Dune War for Arrakis Review

Dune War for Iraqis this is a two faction game depicting the struggles between the Aron and the Traders and the fman lied with your Traders on the planet Dune and you probably have seen the movie one of the many movies especially the recent ones and it's a two- faction game as I said mainly two player game really although you can also play the uh solo with a uh with an AI you can also play to solo two-handed which I did you can play to two players which I also did against a human opponent and then there are variants that allow you to play it with three or four players splitting the main factions so but again my review is based on playing it's solo two-handed and two player solo the board I think you're already took a look at it as I was moving the camera it's pretty big is pretty nice actually what you see here is the actual setup including the setup for the vehicles for the arcan in the first turn and so the aranan will be based of course at the beginning especially here in the central area on the mountains and around the plateau that is where they have their settlements and from there they will move out to trying to uh take down the siege the settlements of the of the fremen that are represented by these tokens here they also have values oh this is a good one values between one and three and these values are secret and you can keep them secret if you're playing two-handed solo like I did I simply had no idea how valuable the those were and so uh that's the fren that's start from those settlements here and the Aron basically are trying to collect spice which I will do by placing these uh collectors the Harvesters and the Harvesters if they're in the Deep desert close to the edge of the board they yield more spice but they're also more likely to be gobbled up by by the big worms the Aron are collecting spice and also trying to destroy the the fman sieges and fman SL trades are trying to do a variety of things well first there is a victory condition card that they will draw at the beginning of the game tell them telling them exactly what they need to score there are three resources in which the uh Traders can collect points and if this is the victory card that the Traders Drew at the beginning of the game they they need to score nine points on this in this resource six on this one and four on this one and yes there is a track there's a a track there that allows us to keep a record of where we are on those three scales and then then we had the Preen cards three are revealed at the beginning of a turn and I already placed those I set out the game so I'll be ready to play solo I mean just played solo after I filmed this segment and before I uh filmed the conclusions still three will be revealed and as you can see they will tell value they will describe a condition that needs to be met either at the end of the round or sometimes during the action resolution phase by completing the conditions described there then the Traders will collect the corresponding points and that's the that's the idea the Traders whenn if they met the victory conditions of their card at the end of a round thear Conan they again score points by collecting spice and destroying uh fman settlement they keep track of those points there but they can win immediately for them it's instant Victory so the moment they take down a siege that gives me enough points this one for example be three points the moment they take down that they win the game if you played W rings you'll be familiar amiliar with the main ideas here because the mechanics are reminiscent each player has a dashboard this is the one for the atrus this is the one for the aronin with different actions indicated there at the beginning of the round players will roll these Dice and they will place them on the corresponding uh actions there and so for example these are the dice that I rolled and one fell on the ground well I'll find it later maybe boom and I's just say that this one was there just for the fun of it so players roll the dice that indicate the actions that they take the action slots have two actions printed on them and they can be used as many times as you want as long as you have enough dice to pay for it but then there also leader cards that have the same two actions so the same actions you see there they're also here plus they have a third action uh printed in red and this can be used only once per round so if I had these di here I could spend one to take that action but once I do it I remove that card as a reminder that now one left with only the two basic actions not all slots have Leaders with their corresponding actions on the on the board at the beginning uh but those leaders maybe uh may enter play later so they will have a miniature and they will also have a card that again makes your action a little bit better so that's going to be the main engine of the game that is that the players will alternate spending dice spend a die to perform one of the actions Allowed by that D and you continue like this until there are no dice left you also have planning cards that you can uh play by spending dice so any D that you spend will like to play a card they can be very powerful they can also be very situational each player has each faction has two decks to draw from you can also discard cards to boost combat and we'll talk about that in a second not literally but figurativ so oh I should also mention that the uh at traas have another special action which is the desert action the desert power because they got that msti going on with the sand and the weird creatures in it as long as the um the traas have fewer action dice left unused than their conon they can use this action here which allows them to place two warm tokens and those indicate that the the worms may be there move two sand worms once they are on the board or attack with one sand warm because yes there are not at the beginning on the board at the beginning of the game but those guys are ready to start some serious trouble there the actions the actions there you go well the main actions really are uh kind of what you expect in a game about confli which is there will be actions that will allow players to to recruit units you have a lot of nice plastic here the uh units are identified by the collar telling you who controls them and also the quality by the shape of the base the round ones are the regular unit is the square ones are Elite and the and the exagonal ones are super Elite so the Sardar for de Conan and the fedin for the tradus and they will of course work in different ways each team has unnamed leaders who are let's just say good enough and then you have named Leaders with the ones that come with a specific card and they have different abil this as indicated by the card themselves so actions will allow you to deploy leaders uh to deploy units and or leaders actions will allow you to move them moving is pretty tricky on AR rockus and so usually movement is just from one area to the next adjacent the archon can also use Vehicles you can use the Orit toter you place the vehicles on the board at the beginning of the round B moving arter and a legion so a group in the sector where the arter was can move by two instead of one so from there I could do one two you can also move across those solid red edges that you could not just walk across any or the top turn to help you there and supposedly they did that I just moved that way actions will allow you to deploy units to move with units and to attack units and you Haack into adjacent areas now the uh framing can be a little bit sneaky stealth is very important for them that's why you have those tokens at the beginning that indicate how many units they have there they do not necessarily tell you well of course your con don't know exactly what those are unless you decide to uh spend or knops as they conom to Scout and so for example I decid to attack there there were hidden units and it turns out that it is too a complete units and so I just replace them that way combat is pretty simple the two sides will use their combat dice their combat Dice and you roll a number of dice equal to the number of units that you have there so there'll be two for that side and three and three for that side you roll the dice and then well oh that's what I rolled that's that's definitely what I rolled no this that's so you roll the dice and you see what happens pretty much each of these symbols inflicts a casualty on the opponent however the shields block those casualties however special elite units such as the sard the card the fing break the Shields and what these symbols mean depends on the leaders that you have there usually if you don't have any leaders that is a mess otherwise it can me different things so for example if the the lovely Beast is here then uh that means two hits and just to visualize I'm going to replace it like that so that's uh what happens The Shield blocks that one so nothing happens there and the Arcana have inflicted three losses against them against the uh their atres the elite units they can remove the count as two losses so I can do that and then I can also downgrade this one into a basic unit like that so taking three points of damage I could also actually take a hit on a unit suppose I decided to do that I don't know why but I did that's a possibility in the game now if one side is completely annihilated the defender is completely annihilated then the attacker moves in if the defender is still there then in order to continue the attack the attacker needs to take a casualty and I decide to do just so and then we would repeat repeat the procedure with our remaining units and that's and that's how combat works again you have going to have a lot of other little bits and pieces moving things and other elements to to portray to mirror the complexity of the theme but the general idea is still that you're going to roll dice and then play dice to activate actions and cards to recruit more units to move units to attack uh the other player and to and and also you will play cards and so you'll also have actions to collect those cards first place player to complete their Victory conditions wins the game very good game very good game for sure you can see the DNA of word the ring uh but you have a game which is simpler doesn't take all day to play more streamlines so really good because again you have a highly thematic game a really cool mechanic the card driven SL dice driven mechanic that you have here it's one that I really like I like it in war games I like it in so many other games because it gives you a balance between a certain element of Randomness which can be significant you really want to deploy troops but you don't get the right dice you can mitigate that with cards though but it's still something you have to consider uh you want to do a certain action again you don't get the dice so there is a random element but there are ways of working around it so that the random element is mainly presenting you with challenges rather than denying opportunities or giving you easy victories uh the same goes for combat because you have uh well you again you're going to roll dice but if you prepare well for a certain battle then there are many ways in which uh Randomness is mitigated and you feel that the overal outcome of the whole confrontation still has to do with strategy and reacting to each other actions rather than just pure Randomness but of course when we play a game that is in the lineage orward ring but has to do with Dune we want to see the theme we want to see the topic if we just want to see about war there's there's so many other games that can do that to me a game of this kind uh lives or dies wins or loses uh based on how it portrays the theme and I really enjoyed that now I read the novel twice in my life but both times was a long time ago I watch the recent movies I watched the recent movies and uh and I it's good enough for me it's detailing gives me the sense of this highly this vast asymmetrical contrast between well a faction which is all about greed and power and might and numbers and another faction which is about Stealth thing nonconventional uh means of confrontation so that's a disparity that asymmetry works very well the two sides do play compettive differently and I had to say I do prefer the atrus Fran side uh it's just more fun to play because it has more variety there are more things going on objectives that change all the time and so you're going for these targets of opportunity um that very different you need to find the right time when Paul can take a break to drink the water water of lives and he's going to be in the Regeneration tank for a while um you got to move into the desert do different things but also possibly try to delay as much as possible to harass uh the forces of the Arcon that will come and attack the various friendman settlements the Aron a little more lanar to play probably easier so if you have a starting player and a player who's maybe not familiar with games of this kind of entity and I'm talking about the design more than the size of the Box um the Aron side is definitely more linear to play because you're amassing forces and you're sending them out and you try to keep somebody behind to protect your own settlements because uh the at trees can also score points by destroying those settlements which is ritually impossible if you keep them guarded but you may not be able to keep them guarded where you while you're going out there to uh destroy their own settlements and from time time in the later parts of the game the Traders may come up with some atomics and then they just like take down part of the mountains and the worms all over side and stying to take big bites starting to take big bites from the aranan settlements there's a lot going on there again I just gave you a general sense a general sense of the engine because going into all the Thematic elements would have made my main segments too much of a of a tutorial which you don't need there are other people who do those better but I want to knowledge the conclusions that those thematic elements are there you're going to see the tradus sand ride and so using those tokens to move fast in the desert you see the Haron being under pressure of both destroying the rebels and also producing spice there are penalties that you have to face if you don't uh produce enough spice every turn the two sides play very well it feels very thematic and again very asymmetrical giving value to the two sides when you play switching the game play surpris Sur the game plays surprisingly well also to player solo so two-handed solo um I just pretty much kept everything secret and I just feel oh look how many the oh these are how many people the Traders have oh this is how valuable that um that sieg is to me it worked and had a good time playing it that way also production is great the board is awesome lots of plastic Miniatures and they all look nice so I'm very happy very pleased with the Dune War for araq kiss if you like the Dune franchise and if you like word the ring I'd say pretty much this is a this is a shb because this is a good game

Channel: MarcoOmnigamer

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Id: eEsrmitXxIw

Length: 19min 18sec (1158 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 14 2024