I’m addicted to Dune Imperium, a digital deck-building and worker-placement board game that I’m just starting to get the hang of. Here’s some news that’ll confuse me again: the Rise Of Ix expansion is now available, bringing three fresh factions, six fresh leaders, a fresh mode, and more.
The Rise Of Ix expansion is currently only available on the Steam version of the game, where it costs £8.50.
Ix adds additional strategic layers to the existing game, including a technology track for players to navigate and fresh dreadnought units to apply in combat, all of which are represented as fresh spaces on the board where players can send their agents.
There are also 35 fresh cards to add to your deck, and a fresh Epic Game mode where players compete for 12 victory points, up from the base game’s 10. Almost every game of Dune Imperium I’ve played has been longer, and I wonder if this game will fulfill that wish.
The update also brings a set of bug fixes to the base game, including improvements to the AI that takes over when a player quits, improved AI behavior in Staged Incident mode, and other miscellaneous improvements to skirmish games.
Earlier this month, Sin played both of Dune’s recent strategy games, Imperium and its real-time cousin Spice Wars . Both proved to be successful adaptations, despite or because of everything they jettisoned from the source material.
I haven’t played Spice Wars, which means I can safely say that Imperium is definitely better. I’m not sure I’ll dive into Rise Of Ix right away – I don’t really feel like I’ve gotten bored with the base game – but I’ll definitely come back to it in due time.
