Dune: Imperium - How To Play

hi there and welcome to watch it played my name is rodney smith and in this video we're going to learn the one to four player game dune imperium designed by paul dennan and published by direwolf digital who helped sponsor this video the great houses of the imperium crave many things but perhaps nothing so much as the precious spice melange a resource found on only one planet in the known universe dune based on the film from legendary pictures and beloved books by frank herbert dune imperium has you playing as one of the great houses desperate to carve out your dominance in the coming conflicts so join me at the table and let's learn how to play to set up place the game board in the middle of the play area and then put these four alliance tokens on the circular spaces for them in these areas that match their color and their symbol then set this piece known as the mentap onto the outline space for it here the cards with this back are known as conflicts which will separate into three shuffled piles based on the values here set all of the conflict three cards into a face down pile on this space of the board and then deal five random ones on top from the conflict two pile and then one random conflict one card on top of those creating a 10 card deck the rest of these you'll then return unseen to the box the intrigue cards which have this back you then shuffle and set face down by the board there are a bunch of cards with this back design but they can be divided into three main types based on the style of their titles found here at the top any with a white background like these are the reserve cards separate them into their three different types setting each stack in a reserve area near the board the rest have a black background but remove and set aside any that show an arrow to the left of their name we'll use these later the rest make up the imperial deck which you'll shuffle into a face down deck beside the board dealing five into a face up row beside it also by the board you'll create a bank of water solari and spice tokens each of the smaller tokens counts as one of that type of resource and larger tokens count as five now none of these are limited in other words if you run out of any of these while playing you can just use a suitable replacement and you'll also notice i have mine stored in some game trays that i have and if you'd like to get some of your own you'll find them linked in the description of this video every player now collects any one of the eight leaders and these will have either one two or three dots by their name the more dots the more strategically complex they are to use so for your first game they recommend picking leaders with only one dot then give each player any one of the unpicked leaders and flip them over to use as a player aid during the game remember the cards with this back that we set aside earlier they had a black border at the top and this arrow on the far left side you'll now organize them into four sets each one containing two dune desert planets two convincing arguments two daggers one reconnaissance one sikh allies one diplomacy and one signet ring each player takes one of these sets and shuffles it into a face down deck to the left of their leader in this video we're gonna set up a game between three players so we'll return all the unused leaders and starter decks back to the box every player now picks a color taking the matching components these are your agents and you'll set two of them onto your leader the third one known as your swordmaster you'll set next to the game board you also have two discs one is a counselor token you'll keep beside you but the other you place onto the zero space of the score track here unless you're setting up a four player game in which case everyone would begin with one point and they would all place their markers on this space every player has a combat marker and you set it sword side up onto the zero space here below each of the four alliance tokens we placed earlier you'll find influence tracks and each player sets one of their cubes on the bottom row of each one then set three more cubes into the circle of this area that's closest to where you're seated at the table all your remaining components which includes your counselor the extra cubes and these three control markers you'll keep in a personal supply where everyone can see them then each person collects one water token from the supply you then determine a first player randomly and give them this first player token i should also mention if you're setting up a solo or two player game there are additional setup steps you need to follow found on this separate sheet that i won't be going over now but we'll discuss briefly at the end of the video otherwise that's the setup in dune imperium you and the other players are leaders of one of the great houses of the imperium vying for domination over your rivals which will be tracked in victory points have the most victory points by the end of the game and you win the game is played over a series of rounds and each round is broken into five phases starting with the appropriately named round start phase here you flip over the top card of the conflict deck this will show the potential rewards available to players who participate and succeed in the combat phase that occurs later then each player draws five cards from their personal deck forming their hand for the round now you only have a few cards in your deck so in a later round you'll definitely run out of them to draw any time in the game that you're required to draw a card but your deck is empty you stop and shuffle the discard pile that you'll have created here into a new deck and then continue drawing as many cards as you're owed now it's time for the second phase of the round player turns starting with the person holding the first player token and going clockwise around and around the table each person takes either an agent or reveal turn to take an agent turn you must have an agent piece on your leader card to use so if you don't have one then you must take a reveal turn instead and after taking a reveal turn your turns will be skipped for the rest of this phase while the other players continue to go but once everyone has taken a reveal turn the phase ends now you can take a reveal turn early even if you have agents available but normally players will play agents until they have none remaining and then take the reveal turn but with that understood let's go back to the table and see what an agent turn looks like here you play any one card from your hand face up in front of you checking the icons along the left side of its main image you'll find anywhere from zero to seven of these and they're known as agent icons that represent different political groups and organizations that you can send your agents to if that space is empty and that area's symbol is on the card that you just played spaces are shaped like this and they'll have an image or other icon inside of them and the agent icon you need to play in order to travel to a space will be shown here in its upper left hand corner so by playing this signet ring it means i could send one of my agents to a space marked with either a landsrod city or spice trade icon that would allow me to travel to any one of the spaces within this area but not to spaces like here or here that show different agent icons if you ever see any symbols beneath the agent icon of a space you want to send your agent to that is an additional cost you must immediately pay for example going to haga basin requires playing a card with the spice trade symbol and then paying one water costs like this you return from the area in front of you to the general supply then once you've paid the cost for a space if any you move an agent from your leader to that space and gain the benefits showing to its right along with any benefit showing on this gray line of the card you played known as its agent box and you can resolve these benefits in any order now this here is the symbol for the spice resource so it means we would take two of those tokens from the supply and as we'll see later additional spice may end up on this symbol and if so you also collect any there at this time as well we also resolve our agent box effect here which shows the signet ring symbol this means you get to resolve the special signet ring ability of your leader which will be shown in this area of their card this symbol here means that you draw a card from your deck and add it to your hand every leader also has a unique passive effect here to the left this is always active and can be used anytime it applies so be sure to pay attention to it for this leader it says that they can check the top card of their deck at any time that they want but then have to put it back when they're done as you can probably imagine the player turns phase will offer you all kinds of options you'll be examining your cards to see what areas you can send your agents to and then picking which card to pair with that action so you can take advantage of its specific effects now every space on the board has its own unique benefits and these are all explained here on this board space guide the back of the rule book also explains every symbol you'll encounter but i want to go over enough of the spaces with you so you'll be able to understand any symbols you run into while playing anytime you see a gray cube on a board space or a card that you've played it means you recruit a single troop for each of those symbols now this is not a card you'll find in your opening deck but we'll see later how you can acquire new ones at the beginning of the game to get to the space we probably would have played a card more like this to recruit you take a troop cube from your supply and put it in your garrison which is the circle here that's closest to your seat at the table now once you run out of troops in your supply you can't add any more until you get some back after adding a troop to your garrison check the space you just assigned your agent to if it shows a desert illustration with cross swords here it's a combat space and that means you can move any number of troops you just recruited this turn from the garrison directly to this area of the board known as the conflict then whether you moved any of the troops you just recruited into the conflict or not you may move up to two more that were already in the garrison over to the conflict but again only if your agent just went to a combat space for example going here would also allow me to recruit troops for in this case but you'll notice this location is not a combat space it doesn't have a desert illustration or swords here in the corner so this means the newly recruited troops would go into my garrison but none of my troops would be able to enter the conflict at this time some combat spaces you go to won't actually help you recruit any troops so they won't add anything new to your garrison that you can then move directly into the conflict but don't forget anytime you go to a combat space in addition to any troops you recruited which in this case was zero you can always move up to two troops that were already in your garrison into the conflict area and remember the option to move up to two means that you could just move one in or none at all either way the more troops you have in the conflict the better chance you'll have of winning it and getting the best rewards from this card as we'll learn about later all of these concepts related to troops can be a little difficult to understand at first so let me just quickly summarize once more there are three main places for troops to be in your personal supply in your garrison or in the conflict area here in the center by going to a combat space you can send any of the troops you might have just recruited directly into the conflict if you want or you can leave them in your garrison that's up to you but whether you recruited any troops or not as long as you went to a combat space you can always move up to two troops from your garrison into the conflict any time you're allowed to recruit but run out of troops in your supply just recruit as many as you can and ignore any extras and don't worry if you don't understand the importance of troops in your garrison versus in the conflict just yet that will all make more sense when we see how conflict is resolved later anytime you see this symbol it refers to the solari resource so just gain that amount from the supply going to this space lets you make a single trade of either two three four or five spice back to the supply and then you gain the related amount of solari so if we traded in three spice we get to take eight solari back anytime you see this symbol you gain an intrigue card from the top of this deck and then you'll keep that face down in front of you but you can examine it at any time these come in three main categories as shown here on the bottom there's plot combat and end game intrigue cards these two types we'll learn about later but plots can be played at any time during any of your agent or reveal turns providing you with the benefits shown here many of which you'll understand better as we go through the rest of the symbols on the board so let's go back and take a look at some more of them by going here and spending eight solary you gain your swordmaster the agent that you set by the board move this to your leader and from now on you'll have it to a sign for agent turns as well going here lets you draw a card that's the symbol we saw earlier and then if this piece known as the mentat is here you get to take it and place it on your leader you'll be able to use it just like an agent in a future turn this phase but unlike your swordmaster that once recruited you get to keep from round to round the mentat is temporary you'll have to return it in a later phase as we'll see when you go here this symbol means that you gain a full space card from the reserve this is one of the three available cards in the reserve stacks and it's special because it's the only one that shows one of each type of agent icon so playing it will allow you to travel to any space gaining a card is different than drawing a card cards you gain like this fold space one come from somewhere other than your deck and once gained you add them to your discard pile not to your hand so it's only once your deck is empty and you have to shuffle your discard pile into a new deck that you'll then get a chance to draw and be able to use cards like this that you gained previously anytime you see an arrow either pointing down like this or pointing to the right as we see on this card's effect it means you must do the thing on the top or on the left in order to gain the thing below or to the right now this symbol means that you must trash a card and that can come from your hand from the play area in front of you or even your discard pile and then you get to draw two new cards from your deck trashing means that you remove the chosen card from the game but this can be a good thing as we saw with the fold space location there are ways to gain new cards and as you gain stronger ones trashing weaker cards means that as you draw through your deck the hands you get will improve giving you better symbols and abilities to resolve but now let's move on and look at some more spaces on the board going to this secret space lets you draw an intrigue card from the top of the deck and then each opponent holding four or more intrigue cards must randomly give you one of theirs i should stop here and point out that this space along with every other space in this column is associated with one of the four powerful factions in the dune universe and there are two spaces for each faction which you can identify by their colors related symbols and the name of the faction here anytime you assign an agent to one of the spaces related to one of these four factions you go up an influence within that related faction by moving your colored cube up one space along this track some card effects will also provide you with influence in these factions showing either their related symbol or a question mark meaning that you can choose which faction your influence will change in the number of gold upward arrows or red downward arrows will indicate how far you move in either direction for example this would cause you to go up one influence in the beni jesuit faction whereas the agent box effect here would cause you first to go down one influence in any one faction then pay two spice and be able to go up to influence in any one faction as soon as you reach the second level in any faction's influence you'll see this symbol which represents gaining a victory point anytime you gain victory points during the game move your related marker here up one space on this track now if you ever drop below to influence in a faction then you lose the related victory point you had gained earlier and adjust your marker accordingly if you reach the fourth level of influence then you gain the bonus in that space in this case you would draw an intrigue card if you later drop below that level you don't have to return the bonus but if you go back up to that level again later you gain the bonus again also the first person to reach the fourth level of influence in a faction which will have this golden background is said to have secured an alliance with that faction and collects the related alliance token gaining the victory point that's showing on it as soon as another player rises to a higher space in this area of an influence track they will take the alliance token from whoever has it causing that other player to lose this victory point as the new player gains it and if you get to the top of the influence track while there no one can go higher than you so your alliance token is safe so that covers the rules for these influence tracks and anytime you play a card to go to one of their spaces as long as you pay any related costs you then get to resolve the benefits of that space the card's effect and the influence track in any order with influence understood i can now explain this additional cost found in this space to go here you need to play a card that shows the city agent icon but also have two influence in the frame infection which this symbol represents so that just means my marker would have to be on this space or higher this leaves us with two final spaces to cover and we'll start with the high council you pay five solari to go here and then you place your counselor token which you'll have over by your leader map on any one of these four available spaces and it will stay here for the rest of the game now you can only take this action once per game as you're reminded of here but from now on during future reveal turns you'll gain two bonus persuasion now going over here instead gives you one troop for your garrison and then gives you one extra persuasion during your next reveal turn i know i haven't explained what persuasion is or how you use it but that's because you only use it during your reveal turn which we're going to learn about right now remember if it comes to your turn and you have no agents left on your leader or you decide not to use any agents you have remaining you must take a reveal turn performing four steps starting with revealing cards here you reveal every card in your hands you haven't played yet putting them face up in front of you but separate from cards that you have already played you then gain and resolve all of the reveal effects of each of the cards you just revealed which are located in this box found at the bottom with a blue background some of these symbols we've seen before others might be new but you resolve them in any order if your reveal effects show any of these persuasion symbols total and add them to any other persuasion you might have earned during your agent turns for example by having a counselor here or by sending an agent to this spot in a case like this we'd say we had a total of six persuasion during the reveal turn you can then spend the persuasion you have to acquire new cards either from the five face-up ones here that make up what is known as the imperium row or from these piles in what is known as the reserve which are made up of these three specific cards one of them fold space we've seen already the cost to acquire a card is shown in its top right hand corner and you can acquire as many cards as you like so long as you have the persuasion left over to pay for them i'd like to also point out this card specifically from the reserve and you'll notice it has an arrow just beneath its cost and there are other cards like this as well and it means that after paying for that card you gain what's shown here in this case one victory point now you only get that reward at the time that you buy the card not each time you play the card for this one when you play it it's best during the reveal turn where you'll earn one spice you won't keep track of your persuasion with tokens because any you don't spend during a reveal turn are lost so just buy as many cards as you can or wish to with the persuasion you've earned this round and ignore the rest anytime you pay for and acquire a card from the imperium row you replace it right away with a new one from the top of the deck and then you can continue spending for example i could now buy any one of these including the one that was just revealed if i have enough leftover persuasion as explained earlier cards you acquire go straight to your discord pile and you'll gain access to them in future rounds after your deck runs out and you have to reshuffle the discard pile into a new one the third step of your reveal turn is to set your strength based on the troops that you have in this conflict area any troops you have in your garrison are ignored they are not contributing to the conflict now as we're shown down here in this bottom corner every cube is worth two strength so here i have two four six strength and i indicate this by moving my related marker to that position on this track cards you revealed may have also provided you with sword symbols which as we see here are worth one strength each so i would move my marker up one more space if you would ever gain more than 20 strength in a single turn flip your marker over to this 20 plus side and then keep counting again from the start of the track so this would mean that i have 24 strength your total strength in the conflict will come into play later in the round but with it set now as the last step of your reveal turn you send all of the cards in front of you both from your agent turns and from your reveal turn over to your discard pile now as mentioned once you've completed a reveal turn you won't take any more turns during this phase and instead the other players will continue taking agent turns until everyone has either chosen or been forced to take their own reveal turns which brings everyone to the next phase of the round combat starting with the first player and going clockwise around and around the table each person with at least one troop in the conflict area can choose to play any number of intrigue cards from their hand that have this combat keyword and would affect the strength in the conflict if you have no troops in the conflict only in the garrison or in your personal supply like this player has then you cannot play combat intrigue cards but let's say the first player here did choose to play this card now they can increase their strength by three points or retreat up to three of their troops sending them back to their garrison they'll choose to gain three strength and adjust their marker here accordingly if you choose to pass rather than play a combat intrigue curt you can still play one or more if it comes back around to your turn again however as soon as all of the players have passed consecutively no more intrigue cards can be played and it's time to resolve the conflict anyone who doesn't have a troop in the conflict is ignored but everyone else compares their strength the player with the most gains the top reward shown here the player with the next highest strength gains the second reward if you only have three players like we do here then no one gains the third reward even if this third player had been in the conflict this is only awarded to the third highest strength if you have a four player game next i need to explain what happens when you have ties in strength and to do this it'll be easier if we pretend that all three of the players are in the conflict now if two or more players are tied for first place in strength then no one gains the first place reward and instead they each gain the second place reward now if this is a three player game that means no other reward is given out however if you have a four player game where there's a tie for first place anyone in second place would instead gain the third place reward now let's say instead you had a tie for second place the first place person would still get the first place reward but then everyone tied for second would get the third place reward instead and nothing else would be awarded and if players ever tie for third place none of those players get anything once all the rewards have been given out each player takes back all of their troops they had in the conflict and puts them in their personal supply not back in their garrison everyone also resets their combat markers back to zero and that covers the conflict step but i do want to show you one symbol you'll find as a possible reward on these cards that we haven't looked at yet this is the control flag symbol and gaining this benefit means you get to place one of your flag tokens into this control outline of the indicated space so this is called siege of arakin so we would be able to put it here at our keen however if another player had their control flag there already they would first take that back and then you would get to add your token to that spot now there are two benefits that come from a control flag first of all anytime you or another player puts their agent on that related space the person with the control flag will now gain the related reward here so in this case one solari from the supply additionally and this is very easy to forget but now anytime a conflict card is revealed at the beginning of a round that shares the name of the space where you have a control flag you may immediately choose to move one troop from your supply directly into the conflict okay with the conflict resolved it's time to move to the fourth phase of the round known as makers check each of the three spaces of the board that show what is known as this maker symbol and if there's no agent at that location add a single spice from the supply to that spot in this way if one of these locations doesn't receive an agent for several rounds in a row the amount of spice there will just continue to increase but the first player to send an agent to one of these spaces will then get the listed spice value and every spice token that has accumulated there and now we arrive at the fifth and final phase of the round the recall phase first check to see if any player has 10 or more victory points on the score track or if the conflict deck is empty if either of these things are true the game ends and you check to see who won but let's assume that neither is the case and in that situation you now prepare for the next round first return the mentat to its space on the board if it had been collected and then each player collects all of their agents and returns them back to their leader mat finally you pass the first player marker clockwise and begin a new round now if instead you get to that fifth phase and someone has 10 or more points or the conflict deck is empty then the game ends and it's time to determine the winner here each person plays any intrigued cards they are holding with the end game keyword here resolving their effects now the score track only goes up to 12 but you can still gain more points than that just keep track of your actual total and now whoever has the most points wins in the case of a tie the tie is broken first by checking who has the most spice and if there's still a tie check solari then water and finally if there's still a tie check for the tied player who has the most garrison troops if the tie isn't broken by that point the tied players share the victory and that's everything you need to know to play the game with three or four players this included sheet explains how to play solo and two-player games this side covers the two-player rules that uses this deck of cards to provide an automated opponent that will take actions along with the human players in solo play you also use this deck and the rules found on this side of the sheet which provides instructions for setting the challenge to your desired level of difficulty the game also comes with an app you can download to streamline the solo and two-player experience but otherwise that's everything you need to know to play dune imperium if you have any questions about anything you saw here feel free to put them in the comments below and i'll gladly answer them as soon as i get a chance you'll also find forums for discussion pictures other videos and lots more over on the games page at board game geek and i'll put a link to that in the description below and if you found this video helpful please consider giving it a like subscribing and clicking that little bell icon so you get notification anytime we post a new video but until next time thanks for watching [Music] [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: Watch It Played

Views: 485,395

Keywords: Watch It Played, Miniatures, Tutorials, Instructions, Tutorial, Instructional, Board Games, Legendary Entertainment, Play Throughs, Dune, Card Games, Learn, Learn How To Play, Tabletop, Game Rules, Dune: Imperium, Dire Wolf Digital, How To Play, Rules, Board Game

Id: nvX9EYxQEfY

Length: 31min 2sec (1862 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 27 2020