Dune War for Arrakis Board Game: Rules, Rounds and Background

Setup

1. Join the two board sections. Place the 8 Sietch tokens face down on their marked spaces, where only the Atreides player can see them.

2. Place one Atreides starting deployment token and one Naib leader in each sietch area.

3. Shuffle the standard Atreides deployment tokens and set them beside the Atreides player. Place the six Harkonnen settlements and put the Harkonnen starting tokens on them.

4. Place the six ecological testing stations face down on their marked spaces.

5. Place the three prescience markers and supremacy marker at 0 on their tracks. Shuffle the prescience cards and 16 wormsign tokens.

6. Each player takes a dashboard and the leaders named as in play at the start. The Harkonnen player takes the Spice Must Flow board.

7. Shuffle the four planning decks. The Atreides player draws one of six secret objective cards and starts with 1 Bene Gesserit token.

Turn by turn

• Action dice

  Both players roll action dice and place them on their dashboards. The Atreides roll 4 dice. The Harkonnen number depends on the Spice Must Flow board. Results cover strategy, leadership, deployment, mentat and house actions. Any die can also pay to play a planning card.

• Moving legions

  All units in an area make up a legion. It moves to an adjacent free area, and a leader needs at least one unit along. The Atreides can sandride with wormsign or sandworms. The Harkonnens can use an ornithopter to move up to 2 areas further.

• Battles

  Each side rolls one combat die per unit, plus dice for discarded planning cards, up to a maximum of 6. A defender in a settlement rolls extra dice equal to its rank. Compare hits, shields and leader results, then remove casualties. The attacker can continue or cease the attack.

• Wormsign and storms

  For desert hazards, the Atreides place wormsign tokens in desert areas with Harkonnen legions or harvesters. Revealed worms hit units: 2 hits in deep desert and 1 in desert. Coriolis storms threaten legions on plateaus, minor ergs and deserts.

• Spice and Imperium bans

  When harvesting spice, each harvester collects 1 spice in desert or 2 in deep desert. It costs 2 to keep an Imperium marker in place and 3 to raise it. Markers that drop activate bans restricting the Harkonnens.

• Prescience

  The Atreides advance on three prescience tracks by claiming cards and destroying Harkonnen settlements. Reaching track steps brings in leaders like Chani and Alia, and can trigger the Family Atomics.

End of the game and scoring

Key rules

• Asymmetric factions

  In a two-player game, each side leads a faction with an ally: Atreides with the Fremen ally, Harkonnens with the Corrino ally. In three- and four-player games, players form two teams and split the four powers.

• Hidden Atreides

  Atreides units enter play as face-down deployment tokens. They’re revealed if the area is attacked or scouted by an ornithopter, or the Atreides choose to reveal them with guerrilla training.

• Regeneration tank

  When a named leader dies, they go to the regeneration tank on their owner's dashboard instead of leaving the game. They return after moving along the tank.

• Settlements

  Settlements muster new forces, and destroying one matters to both sides’ chances of winning. An attack on an undefended settlement succeeds automatically, but still needs a legion.