Board With Each Other

Board with Each Other Bite Size: Episode 3 - Dune: Imperium Expansions

• Alister Simpson & Hannah Kelly • Season 1 • Episode 26

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In this episode of bite size, we delve into expansions for the first time, namely the first two for Dune: Imperium - The Rise of Ix and Immortality.

We discuss how they alter the game, what they bring to the table in terms of content and most importantly, how essential are they to the Dune: Imperium experience.

We hope you enjoy, and please do check out our full review of the base game back on Episode 9!

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Al:

Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of Bored With Each Other Bitesize, the spin-off podcast from Bored With Each Other that looks at small games and expansions. So today we are going to be looking at our first expansion in the series. We will tend to only look at expansions that change the core game enough to warrant a conversation, but in this case I think it is most definitely warranted, as today we are going to be looking at Dune Imperium The Rise of Ix.

Hannah:

Also known as The Rise of Ix.

Al:

Yep, officially known as The Rise of Ix in this household. And... June Imperium Immortality. As always, I'm joined by my co-host, my wife, and player two, Anna Kelly.

Hannah:

Hi, guys.

Al:

We are going to split these up to a certain extent. I think it's worth talking about each one in turn, and we will give them an overall score at the end, but with these bite size, we don't tend to go into all of our scoring criteria as we normally do. We might touch on a lot of the same points, if relevant, but we don't go as in-depth. As always, if you want more, you crave more content, then please do check out our monthly review podcast, where we go really deep dive into the games that we review. These tend to be a little bit more snappy.

Hannah:

And if we're clever enough, we might even link the episode of Dune, the original.

Al:

You're asking way too much of my technical capabilities here.

Hannah:

We'll

Al:

try. We'll try. So let's start with the first expansion to Doom Imperium, which is Rise of X. It's the larger of the two, and it makes the more significant changes. And I think with expansions, it's probably worthwhile just going through briefly what it adds to the game or what it changes. So Rise of X, a long time... Rise of X. Okay, Rise of X. We're just going to call it that for the rest of the episode. As you'd expect from an expansion, it adds more leaders. It adds more cards to the Imperium. You know, your standard sort of thing. But what it also adds is a new board and an overlay to the existing board. So you have an overlay that basically replaces the trading section on the top right of the original Jude Imperium board with a shipping track to represent your engagement with the merchant's... Spacing Guild. Spacing Guild, that's it. It also adds a new board at the bottom, which allows you to buy tech tiles. These can be purchased for Spice by sending an agent to one of the new board spaces, and they either have an effect at the end of the game, an ongoing effective return, or you have some that you can activate once per... once per round to have a particular effect. You can also buy dreadnoughts, or as we like to call them, dick ships. And dreadnoughts are extremely powerful troops, for want of a better term. They count as three combat strength instead of your two combat strength you get from your normal troops. And if you win a combat with them, you get to control places on the board, which gives you extra money and extra spice as you go along.

Hannah:

And notably, ordinarily when you commit troops, to a conflict, at the end of them, they're spent and they go back into your pile. Dickships don't. Dickships stay.

Al:

Dickships are forever, not just for Christmas. So those are basically the additions and changes to the gameplay. Everything else sort of stays at score the same. So where to start with this one, really?

Hannah:

So I think one of the things that certainly is a two-player game of Dune is things could be very, very heated. You're often fighting over the same board space. And I imagine, again, when you've got more players, that's the same case. Whereas by having a shipping track, that allows a bit more freedom, I think, about how you win. And money becomes more

Al:

usable.

Hannah:

What would happen in a lot of games of Dune is, vanilla, if you like, is you would end up with huge big piles of cash with no way of being able to really meaningfully spend it.

Al:

Fast stacks that do nothing.

Hannah:

Yeah. Whereas in this case, actually...

Al:

Yeah, with the Dreadnaughts, there's more places to spend money. There's more use. And there's a lot more cards that you get through the Imperium row that interact with money.

Hannah:

Mm-hmm.

Al:

So it addresses one of the issues in the first game. But as Hannah says, it also opens up new paths to victory. So it does mean in some ways, particularly in a two-player game, you can actually be in each other's faces less to a certain extent because you have more options. But with those more options comes the ability, in my opinion, to really mess up your game. because it becomes more tempting to spread yourself too thin and not concentrate on anything enough. And you end up just giving your opponent the victory because you're trying to be a jack of all trades. And I think the interaction with the leaders becomes more important when you include this because you need to concentrate on what you're good at and you need to sort of keep yourself not completely blinded, but there is that propensity to go off to red herrings constantly, which I've done in a couple of games. I know I have, particularly when we first cracked it out. I got very excited by all the shiny new things and basically just didn't do anything.

Hannah:

I do think what's really cool, though, is that some of the leaders do have some really cool abilities that are slightly more complex than the original sort of base vanilla game. But again, if you understand the mechanism behind them, that can be really satisfying and really fun to play. Oh,

Al:

yeah. The new leaders are one of my favourite components of it. particularly my homie, Helena Riccesi, who's my favorite character in the game now. There's some really, really powerful ones, but like you say, some of them do go to definitely go more complex. The base game had a complexity rating of one to three on all the different leaders. There's some fours in here. So there are some that are quite tricky. Another cool mechanic that it does introduce is some cards allow you to send agents to spaces that are already occupied, which I'm not 100% sure, but I'm pretty sure was not in the base game. It's a new mechanic. Which, again, less important in a two-player game than I imagine for more multiplayer games starts to become very tactically vital. to utilise.

Hannah:

So quite often you will end up, or I found myself, even in our two-player games, desperately trying to get onto one of the slots where I can buy my additional agent or seat on the council. Well, actually that now enables us to be able to do that potentially. Whereas I imagine if you got really unlucky, you could be waiting the entire game to do that.

Al:

Yeah, absolutely. And the tech tiles, I think, add a very, very... deep additional mechanic to it. I really like the tech tiles.

Hannah:

I don't play with them. No, you tend to

Al:

leave them alone.

Hannah:

Yeah.

Al:

There's some that are just exceptional. If you get the right thing to put with your leader and what you're trying to achieve in the game, it's an absolute game breaker. They're really, really good. But like anything, it is a distraction because they all cost spice, and that's spice that you'd normally be saving up to spend on a big whack of troops. So you sort of have to commit to that. But I think, going back to vanilla, 99% of games I would get... the additional agent, I would get a seat on the council. Not so much. The last game we played was the first game I think I've ever played with this that I didn't actually bother.

Hannah:

Do you think any of us got a seat on the council?

Al:

No, didn't bother. Yeah. So it's interesting. So it shows that there's, you know, usually that would be an absolute must-have. But it just gives you a lot more options. The cards in general, the additions are all really cool, really great. I don't think there's anything quite as powerful as the... because it's had a rack, the original one, but there are some very powerful cards, new ones in there, which are really, really cool to crack out when you get them. Lowball entry cards, I didn't mention. Yeah.

Hannah:

And also, I think a bit more diversity with the entry cards as well. So they do move dark and they have more input on gameplay. And so it's not just about committing additional troops or, you know, trading for influence in a certain section.

Al:

From the two-player perspective, the house, Hadal, the AI, They've been quite careful not to spread that much thinner. So the interactions you have with that is they will start to, the AI will start to implement dreadnoughts

Hannah:

Dick ships.

Al:

Yeah, dick ships. And it also interacts with the shipping track purely to get more troops out on the board, just as a bit of a spoiler. To block you

Hannah:

from using the shipping track, because the shipping track can be really powerful. Again, you use it a lot more than I do.

Al:

And again, one of the things I really like about the shipping track is it makes your influence for the Spacing Guild much, much more important, because once you get too influenced in the Spacing Guild, which I used to ignore a lot of the time, you can then go to a different space on the shipping track, which gets you two moves up the track as such instead of one.

Hannah:

So it becomes more powerful. Yeah.

Al:

So again, they sort of looked at the areas of the board or tactically they were weaker and have tried to buoy those up. And I think it's worked fantastically. I think out of all the expansions to board games that I've played, this is my favourite.

Hannah:

The rise of X specifically? Yeah, the

Al:

rise of X specifically.

Hannah:

See, it's funny because we haven't talked about it yet, but the other one I think I prefer. Oh,

Al:

really? Yeah. Okay, interesting. Well, we'll get onto that in a minute. But...

Hannah:

Wipe it down, Adam. We're not there yet. We're

Al:

not there yet. No, that's fine. For my money, this is essential.

Hannah:

So how much does it retail for, I mean? 30

Al:

quid.

Hannah:

Yeah, I think that's pretty good as far as price points go.

Al:

It's big as far as it expands.

Hannah:

Yeah, it is, and it does change gameplay considerably. gameplay quite considerably, and I do think the experience of playing Dune with The Rise of Ick is a far better experience than playing Dune Vanilla.

Al:

Yeah, and I say a lot because Dune Vanilla is one of my favourite games. It's awesome. But yeah, I am a bit of an expansion freak. I love a good expansion. This is the only one I think I would classify as an absolute must-buy. I think it's essential. to the experience. I think it adds so much without taking anything away. Whereas in a lot of other expansions, I tend to find that there's a bit of a little pull with becoming overall to over-complex.

Hannah:

Yeah, because if you think about it, what was originally there, the overlay for the top right corner where you have the space or the trading section, actually, we never very, very, very used that. It was only when we had spare yellow symbols and we didn't have anywhere else to go. Whereas this actually makes that meaningful, have an impact on gameplay, help you achieve your own goals.

Al:

It feels almost like a patch to a video game that just adds loads of new stuff and plugs all the holes that were there before.

Hannah:

That's a good way to describe it, yeah.

Al:

And it does. It fixes every slight niggle I had with Dune in the first place, and Dune is a 9 out of 10 for me. This makes it a 10 out of 10. So, yeah, I mean, my score, 9.

Hannah:

Yeah. I think I'd be happy with that. I would never go back to playing Dune without it.

Al:

No, which is very telling. Yeah. Okay, shall we talk a little bit about Immortality then?

Hannah:

Yes.

Al:

So Immortality is a smaller expansion. It's still fairly weighty. I think it retails for about 23, 24 quid most of the time. And what Immortality adds is, again, another board. So it adds...

Hannah:

It begins to take up quite a lot of space.

Al:

Yeah, it does. When you include both, it does start to become quite a table hook. But you get another board, which is basically a research track. So it's to represent your engagement with the, and I'm probably going to murder this in pronunciation, Tleilaxu, who work on forbidden genetic manipulation technology in the Dune universe. And how it works, essentially, is you have a new card that gets included in your starting deck with a new icon. Which

Hannah:

replaces June cards.

Al:

Yeah, June the Spy, the Desert Planet. Desert Planet, that's it. June the Desert Planet replaces those. You get two of them to replace the two Desert Planet ones. And on that card, it has a microscope icon. Every time you get a microscope icon, you move across a branching track on this new board. And that will either get you specimens, which go into a bank. You take one of your troops and put it in the bank. Or it gets you scarabs, which progresses you on another track up at the top, which basically gets you entry cards, victory points, and spice, depending on how far along you go on the track. During the reveal phase, when you buy cards, you can use your specimens to buy cards from a new marketplace. And they tend to range between one and four specimens. One of the mechanics that pretty much all of those cards use, and one of the main new mechanics in Immortality is card grafting. What that means is if you have a card in your hand that says graft, you play it alongside another card from your hand. So you essentially play two cards in one turn. You can choose which of the agent markers to use, but it usually has a, well, not usually, always has a sort of embellishment effect on the card that you're playing. Or if you craft it with something, it gets a positive. They're usually very, very powerful. But the downside is you're playing two cards instead of one. So your reveal turn and the rest of your turns, they're going to be weaker. It also introduces an overlay to the research station, which is a spot you can go on the board. And basically that just means Now when you go there, you get one of those microscope resources.

Hannah:

And you get cards as well. Yeah,

Al:

you always did. And again, underutilized space in both the base game and Rise of X. So plugging yet another gap that we've seen. It doesn't add any new leaders. It does add quite a few more cards to the Imperium deck. And it also adds something called a family atomics counter. Basically, that is a counter that each player gets at the start of the game and you can use it once per game to wipe the Imperium marketplace and replace it with new cards.

Hannah:

So that can be really handy if there's something on the row that your opponent wants and you don't want them to have it or conversely where we've had games where we have

Al:

sixes and sevens

Hannah:

out and it becomes almost impossible to then build up your deck because you're just locked into this very impenetrable marketplace.

Al:

And that's such a small and neat thing that I think you should just house if you're playing within version. It should have been there from the start, really. I don't know why it wasn't. So yeah, it has less of an impact on the game than X does. However, again, if you're playing with both of them, you start to get spread even thinner.

Hannah:

Yeah, and I think that's what I really love about it because it then becomes... Your route to victory becomes so disparate. And whilst it can still be really close, and we've had some real... We still have really... Oh, you still have very

Al:

nail-biting close games,

Hannah:

yeah. There are games where one person does shoot into the lead because actually someone has spread themselves too thin. Or... It just allows you a bit more freedom, I think.

Al:

It does. And I've noticed, I think a lot of the mechanics in it, particularly with the very powerful card, rafting cards from the Leleksu marketplace, can mean people start to come from behind late really, really hard in a way that they don't tend to with the others. So you've already mentioned that this is your favourite of the two. Do you want to talk a bit about why? I

Hannah:

think because with... even definitely with vanilla, but even with the rise of it, there was a path to victory and you did still have to follow that path to victory. You had to do this, you had to do that. And then you can start worrying about, you know, conflicts and, and, and getting your victory points that way. Whereas this, I think completely turns that on its head. And that's what I like about it. And knowing when to, uh, exploit perhaps the other tracks and knowing when actually no I need to pull back and I need to focus on something else and I like that and I like that we don't necessarily feel so loggerheads at all times competing over the same resources whereas I used to find that occasionally frustrating although also again it did add to that competitive nature to it I think so it is a bit of a I agree. I also think some of those grafter carts are really cool. Yeah,

Al:

the grafter carts are

Hannah:

really, really cool. And they're really powerful. And when it works, you're just like,

Al:

yeah. Yeah, no, absolutely. When you get them to pop as such, they are incredible. Some of them are really, really good. And

Hannah:

I would also say because of that, deck thinning becomes more important. It does, yeah. Whereas I think previously it didn't really matter. I wasn't really that fussed about thinning out my deck. Yeah. Whereas now, actually, cards really do have to matter. Or maybe that's because I'm getting a better player. I don't know.

Al:

Yeah, probably a bit of both, really, I imagine. But I appreciate what you're saying. I think it's true. I think with the card crafting stuff and the different ways to get cards, your deck can bloat a little bit quite quickly.

Hannah:

Mm-hmm.

Al:

So I think, again, it raises the importance of being able to trash cards.

Hannah:

That's one thing that we haven't mentioned. So one of the expansions introduced new rules about trashing cards. Oh, yeah.

Al:

I think it's Ryzavik, but there's a new mechanic that was introduced that cards do certain things if you discard them or trash them.

Hannah:

Yeah.

Al:

So some of them, if you discard this card, you get this bonus. Some of them, if you trash this card, you get this X bonus, which, again, is quite...

Hannah:

Powerful when you're playing with certain houses as well.

Al:

Oh, yeah. But if you've got a house that leans into that sort of hand and deck management side of things, they become incredibly powerful, especially if you can get them to line up in the deck building space. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, from my side, I love this as well. I don't think it's essential in the way that Rise of Ish is. Rise

Hannah:

of Dick, maybe. Rise of Dickship.

Al:

Rise of Dickship. There's an episode title right there. I think... I love it, and I don't think I could take it or leave it approach, because I really enjoy including it in the games. But if you were going to go for one and wanted to pump the brakes a little bit on over-complexity, I would definitely go with Rise of Echo and Immortality.

Hannah:

Yeah, and I think that's also an interesting point as well, because I definitely find the... purple one, immortality. I find that does add more complexity to the game. Even just being able to, again, more iconography, also understanding how grafting works. I found it took me longer to get my head around that rather than The Rise of Ick, which was fairly straightforward and kind of, that was okay. It has

Al:

some trickier concepts than you'd find elsewhere. I think the thing that swings it for me is while we've never done this, I think playing with the base game in Immortality, I would miss Rise of Ik way more than I'd miss Immortality playing with the base game in Rise of Ik.

Hannah:

Yeah, I can understand that.

Al:

Which makes me feel like Rise of Ik is the superior of the two, for my money anyway.

Hannah:

Yeah, I just have more fun playing it. Yeah,

Al:

no, that's absolutely fair enough. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So on that basis, I'd probably give Immortality an eight as opposed to Rise of X as nine.

Hannah:

Can I not give it a nine as well?

Al:

If you like, it's your scoring.

Hannah:

I'm not the

Al:

scoring police. That's the internet.

Hannah:

Yeah, just because I think I have more fun playing with apps. Yeah, fine. But it definitely does ramp the complexity up and I would put that out there. It's taken me longer to get my head around it. So if you find Dune complicated...

Al:

On the borderline of what you're willing to take...

Hannah:

Yeah, you probably don't... Approach with caution. Yeah, you probably are going to be interested in this. Definitely.

Al:

Okay, well, I think we should wrap this up because we're definitely getting into normal episode length territory. We bang on much more. But to sum up, they are both incredible expansions that make an amazing game almost perfect, in my opinion, and you can't go wrong with them. Highly recommend. Bored with each other, stamp of approval, overwhelmingly. Thank you very much for joining us. We hope you enjoyed it. As I said before, if you want to explore some of our longer-form content or the original Dune Imperium review to go as a companion piece to this, then feel free to dive in. Until next time, be good to each other, have fun, and play lots of board games.

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Al Simpson

Host
Contributor

Hannah Kelly

Host