Dune: Imperium Board Game: How a Round Plays Out

Setup

1. Build the conflict deck: shuffle the four tier III cards face down on the board. Deal five shuffled tier II cards on top, then one shuffled tier I card. Return unused conflict cards to the box without looking at them.

2. Shuffle the Imperium deck and deal five cards face up to make the Imperium Row. Set the Reserve cards in three stacks: Arrakis Liaison, The Spice Must Flow and Foldspace. Shuffle the intrigue deck and place it face down.

3. Place the Mentat token on its space and the four alliance tokens on the marked spots of the faction influence tracks.

4. Each player takes a leader, a shuffled, face-down 10-card starting deck, one water, three agents in their color and 16 cubes. Put two agents on your leader and place the third, your Swordmaster, beside the board.

5. Put one score disc on the score track: on the 1 space in a four-player game, otherwise 0. Set your combat marker on 0 of the combat track. Place four cubes on the bottom spaces of the four influence tracks, then put three of your other twelve cubes, your troops, in your garrison.

6. Choose the first player at random to take the first player marker. Solo and two-player games use House Hagal cards, with a separate rules sheet.

Turn by turn

• Agent turn

  Play one card with an agent icon, then place an unoccupied agent on an empty space with a matching icon. A card can send only one agent. Pay any cost first, then take the space’s effect and the card’s agent box. You can’t play cards without an agent icon this way.

• Reveal turn

  Reveal your remaining hand and resolve each reveal box, using persuasion to acquire cards. Then set your strength: 2 per troop in the conflict and 1 per revealed sword. With no troop in the conflict, your strength is 0. Finally, put every card you played or revealed into your discard pile.

• Troops and deployment

  Recruited troops sit in your garrison and earn nothing there. When you send an agent to a combat space, you may deploy troops recruited that turn plus up to two from your garrison to the conflict.

• Intrigue cards

  You mainly gain these from Carthag, Conspire and Secrets, and keep them hidden. Play plot cards on any of your agent or reveal turns, combat cards only during combat, and endgame cards at the end of the game.

• Combat and rewards

  Players with troops in the conflict may play combat intrigue cards until everyone passes in a row. The highest strength takes the first reward, and the second highest takes the second. In four-player games, the third highest gets the third. If players tie for first, nobody wins; each tied player takes the second reward. A tie for second takes the third reward. A player with 0 strength gets nothing.

• Makers and recall

  During the makers phase, each of the three maker spaces without an agent gets 1 bonus spice. It stays there and builds up until an agent collects it. During recall, the Mentat returns to its space, agents go back to their leaders and the first player marker passes clockwise.

End of the game and scoring

Key rules

• Influence and alliances

  Reach 2 influence with a faction to score 1 point; drop below 2 and you lose it. Reach 4 to earn the bonus on that track space. The first player to reach 4 takes the alliance token and its point. A rival who passes them takes both.

• The Mentat

  A board space costing 2 Solari lets you draw a card and take the Mentat token to your leader. It acts as an extra agent that round, then returns to its space during recall unless you won it as a conflict reward.

• Swordmaster

  The Swordmaster space costs 8 Solari and is a once-per-game purchase. It gives you a third agent for the rest of the game.

• Control markers

  Some conflict cards reward control of Arrakeen, Carthag or Imperial Basin. If you control one of those spaces, you gain 1 Solari whenever any player sends an agent there (or 1 spice for Imperial Basin).