to kind of be fluid with what you're doing and work with what you have. I like that better. But I would probably give it like a five, four or five, like, it's not super random, but it is potentially random enough that it makes a difference.

Rachel: 48:37

Yeah, I was gonna give it a five I think, because again, I think you do have some randomization, but you also have quite a lot of control over it. So I think it's right there in the middle. Makes for a good balance, I feel. Yeah, I think it's a great balance. All right, it is time to answer our question, Jake, would you rather play this game than put away multiple weeks worth of laundry that has been piling up in the closet because you're just too lazy to put it away? But now you can't find any of your underwear and you might as well just put it away because no matter how much you dig, it's not showing up and you really hope your puppy didn't eat it.

Jake: 49:14

So you asked this question, and it makes it feel like if I choose to play the game, then I just don't have underwear to wear. Yes, that's fine. Nobody really needs underwear. I would much rather play dune Imperium.

Rachel: 49:31

Going commando playing Dune. I like it. Yeah.

Jake: 49:33

Or you know, just who needs pants? We don't need pants. People live for hundreds or 1000s of years without clothes. Why do I need them? Yep, there it is. There you have it. That's dude Imperium.

Rachel: 49:47

Thank you guys so much for listening. We really appreciate everyone who comes here and listens to us every week, you know, and again, we are doing a giveaway so please check out our Facebook page. There will be pinned to the top of the page, a gleam giveaway that has multiple ways to enter including something secret in this episode that you're going to have to go back and remember, so hopefully you actually listened. But, you know, we just are really appreciative of the support that we've gotten and how much this has grown in the last year. So really, thank you, as always hit us up on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at so board podcast. So Bo, AR D podcast, we'd love hearing from you any house rules or fun experiences that you have with this game, you'll also be able to see some of our pictures and short stories of things that we're doing in regards to tabletop gaming, and interact with us all things board gaming, you can also email us at We are so bored@gmail.com So that's w e a r e s o Bo, AR D at Gmail, and make sure you hit that subscribe button. I know you don't like hearing it. I know it's annoying, but come on. It helps us helps us understand our demographics. And it helps you know exactly when new episodes come out. Come on.

Jake: 51:06

That also helps other people who might be interested in the show find us

Rachel: 51:10

that's leaving a rating but yes, also leave a rating because it takes two seconds, please. Thank you.

Jake: 51:16

We also want to give a shout out to the people who knew we were going to be reviewing dune Imperium based on the picture we posted on social media last week. So congrats to Daniel Stafford, Chabuki Cheishvili, Stephan Zyweck, and Paul Benson. Awesome job, guys.

Rachel: 51:35

And we also want to give a shout out to our artists Mitchell Mims. He is accepting commissions. You can go check him out on Instagram at MIMSCOSA RA or on his websites. Mitchell Mims, M i c h e l m i m s.ca RR d.co.

Jake: 51:57

Once again, I'm streaming on a semi semi regular basis on Twitch. My schedule changes each week. But I do keep my schedule up to date on the streaming schedule tab on Twitch. So you could find me at twitch.tv/naughty Doc 541. That's NAU gh t. Why do C 541. And yeah, come in, hang out. Tell me what's going on. I'd love it and appreciate it. Watch. Follow anything. It's good. It's a good time. We're streaming Elden ring right now.

Rachel: 52:27

I will admit I'm not a like a souls person. But it is fun to watch.

Jake: 52:32

Oh yeah, this is a SoulsBorne game in case you weren't aware. But that's it. Thank you all for listening. We will see you next time.

Rachel: 52:38

Bye.