Reviews

Count me in!

I find this post very interesting. There's big money in zombies and the zombie apocalypse. Credit George Romero, “Resident Evil,” “The Walking Dead” and a number of other popular culture resources for that phenomenon. But the business of zombies and zombie folklore isn't all fun and games. There's a darker side to “zombies” involving mind control narcotics, kidnapping, extortion and mind-numbing weapons engineering that's sure to give even the most skeptical individuals a scare.

I had a great time watching this game unfold! This seems like a simple game, but once the Bene Gesserit are playing, quite a few questions arise as to the "how's" and "when's" of their special abilities. I think everyone was gracious in allowing us to take the time to get the right rulings on things.

We used Vaca's 2003 DUNE Tournament rule book almost exclusively which is very thorough and had enough information to handle just about every situation, EXCEPT one thing I was not anticipating, adding an additional faction that is usually only used in GRAND DUNE. I was very glad I had thrown into my box the Landsraad, Ixians, and Bene Tleilax; these were additional factions added by the General magazine.

We ended up using the Landsraad which if I must use again I will probably allow only the basic version shown in the General mag. and not the advanced version which seemed to be a bit too strong. As it was, the Lansraad became a decent early check on the power of the Emperor, but even so were wiped from the map on turn 4 or 5 by a large battle in Habbanyah Ridge.

I was happy to see the Fremen finally get to ride a worm in the game on a double worm card flip during the spice round. I was also surprised by how few units remained on the map by turn 9; part of this was due to the fact that both nukes went off in earlier rounds, the lasgun/shield nuke, and more importantly, the Family Atomics, which blew the Shield wall around turn 5 or 6 causing Arrakeen and Carthag (the most important game strongholds) to both be vulnerable to sandstorms (which quickly wiped the armies in both shortly thereafter).

Great fun! -- I hope to do this again at Spielbound in a few months, our new limit will be 5 to 9 players, 5 is a decent play and 9 is full blown GRAND DUNE, which I will refamiliarize myself with shortly. As it was, we played partial GRAND DUNE on Saturday.

We wound up having an epic seven player game that lasted five and a half hours. It was a bloody, bloody mess as factions continuously disappeared completely from the map only to re-emerge stronger and more resilient later. Sand worms appeared and alliances formed - The Fremen working with the Bene Gesserit, the Emperor and Harkonnen, and the Landsraat and The Guild. Each of the Alliances were on the verge of victory at one time or the other but ultimately it was the Emperor and Harkonnen who controlled four of the five strongholds at the end of round 9...only to be foiled by the Bene Gesserit's pre-game prediction, which identified the Harkonnen winning in Round 9. Thanks to the bit of good fortune, the Bene Gesserit came out on top!