Dune Imperium: Uprising Review

Overview

Dune Imperium: Uprising is an oddly difficult concept to explain. It’s a completely standalone game which firmly places it outside the realms of being an expansion. At the same time, it’s not quite a sequel either as it’s still fundamentally the same game as Dune Imperium.

Uprising is more of a Dune Imperium remaster, but the best kind of remaster as it’s fully compatible with all previous Dune Imperium products. This unique position means it’s open to new fans without alienating old ones.

You can find a video version of this review on YouTube!

Since Uprising is equal parts new and familiar, I’m going to be making a lot of comparisons to the original game. I recommend checking out my review of Dune Imperium if you haven’t already, as plenty of things I say about it are just as relevant to Uprising.

Uprising makes changes to the game board and features all new leaders and cards while also adding some new mechanisms. That said, the core of the game still plays the same way. It’s a hybrid deck builder and worker placement game where your deck dictates where your agents can go and what they can do.

Dune Imperium was and still is one of the best board games available. Uprising builds on that success with new stuff and some under-the-hood changes that make a huge difference in how the game is played. Without actually changing how you engage with it.

Gideon’s Bias	Dune Imperium: Uprising Information
Review Copy Used: No	Publisher: Dire Wolf Digital
Number of Plays: 20+	Designers: Paul Dennen
Player Counts Played: 2, 3, & 4	Player Counts: 1-4 & 6
Fan of Genre: Yes	Genre: Worker Placement, Deck Building
Fan of Weight: Yes	Weight: Medium
Gaming Groups Thoughts: Loved It	Price: $60

Presentation

Like all Dune Imperium products, Uprising is a thing of simple beauty. While many components are just wooden shapes, it also features excellent artwork and smooth iconography. The game’s great use of colors and clean layout makes the game look good on the table despite its simplistic pieces.

The choice to use such components helps keep the game’s price accessible while still offering premium add-ons for enthusiasts, which is the way I would really like to see most board games handled. I’m also a sucker for wood tokens, so there’s that.

If the original game was missing anything, it was both the physical and mechanical presence of the terrifying Sand Worms. That has been remedied in Uprising. Sand Worms can be summoned into battle, and the game includes both wooden and plastic versions of the beasts.

The plastic miniatures look disgusting, in a good way. But the shape of them makes for a rather unfortunate visual of the male reproductive organ and its pals when you turn them sideways. This is neither a strength nor a flaw. It’s just something my immature brain wanted to share because it makes me giggle. Grow old, not up.

There’s also a set of components and boards that are used purely for a special six-player game mode. I did not have the opportunity to test this mode so I won’t be speaking on it except to note that it exists and to clarify something that is easily missed. Uprising can be played at player counts 1, 2, 3, 4, and 6, not 5.

It’s rare for a game to skip a number, and I almost didn’t notice it. I commonly play with a group of five, and it would have been rather embarrassing as the self-proclaimed expert of the group if I had set Uprising up for its non-existent player count. My ego was put at risk.

Another new addition is a couple of stacks of cardboard contract tiles, one set for standard play and the other for use with the Rise of Ix expansion. They look nice, are sturdy, and share a similar quality with the tech tiles found in the aforementioned expansion.

Like the original game, Uprising comes with plenty of nice components. The cards do get shuffled a lot, so I do recommend sleeving them, however.

Diplomatic Attack

Most of the game board has been altered in some way compared to Dune Imperium. Each individual change causes a shift in how Uprising is played, but much like the original, they work together to form a cohesive whole.

In general, victory points are more difficult to acquire, you don’t really stumble into them anymore. It takes a deliberate effort on your part to acquire them. For example, Foldspace no longer exists. This means there is no card that is always available in the Imperium Row with faction icons. Not only that, three powerful spaces require you to have at least two reputation with a specific faction.

Bene Gesserit is the only one without such a space, however, they have replaced the always-available Arrakis Liason, with their own Prepare the Way cards, which require two reputation with them to fully utilize.

The conflict cards have fewer victory points available, with most of them appearing on the tier 3 conflict cards. However, you also gain the conflict card when winning that conflict. Each one has an icon on the top right, and a matching pair grants you a victory point. At the start of the game, each player also has an objective card with one of those icons that can be matched with them as well.

These changes put a much stronger emphasis on your deck building in order to visit the faction spaces you want, as well as making you be extra picky over your battles. The rewards for second and third place in combat tend to be pretty good. But matching the conflict card icons is also a factor you have to keep in mind. Sometimes it can be worth it to go a little harder in battle, simply to stop another player from matching icons for that free victory point.

To help compensate for these changes, card drawing and trashing cards are a lot more common. Which again, puts an even stronger emphasis on deck building, and that’s great.

Solari is a bit easier to obtain in Uprising than the original and gaining your Swordmaster only costs 6 if another player has already gained theirs. That combination of changes makes the Swordmaster flow a bit more naturally, and it’s pretty common for most players to have the Swordmaster every game.

While that does somewhat eliminate a potential strategy from Dune Imperium, Uprising adds plenty more. Having three agents to play simply makes the game more fun because you are engaged with the gameplay even more. Since card draw is more common, it generally makes up for spending that third card without damaging your reveal phase too much.

I also like that every faction has something powerful locked away at two reputation. With the Space Guild, it’s easy money and faction rep. With The Fremen, its access to the powerful Sand Worms, and the Emperor completely replaces the Mentat space with something that makes far more sense and feels like less of a trap than the Mentat did.

For three Solari, you draw a card and recall an agent you previously placed. You also can discard an intrigue card for a new one. It has a lot more utility than the Mentat while also being less of a newbie trap. Since it requires two reputation with the Emperor, it’s not something a new player can inadvertently get sucked into since it requires effort to gain access in the first place.

I Spy Contractual Obligations

Spys are a new element introduced in Uprising. Observation posts are linked to one or more board spaces, and whenever a card or effect allows you to place a Spy, you place one on an observation post. Plenty of card or leader effects bank off of spies, but they generally have two main uses.

When you send an agent to a space that has a spy linked to it via an observation post, you can choose to recall that spy to gain one of two effects. One effect is to simply draw a card and drawing cards is good for numerous reasons. The other is to place your agent in a space that is already occupied by an enemy agent. Through the strategic use of spies, you can counter another player locking you out of a space you desperately needed.

Spies are a very elegant system that fits right into the core gameplay, and it further expands the tactical nature of the game. Contracts also do this, although they are technically optional. If you don’t want to play with contracts, you simply gain two Solari whenever you visit a contract space. I found playing with them to be more enjoyable, however.

Two contracts are always available. When visiting a contract space, you choose one and keep it. Sometimes they just give you resources, other times they reward you for completing them by visiting a specific space or gathering a certain amount of spice all at once. It’s another small system that simply makes the game feel even better by further expanding your strategic options.

It’s all part of a common thread I’ve found to be true when it comes to Uprising. While the fact remains that you are pretty much playing the same game Dune Imperium has always been. It feels like you are doing more every turn and every round. Your turns feel even more important and impactful, you get to do more things, and doing things is the best part of playing a board game!

There are some games I loathe to play simply because three hours will pass, and when I look back on them, I realize I hadn’t technically “played” that much. Dune Imperium never had that problem, but Uprising makes your turns feel even more impactful without compromising the tight strategy that made the game great in the first place. That’s a tight rope to walk, but Uprising wore its ballet shoes.

Worm Food

The massive Sand Worms of Arrakis were a simple footnote in Dune Imperium. Uprising makes them a powerful force to be reckoned with. Any player can use Sand Worms in battle. They add three strength each but they go back to the supply afterward, not your garrison. More importantly, is the fact that they double any rewards you gain from a conflict card, including victory points. All by simply having them in the fight.

The balancing factor, however, is Sand Worms take a real effort to obtain. First, you need a maker hook, which can obtained by visiting Sietch Tabr, and that requires two reputation with the Fremen. From there, you have to visit a maker space that provides worms which costs water to visit and you have to forgo the other rewards there.

Furthermore, a shield wall protects three key locations. If a conflict is happening on one of them, Sand Worms can’t be used. That is unless someone has broken the shield wall, which once again requires effort.

Sand Worms are an interesting factor. They are incredibly powerful but balanced out by the effort required to obtain them, and the fact that you completely telegraph your intent to use them by obtaining a maker hook. Those factors make Sand Worms a strategic choice rather than an automatic one. You don’t need them to win at all, but you must always be aware of their potential appearance and be prepared to act accordingly.

Choosing the right moment to deploy Sand Worms is pivotal since you don’t keep them after a battle, and you’re likely to have a bit less in the resource department than players who haven’t been pursuing them. However, a well-timed Sand Worm attack can completely turn the tides of a game in your favor. They emit a fearful presence in the game, and that’s fitting for the colossal beasts.

Imperial Intrigue

The cards and leaders in Uprising are brand new, they aren’t reprints of those found in the original game. The Leaders feel unique and balanced even when compared to the original ones and those in the Rise of Ix expansion. The Imperium cards maintain the first game’s excellent melding of theme and mechanics, but they do feel less generalized than Imperium’s selection.

Many of the cards in Dune Imperium felt like they were all-around great choices, while Uprisings are powerful but feel more situational. That’s not a criticism exactly. For the most part, it enhances the strategy, but it does make the game slightly less accessible, and that’s probably true for Uprising as a whole.

Don’t get me wrong, Dune Imperium has never been a difficult game to learn, and Uprising isn’t either. However, all the changes in Uprising make it harder to be good at. That was true of Dune Imperium post expansions, but with Uprising it’s definitely more visible, and the skill floor sits a bit higher. I’m pretty good at Imperium, but in my first few games of Uprising, I got kicked in the Mentats, and sand rubbed in my face.

Even for experienced players, there’s a lot of adapting you have to do, and while this isn’t Uprising’s fault, perse, humans, are stubborn. Some previous fans may have a kneejerk reaction to the changes and bounce off of Uprising because habits are by nature difficult to break. I’d advise really giving it some time with several plays first.

As for the new intrigue cards. There aren’t any notable changes to mention aside from the fact that Uprising repeats a grievance I had with the original, and that’s the inclusion of sneaky end-game victory points. Given the game’s tightness, they still have too much of an impact that ends up feeling really cheap when you’re on the losing side.

When it comes to the original game the issue more or less vanished as expansions added more ways to gain victory points as well as more intrigue cards. Uprising in a vacuum has that same end-game intrigue card ick as the original pre-expansions. However. Uprising is compatible with said expansions.

Expansion Compatibility

The most surprising thing about Uprising is that it’s compatible with all previous Dune Imperium expansions and the original game. It even comes with special contract tiles for Rise of Ix. I played several games of Uprising by itself. But once I added Rise of Ix and Immortality, I left them together, and that’s how I will always play going forward.

They integrate beautifully into the game. The expanded deckbuilding of Immortality feels great with Uprising’s changes, and the shipping track and Dreadnaughts slot in really well. All of the previous leaders feel balanced with the new ones, and the combination of Uprising, Ix, and Immortality feels like the true apex of Dune Imperium’s gameplay.

I do have a slight annoyance with Rise of Ix’s overlay tiles. Obviously, they don’t have observation posts marked on them, but you are to treat them as if they do. I don’t like that, I would have appreciated a token overlay to mark them, but that’s a rather minor gripe.

On the flip side. The compatibility gets slightly messy if you want to play with some of the original games Imperium and Intrigue cards. If you already own the original, that’s a pretty reasonable desire.

You see, by adding just Rise of Ix and Immortality, you get close to the same card distribution as the original game with both expansions. But, if you add the original game’s deck too, you dilute everything terribly. The rulebook’s only guidance is to add them wholesale or make your own custom imperium deck combo, and boy, do I have a bone to pick there.

To make a custom combo function, you would need a carefully curated list of cards. Not just the ones you want to use from the original, but the cards from Uprising, Ix, or Immortality that you want to replace. There are numerous variables that go into the game’s card distribution. You would have to factor in icons, faction icons, card costs, and allegiance distribution, in addition to the mechanical effects each card provides.

It’s well beyond the reasonable scope of most players as you would need an intimate knowledge of not only the game itself but the analytics of each and every factor of the cards in order to throw together a custom deck that wouldn’t be borderline unplayable. Why a curated list or even several variants of them wasn’t included is beyond me.

That said, I’m working on one personally, and if I ever put together anything that doesn’t suck, I’ll share it.

Solo Play

Solo play works as gracefully in Uprising as it did in the original game. In some ways, it streamlines the process even more. You no longer awkwardly place the automa’s agents under the conflict cards to time when they get their swordmasters, for example, it’s all built into the new rival cards.

The rival cards replace the actual character boards for your opponents. Each rival initially hoards resources, spending them on their sword master when they reach a threshold dictated by their rival card, after which they spend them normally. They also add a bit more personality to your adversaries as they include some solo-tailored abilities for them.

There are several ways to tweak the difficulty level of a solo game, but as a whole I found the rivals to be much more competitive. They don’t dawdle, and then the victory points start flowing fast. Running the rivals is still as simple as flipping a card and following its instructions. Each rival card also has a handy track of which factions they prefer to gain reputation with, so there’s rarely any ambiguity in their decision-making. It’s all upfront and clear.

Dune Imperium is one of the few games where I never felt like I was getting a lesser experience by playing solo. Everything that Uprising adds to solo play is a straight upgrade in that regard, and it will continue to be one of my go-to solo experiences going forward.

Verdict

One thing I really like about Uprising is the fact that it doesn’t need to exist but does. A remastering of this nature usually implies the need to fix something that’s broken. But Dune Imperium is still a stellar game even without Uprising.

I think Uprising is indeed a better version of it, and the compatibility means you don’t lose anything by picking it up. But if a person without any Dune at all only had the choice between the original Dune Imperium or nothing. I would tell them to jump on the original in a heartbeat because everyone needs some spice in their life, even the psychedelic kind excreted by sandworms.

Uprising succeeds as an improved version of Dune Imperium because Dune Imperium is so good in the first place. It would have been a hard sell if it had billed as an entirely new product, but its compatibility with the original base game, and both expansions make it a great addition rather than a wholesale replacement.

For existing players, it’s an easy recommendation because it’s more Dune Imperium. For new players, it’s an easy recommendation because Dune Imperium is easy to recommend, and Uprising feels like a tuned-up version of the designer’s original vision applied after years of experience with designing the base game, and its expansions.

Uprising joins Dune Imperium, Rise of Ix, and Immortality in earning my Golden Shield award.

The cardholders I use in my reviews are courtesy of  InfinitionsTabletop on Etsy