How to Play Dune in 21 Minutes

hey folks I'm Shea Parker and this is RTFM the show where I teach you how to play a game because you must not fear learning to play a game fears the fun killer the little death of a game night stroke is getting away from me a little bit and if you don't know what it's from it's probably because we haven't read dune or watched the movie based on it or played the original dune board game released in 1979 and that's all fine even though the movie has both sting and Sir Patrick Stewart and it's open what are you waiting for but it does mean that we're gonna need to catch you up on a few things so here's a really quick primer on doom okay so it's about twenty thousand years in the future and there's a Galactic Empire with a bunch of feudal houses there's interstellar travel which is made possible by a substance called melange or spice and that only exists on one planet Arrakis aka doom which is infested with these gigantic worms so the emperor wants to make House Atreides and how sarcone and fight each other because Duke Leto is getting just a little too popular so he gives a trade he's the mining rights to do which her Konan used to have q evil laughter leaders son Paul is learning the weirding way from his mom who's part of this group of psychic space nuns called the Ben adjuster these ladies they're cool and they've got this whole plan to unite the Great Houses feels a little eugenics II don't think about it too hard Paul is now leading the Fremen in a jihad against the heart Conan he learns how to attract and ride the worms which the rakonin can't defend against because these worms are like really big Paul has victory in hand but then the Baron's nephew fade goes I will kill him and challenges Paul to a knife but he loses because he sucks and with that there's nothing standing in Paul's way now with control of the throne and the spice he changes the galaxy forever and that's just the first book there's a ton more so let's look at book to dune Messiah now we start with before we get into it just a couple quick things to mention first off in this video I'll be teaching the basic version of a six player game including each factions basic abilities there is an advanced mode which I'll be teaching in a separate video that video is accessible my patreon backers right now and will go public for everyone else in 30 days and while I'm talking about it thank you to all my patrons who voted on June my patrons pick which game I teach next and just a buck a month lets you be part of that second my viewers are really good at spotting any tiny mistakes that might come up so take a look at the description box below because I keep an updated list of Corrections as they appear now let's get started in doon you will be playing as one of these six great factions of the Galactic Empire fine for control of Arrakis you'll be dropping your military forces in different places on the map racing to pick up spice the money of the game attacking or a lying with the other factions and avoiding both the ravaging storm that orbits the planet and the monstrous Shia elude the giant worms that will devour everything you love and cherish no biggie in order to win you need to control three of the five strongholds on the map at the end of a round or four if you're in an alliance now so far so every other troops on a map game but dune will always keep you guessing because you never know when the rug will be pulled right out from under you either by a well-timed treachery or trader card an unexpected warm attack or an accidental nuclear explosion yes that can happen we'll get to it in a bit to set things up first have each player choose a faction there are number ways to do this let's just say we pick them randomly and that we're playing as my favorite faction the benaderet each faction has some forces some leaders a player aide card a screen keep things secret with some strategy advice on it and some faction icon tokens place one of these on the map and space closest to where you're sitting then look at your player aid to see how much spice you start with and where to put your forces the Fermin have to make a small choice here but everyone else just places they're starting troops wherever it says so the map should look something like this deal out one treachery card to each player and for trader cards the treachery cards are like items mostly used during combat but some have special abilities and some are literally useless trader cards are a little different these show every leader that belongs to every faction in the game take a look at them but only keep one if you ever have a battle with an opponent who uses this leader you will automatically win the fight so high number targets will be valuable but sometimes lower ones can be good and if you draw any one of your own leaders that means you know for a fact they won't betray you which is good Intel the last thing to do before getting started is to set the location of the storm place the storm token at it's starting space and give the two players who's faction markers are on either side of it a battle wheel each player will secretly spin it to a number between 0 and 20 reveal and add up both numbers then move the storm that many spaces following the arrows there are 18 sectors so since we got 21 we'll go 18 then 19 20 21 and we're ready to start a [Music] game of dune will take place over a maximum of 10 rounds with each round consisting of nine phases now according to the number of fingers on my hands that's a high number but most of them go very quickly of course before I go any further I need to mention that each faction changes the game in some fundamental way and I'll go over each of them at the end of this video but until we get there for the most part I'll be teaching the generic rules first let's start with the storm phase here you'll be moving the storm around the map kind of like how we did in the setup the two differences are that the players who select the number will be the two who most recently used a battle wheel and they'll be picking a number from one to three here we would move the storm three spaces and this is where things get dangerous looking the map you'll notice the different shading on the various locations the darker stronghold and rock territories are protected from the storm but the sands aren't so if your units are in a sand location and the storm lands on or even passes over them it'll all die place all destroyed forces in the tile Axew tanks I have no idea how to pronounce that anyway there are a couple exceptions to your safe and hazardous locations first off the storm sectors don't line up perfectly to the locations so if your forces are here they're in trouble but if they're here then they're safe fernette second the polar sink is always protected from the storm and the Imperial basin car and Arrakeen are protected until someone destroys the shield wall by playing family Atomics the card will tell you how it works but from that on all three of those locations are vulnerable to the storm next up is the spiced blow you have a deck of cards that will tell you where the spice shows up each round flip a card and place the indicated spice on the indicated space nice and easy unless the shahe lewd shows up if that happens on the first round ignored and draw again every round after that look at the card beneath it that location gets chopped up by the worm and you destroy all forces and spice there then draw a new card and place spice in the new location well a worm attack can be devastating the actual big deal here is that it forces everyone to come to the table and talk things out of it after resolving a worm card begin a nexus phase now all that happens here is that players can form or break alliances but it's the only time in the game that either those things can happen and I'll talk more about alliances when we get to movement in combat next up we have chome charity any player with only one or zero spice calls out job and brings their total up to two you're gonna need some spice for what comes next so hopefully you don't get that low but if you do you'll be thankful for any little amount you can get now after charm you move on to the bidding phase here the players will be bidding on treachery cards but you won't know what you bid on until after you get it so try not spend too much money at the beginning of the bidding phase every player declares how many treachery cards they currently have your hand limit is 4 so if you're at max you won't be able to bid on any new cards for each player the can bid on cards draw one out face down since just showed the Fremen with four they're maxed out and we deal five cards bidding will start with the first player which is determined by looking at the store marker and finding the next player token in counterclockwise order however since the Fremen are out of this phase you move on to the next player on their turn each player in order can raise the bid or pass eventually only one player will be left and they'll get the card the money that they bid will then be paid to the Emperor not the bank another reason not to go hog-wild to these bids once the first card has been bought the second card will go for auction with the second player in turn order starting the bid or in our case since we skip to the Fremen the third player you'll keep going around like this until each card has been bought and then move on to revival during revival you can retrieve up to three dead forces from the tile axe attacks your faction will determine how many you get for free and the rest you can buy back at a rate of two spies per soldier these forces will go to your supply though not the board you also have a number of leaders that might get killed during the course of the game but you can't start reviving them until all of your leaders are dead once that happens you can get back one litre per turn by paying their fighting strength in spice however if that reader dies again place it facedown in the tanks until the rest of your leaders have been brought back and then killed again that double dead leader can't be revived now after the revival phase are these shipment and movement and battle phases because those are a little more details I'm gonna save them for the next section of the video and instead move on to spice collection after the combat phase any player with forces in a sector of the map with spice on it can collect it with each force grabbing two spice or if you occupy either karthick or air akane you've got that good good spice collecting machinery and you can get three spice per force lastly we have the mint at pause phase which is basically just checking to see if anyone has won the game again by occupying three or more strongholds and if not moving the turn tracker forward one space and starting again from the beginning all right you've been good you've eaten your vegetables your spicy desert vegetables so now let's drop in some forces and get in some fights Arrakis is not a place for cold Wars so let's heat things up a bit during the shipment and movement phase you will predictably be shipping and moving forces around starting the first player and going counterclockwise if you've got off-planet forces you can pay to make one shipment to doon and then one movement start by choosing how many forces you want to bring in which territory you want to send them to if it's a stronghold you'll pay one spice per unit otherwise it's two each and similar to bidding on treachery carts the spice you pay to transport your armies doesn't go to the bank it goes to the spacing guild player now obviously you can't ship units into a storm it's far too windy but because of these sector lines you can ship into a territory that is only partially in a storm keep in mind though that storm will keep moving real soon so you better have a plan if you do this you can drop forces into territories with enemy players units but you can't share space with allies also if a stronghold already has two factions forces the doors are locked and you can't get in after you've landed some troops it's time to move them around you get to grab a single stack of units from one location and move them to one adjacent territory however if you have forces in either of the big cities at the start of your move you have access to those ornithopters I showed you earlier which allow any of your forces to move up to three spaces instead of just one also when moving through territories you need to choose which sector to place your units but otherwise sectors have no effect on movement unless you know there's a storm there in which case it will completely block your path now as with shipping forces you can't move into a stronghold with multiple enemy factions in it but other territories can hold as many different troops as you want of course at the end of movement for every territory containing multiple different forces you're gonna have to fight so let's talk about that battles in dune are quick and merciless let me show you what I mean we playing as a bandage s right are currently first player which means that for each of our fights we are gonna be considered the aggressor there are two locations that will cause about to occur but as the aggressor we get to choose which battle to fight first let's start with this big three faction skirmish and let's choose the Emperor as our first enemy since they have the fewest forces each player gets a battle tile and you spin the wheel to determine how many forces you are committed we have six in a territory but we need to save some for the fight to come so we only deployed two forces along with our armies though we need to send a leader our leaders all have the same very good fighting strength of five but other faction leaders have a wide range of values after slotting in a leader and selecting our number both players reveal as expected the Emperor was unprepared for this fight and thus we win handily because they lost all of their troops are killed but here's the thing every force we committed dies too which is why you don't want to overexert yourself unlike forces though the losing leader doesn't automatically die unless you assassinate it more on that in a moment any surviving leaders are left in a location of the battle and can't participate in fights anywhere else in the map until the end of the round so that battle was a cakewalk but the Fremen are gonna be a tougher opponent besides now having as many forces in the space as we do we know that they have the strongest leader in the game so we want to take it out if we can when creating our battle plan we can choose to play a number of treachery cards there are a lot to choose from but most of them fall under the category of projectile weapons and poisons which will kill your opponent's leader versus shields and snoopers which will protect leaders against said weapons you can play one weapon and one defense so we choose this gong Jabbar and a shield and set up our battle the same as the last fight because our leader is stuck on us I might as well use her again we reveal our battle plans and while their total would be higher they don't have a poison defense meaning that their leader is killed and doesn't add its strength to the femen's total they used a projectile weapon but our shield blocked that so it all worked out great not only do we hold the territory because we won the battle we gain an amount of spice equal to the strength of any slain leader in the fight which means that if our leader had also died whoever wins the fight gets spiced for both of them I guess we're looting their corpse or something anyway after losing a fight all Treasury cards you played are discarded the winner gets to keep the cards they played but can choose to discard them which you might want to do especially if they were useless to begin with oK we've got one last battle with a heart Conan we use the same strategy as before though we have to pick a different leader this time and after we were real everything looks good they don't have a poisoned offense either so our Jimmy J ever should kill their leader unfortunately they have another trick up their sleeve after seeing which leader we sent in they reveal a traitor card with that same leader on it when this happens we instantly lose the fight or leader is killed they lose nothing regardless of what they played and they gained spiced matching our leaders strength not a great day for us if we happen to have their leader as well though we could reveal it to make it a draw but then we both lose everything in the territory including our leaders and cards and now no one gets any spice trainers Raphael once the aggressor has finished all of their battles move on to the next player in turn order that has to fight and now they're the new aggressor keep doing that until everyone's fought and move on to spice collection and a few final rules about battles first up if you're in the polar sync or a location that's split in two by the storm with different forces on either side no battle occurs second you have to send leaders into battle if you're able but if you have a cheap hero card you can use that instead of a leader it doesn't add any strength but you'll probably be less broken up about it if it died if you don't have a leader or a cheap hero you can still fight but you can't play any treachery cards and lastly if one player uses the last gun weapon and the other player uses a shield because of the fiction of the setting this creates a nuclear explosion and strays everything in the territory forces leaders other factions units that already mean in the fight yet even the spice on the ground it's all gone and no one's happy oh and a few more things that don't quite fit anywhere else in this video there are a number of cards in the game that aren't used during combat but they'll tell you what they do and how to play them it might be a good idea to check them out before your first game or you can just play and see what happens second you can bribe enemy players with spice to do or not do specific things but you can't bribe allies and something to keep in mind if you make a deal with someone that deal is binding so maybe don't agree to anything vague or too far in the future and since I mentioned allies let's go over that really quick like I mentioned earlier you can form alliances during the Nexus phase let's say we ally with the Emperor alliances can consist of only two players and they change the game in a few key ways first and foremost in order to win you now need to collectively occupy four strongholds instead of individually occupying three second you can never enter any territory by any means that contains your allies forces and you can never battle them third you can help each other out financially by paying for some or all of the cost of your allies bidding on cards and shipment of forces you can discuss strategy and information secretly and lastly when you start an alliance and exchange alliance cards but in order to talk about that we need to move on to faction abilities [Music] so we've learned how to play the basics of Dune but as usual I'm saving the best part for last these six factions take what would be a pretty standard game and turn it into something fascinating because each faction changes his rules in a big way I've already talked about how the Emperor and the space and Gil get paid by other players but that's just the tip of the spice burg and on top of your main abilities when you ally with another player they'll give you their alliance card which grants them access to a little taste of your power whatever that may be so let's dive in starting with the Emperor the Emperor is rich and that's about it you get paid when anybody else buys treachery cards but when you buy them you have to pay the bank now that's only one thing but it is very useful your Alliance power is a little different though when you're in an alliance you can spend some of this cash you've collected to revive three more of your allies forces so instead of only being able to get three back from the tanks they can get back six which means the armies you can muster it can easily outlast other players moving on to house heart Conan your faction is one of deception and trickery at the beginning of the game when everyone is drawing for traitor cards and choosing one of them to keep you get to keep all four so fighting you is a scary proposition also you'll of treachery cards you start the game with two cards instead of one you have a hand limit of eight instead of four and every time you buy a Treasury card you get to draw another card from the top of the deck and when players are allied with you your trader cards can be used against your allies opponents during battle of course this is still at your discretion next up we have our conan sworn enemy House Atreides and here's where the powers start to get a little more complex the tradies leadership has learned a few psychic tricks to help them out during the bidding phase you get to look at each treachery card before anybody starts bidding on it meaning that you will know where most of the treachery cards are during the course of the game this is combined with perhaps the most valuable asset and doun paper you and only you can make notes about the cards the other factions have everyone else just has to remember and if you're savvy enough you might get people to pay for this information just make sure your notes are legible so you actually can follow them you have a couple other psychic abilities as well at the beginning of the movement phase you get to look at the top card of the spice deck so you know where that'll be going next or if a worm is up instead and during battle you can force your opponent to reveal a specific part of their battle-plan their leader their weapon their defense or the number they dialed if you ask for their weapon or defense and they aren't playing one they simply tell you no weapon or defense and lastly when you're allied with a player and they go into battle you can use this ability on their opponent as well as yours so the Atreides can see the future a little bit but everything they know they got from the been addressed and like I said at the top they're my favorite fraction largely due to the utter audacity of their main ability prediction after you've chosen your factions and placed your faction markers around the board make a prediction about who is gonna win and when secretly take the corresponding faction and turn cards from your prediction deck and keep them facedown for the rest of the game if that faction wins on that turn you win instead if you're allied with that faction you both went on that turn only you win and you don't have to win this way you can do it normally - you just have this extra option now the spacing guild and the Fremen also have alternate wind conditions but you can't use those to satisfy your prediction they have to win normally so that's awesome but you have more stuff the benaderet haven't planted themselves amongst all the great factions of the galaxy as spiritual advisors and because of this every time another faction ships forces to dune from off-planet you get to place a free force on the Polar sync and then on your turn you can also ship normally your other power is the voice when preparing for battle you can use this ability to force your opponent to play or not play a specific card as part of their battle plan so you could say play a cheap hero or don't play a shield and if they're able to do what you say they have to and lastly when allied you can use the voice on your allies opponents so all of these other factions want to divide up Arrakis for their own selfish desires but the Fremen were born here and they know how to fight here during setup you can distribute the ten forces you start with amongst each tab ur false walls south and false wall west also when you bring in new troops you aren't shipping them in from off-planet so every ability that's triggered by that like the benaderet spiritual advisors doesn't count when you do it more importantly for you you don't have to pay for travel because you're already here you can bring in as many forces as you want for free the trick is you have a limited area to deploy your troops see the great flat you can deploy here or any space within two territories appear but that's it however your forces are used to walking around in the sand so during movements you can move two spaces instead of just one probably the most impressive power the Fremen have though is the ability to ride the worm as they say if your forces are in a space where a worm shows up instead of being devoured they get on that worms back and take it somewhere else once the Nexus phase completes you can move some or all the forces in that space to any location on the map following storm and occupancy rules the worm is just a ride though it doesn't eat any enemy forces in your destination and your last ability is the special victory condition I mentioned earlier if no-one has won the game by the end of the 10th turn check for a couple of things if either you or no one occupies both stiched abaranda bond usage and there are no harkonnen Atreides or emperor forces in to exit your plans to alter dune succeed and you and any allies you have win the game speaking of you can protect your allies from being eaten by worms and when they revive forces you can let them revive their maximum three for free last but not least we have the spacing guild as I mentioned before everyone that ships unions to dune from off-planet has to pay you for the delivery you of course have to pay the bank but you get to pay half price whenever you do what's most unique for you is that instead of just a normal shipment you have the option of three different kinds you can ship units to dune as normal you can ship a stack of forces from one territory on the board to another or you can ship forces from one territory back to reserves souping tree reserves is done at one spice for every two forces and when allied your friend gets to ship at half rate and they get to ship from one space to another just like you they don't get to pull units back to their reserves though oh and one last thing like I mentioned earlier you also have a special wind condition if at the end of ten turns after checking for the femen's wind condition if no one has one you've kept dune in a state of controlled chaos which is what you wanted the whole time and you win the game and that's how you play doom well those are the basic rules anyway two quick things first like I said at the top of the video there's an advanced mode which new combat rules increased spice flow and new abilities for every faction and if you want to learn about that right now you can join the patreon and get early access if you don't want to or can't afford to that's totally fine that video will go live a month from this video's original air date so make sure to subscribe for that second there's an FAQ in the rulebook that's very helpful and another bigger FAQ online and I'll add a link to that in the description but in all honesty I don't recommend using it unless you really need to see having read through the whole thing and come back with more questions than answers I feel that the game might wanna sleep be better off without it that is unless they revise it or add to it in the future roast me in the comments for saying so but it is what I believe now as for the next game I teach won't my patrons get to decide on that so it looks like I'll be teaching this game next the poll finished after I filmed this so I can't say for sure what it is but I am excited nonetheless and I will see you all next time bye [Music] [Music]

Channel: RTFM

Views: 129,809

Keywords: board, game, rules, explanation, learn, to, play, Shea, Parker, RTFM, gaming, rtfm, rftmshow, show, tabletop, gamer, boardgame, games, tutorial, boardgames, how to play, dune, ares games, arrakis

Id: nW7oMU1M5Bw

Length: 24min 22sec (1462 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 30 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/CorbecJayne]

"How to play Dune's Advanced Rules in 11 minutes" by RTFM

[u/Potarus]

Thanks for this post. Looks like a good intro to the game, and not too long either.