Dune (board game)
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- Dune was also the title of a 1984 Parker Brothers board game. This article is about the 1979 Avalon Hill game.
Dune is a strategy board game set in Frank Herbert's Dune universe, published by Avalon Hill in 1979. The game was designed by Bill Eberle, Jack Kittredge and Peter Olotka, and uses certain elements of their earlier game, Cosmic Encounter.
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[edit] Gameplay
Players take on the role of one of the factions in the politics of the planet Arrakis. The game board, which represents the planet, is split into a number of territories, some of which are strongholds. Players move their units from territory to territory, and if two or more players enter the same territory, the contest is resolved using a hidden bidding system. Once one player, or an alliance of players, controls enough of the strongholds, they are the winner.
The board is also divided into radial sections, and the planet's permanent storm moves along those sections, destroying any troops in its path. Each turn, one territory undergoes "Spice blow" — which places an amount of spice in that territory.
An auction is held each turn in which players can purchase treachery cards - for example weapons (lasers or poisons) and defenses, which can be used later in combat.
Each player has as five leader tokens, of varying strengths. leaders are used in combat, to supplement the strength of their units. However, each player has a traitor among the other players' leaders, so using them can be a risk. Leaders can be killed in combat, but players may use spice to buy dead Leaders back from the Bene Tleilaxu tanks.
[edit] Combat
When a territory is contested, each player in the contest chooses in secret to sacrifice a proportion of their troops in that territory; each unit sacrificed gives them a base score of one. The Leader token the player chose adds to the strength of their side, provided it survives the attack by the opposing Leader. Attacks and defenses affecting Leaders are chosen in secret by the players from their available Treachery cards.
Once both players have chosen their strategies, they reveal the number of units, Leader and items used. If the player has chosen their opponent's traitor, they are defeated. Otherwise, if a player has used a weapon for which the other player has not used a defense, their opponent's Leader is killed. If a laser is used against a shield, all units and Leaders are killed from both sides. Otherwise, the scores are then added together, and the player with the lower score is defeated. The player with the higher score, while victorious, still must lose the number of units they dialed in their strategy.
[edit] Factions
Each player has unique powers which modify the rules:
- House Atreides
- In many cases when bids are performed blind, the Atreides player may use "prescience" to view the object of the bidding.
- The Bene Gesserit
- The Bene Gesserit player may "coexist" with other players' units without causing a confrontation, and may command other players to use or not to use certain cards during combat. At the beginning of the game the Bene Gesserit player secretly records the name of another player and the turn at which they think that other player will "win" the game. If the Bene Gesserit has correctly guessed who will win and when, they win the game instead.
- The Emperor
- The Emperor has five elite units (Sardaukar) worth one base unit each. When the other players buy treachery cards, they pay the emperor.
- The Fremen
- The fremen have three elite units, move faster on the board, are not destroyed by spice blow and only suffer half losses from the storm, which they can predict the movement of. If no-one has won after fifteen turns, and certain strongholds are unoccupied or occupied by the Fremen, they win.
- The Spacing Guild
- The Guild player receives the payment when other players transport units onto the board. They can choose to play at any point during a turn. If no-one has won after fifteen turns, and the Fremen don't win, the Guild do.
- House Harkonnen
- When the Harkonnen player buys a treachery card, they receive a second one free, and they can hold twice as many. Where the other players have one traitor, they have many.
[edit] Expansions
Avalon Hill published two expansions to the game, Spice Harvest and The Duel.
The Spice Harvest expansion changes the initial setup of the standard game by adding a pre-game in which the factions lobby for control of the intergalactic Spice market in order to purchase a more advantageous initial position for the start of the main game (control for the planet of Arrakis).
The Duel adds "leader tokens" representing the primary leaders of each faction and a secondary board representing a circular arena for one-on-one combat. Leaders may fight individual combat using a special deck of cards for movement and attacks.
Both supplements included additional Treachery Cards. Both supplements are also incorporated into the French edition published by Jeux Descartes.
In addition, Avalon Hill's strategy magazines, The General and Heroes, published counters and rules for three additional factions: the Bene Tleilax, the Ixians, and the Landsraad, factions/organizations appearing in Frank Herbert's original novels. In theory, the game could be played by up to nine people using the six original factions and the three supplemental factions from the magazines.
[edit] Winning
A faction wins by controlling 3 of the 5 strongholds at the end of a turn. Two factions in alliance with each other can both win if together they control 4 of 5; three factions in alliance can win they control all five.
Two other winning conditions exist. The Fremen win if after all turns of the game have been conducted, no faction has won. The Bene Gesserit win if, after a faction or alliance has taken the number of strongholds to win, they reveal that they have predicted before the game that that faction would win in that turn; the Bene Gesserit cannot predict the Atreides win condition.
