Dune: War for Arrakis

Maybe my favourite of the head to head epic games. I love how much smoother and clearer this game plays and I love the dune IP in it. It lacks the plotting and deception that the old Dune game has but it makes for an extremely enjoyable war game with elegantly executed asymmetry.

We’ve played many excellent area control games over the years. Kemet was for a while one of our most played titles. We’ve gotten Inis to the table 10 times in a week when we first got it. And, while we’d no longer count those among our go-to titles at this time, Blood Rage, Ankh, Circadians Chaos Order have remained among our favorites. But now they have a contender. Dune: War for Arrakis is incredible. Throw the Spacing Guild expansion in and you’ve got a near-perfect war game, recreating the conflict between Atreides and Harkonnen at an epic scale, and doing that under 2 hours. On the one hand, what makes it so good is the asymmetry. Yes, you’ve got similar units, and the leaders have similar combat abilities, but other than that, the objectives that your pursue, the actions that you can take, the way you approach the game itself are deliciously distinct. The Atreides/Fremen have to lead an insurgency, taking advantage of their mastery over the perils of the desert in order to get closer to the Harkonnen strongholds, while at the same time operating so that they fulfill little by little the additional goals of the prescience cards. The Harkonnens themselves start in positions of power, with their settlements safely situated between the mountains of Arrakis, benefiting from manpower and mobility, but having to spend quite a few actions if they want to find and destroy the Fremen sietches. Combat in War for Arrakis is fast-paced and brutal. Harkonnen assaults in the early game are especially devastating, as the Atreides player has fewer opportunities to deploy troops. The variety of the planning cards, and the fact that you have to give up on action dice in order to play them, adds even more – no pun intended! – spice to the game. And then there’s the Spacing Guild expansion. It adds the possibility of deploying new troops to the game, acting both as regular units and as generic leaders, but also increasing competition over the air zones (as in the base set only the Harkonnens have airships).

The obvious game to compare is War of the Ring, time will tell if this can challenge that game, but its off to a really great start.

I played a few games on TTS during the campaign and it seemed like a solid core, hence I backed it. Now I've played the final version it has indeed been smoothed out and improved, whilst still keeping that solid core.

The main difference between Dune:WfA and WotR is obviously the theme, and considering they are games which heavily invoke their theme, there is a lot of difference. In WotR the Free Peoples are desperately scrambling to bring factions up and pushing their luck with the Ringbearers, whilst the Shadow has to split its focus on slowing down the Ringbearers and building up forces to smash the Free Peoples. The game often builds to a really tense final stand off, whilst the ring is slowly pushing its way in Mordor, when the Free People have little control over the fate of Frodo, they still need to buy him time and ensure he is set up to finish the slog.

Dune: WfA has a very different vibe, the first major difference is that WotR is the whole story across the main trilogy, there are lots of thematic touchstones as a result. WfA is really just the final act of the first book, as a result there aren't as many interesting thematic touchstones, but its still the right decision for a 1v1 game like this.

The Harkonnens are the larger faction, the Atreides have already been mostly wiped out, Paul and Jessica are with the Fremen. However this is not Middle Earth, it is Arrakis, and Arrakis is a very hostile place. As a result you have a very well defended core where the Harokonnens are based, whilst the Fremen are all around the outskirts.

The Harkonnens need to go to the outskirts, firstly to extract spice, and failing to do so adequately requires them to lose dice and take certain penalties, but also to destroy the Fremen sietches, which is their win condition that is basically the same as the Shadows in WotR. Their base in the centre has lots of impassible mountain ranges, but the Harkonnens can use Ornithopters to skip over these sections, as well as other dangerous areas in the desert. They can also call on their ally, the Emperor to deploy his elite troops.

The Atreides are allied with the Fremen, and while their resources are limited, the Fremen know the desert, they can ride worms across great distances, coax worms into attack Harkonnen troops and disrupt the flow of spice. Yet this is not how they truly win, for that Paul needs to guide them towards overthrowing the Harkonnens by using his prescience to put them on an unalterable path to victory.

This latter part is what I feel is one of the biggest and most interesting changes compared to WotR. Pauls prescience is represented by a deck of cards, each round 3 are revealed, each with certain objectives, which give a certain amount up a track for 3 different attributes, but only 2 can be scored each round. To win, they have a secret card which gives them 3 points to hit for each of different types of future.

This creates some interesting opportunities for counter play, the Harkonnens know what Paul might want to do, but they don't know exactly which of the cards are likely better for Paul to win. Early on it matters, less, all tracks need a to hit a certain threshold, but towards the end you've likely hit your target on 2 of them, and just need to push one to its final threshold. This isn't the only way to go up those tracks though, the Harkonnens also hold vital villages as well as the capital Arakeen and the city of Carthag, capturing any of those will boost all of Pauls tracks, with the two big cities being the most rewarding.

Both factions feel dangerous in their own way, if the Harkonnens build up a mighty force they could smash any sietch they want, yet the Atreides can feel like they are everywhere, disrupting your spice extraction, threatening your capital and calling worms to tear apart your legions unlucky enough to find themselves in the desert too long. Givem time they can also deploy their family atomics to tear down the natural defences of your core to assault your capital or other cities with worms and enough legions to end your reign of Arrakis.

Back to mechanics, the core of the game is still very similar, there are action dice, you roll them. Combat is similar but more streamlined, as a small example you still need to take a hit to continue a siege, in WotR that meant downgrading an elite unit, here its just taking a hit, which could downgrade an elite, or just destroying a leader or troop. Leaders are a bit more interesting, rather than just re-rolls you have a special die face, with different leaders giving different results, they can also often provide a once per round special action for specfic action dice results. Bene Gesserit tokens also provide a similar wild dice result to the rings of power in WotR. There are of course lots of other things I have not mentioned, but if you are familiar with WotR then you will definitely not feel out of your depth here.

I feel pretty confident at this point, that WfA presents a really great twist to the WotR formula, I don't feel like it quite hits the thematic highs of WotR, but it definitely does a great job still. My rating is tentative at present, but this could certainly go up. One major positive here is the game is shorter and setup a lot easier. It's a table hog for sure and I have the KS edition which comes in an unnecessarily large box. The KS edition has some cute little modules, but I don't think there is anything essential here, but I am very keen to try the expansions, as well as the PnP module for more interesting ecological test stations which CMON has on their website. If you missed out on the kickstarter though, don't worry, the exclusive content is only some minor modules which are unlikely to be played all that often, if they don't prove interesting enough over time I could see myself downgrading to the smaller retail box.

If time reveals this game to have good balance and staying power, this could end up being very high on my list of favourites. I don't think anything could really usurp WotR for me because it was one of the first games I played so it has a hook in my brain that rationality is unlikely to budge, but this game could prove to be mechanically superior over time, it really is off to a great start. I definitely prefer it already over Star Wars: Rebellion.

Kickstarter

Edit: Designers dealt with the issue I had with the narrative endgame in a way that I felt it should have been resolved. So... bumping that score!

-Rules are sometimes not precise. -Game is a bit on rail, narrower that it seems at first, probably will often end up "close". At risk of being very shallow and guided by the cards you get after a few plays. -Prod value is nice for the price, you get a good feel for Arrakis, lots of stuff! -Combat is very random, not really involved, but serviceable and quick. -The round planning with the dice results is fun, this is the best part of the game, the faceoff vs your opponent depending on your dice. There is some chess-like strategy to the gameplay, and good use of timing, which is well done. -Both the Spacing Guild and Smuggler expac are near mandatory imo. -Solo mode is not good.