How to play Dune: Imperium – Uprising

Dune: Imperium – Uprising takes everything that made its predecessor sing — one card sends an Agent, the rest of your hand becomes Persuasion and swords — and layers a rebellion on top. Spies now slip onto observation posts across the board: recall one to infiltrate a space an enemy Agent already occupies, or to pull intelligence as extra cards. In the deep desert, Maker hooks let your troops summon sandworms — three-strength monsters that double your combat rewards — unless the Shield Wall still stands, and someone always wants to blow it up.

The endgame changed too: Conflict winners now collect their Conflict cards and pair battle icons with face-up Objectives to mint victory points, while optional CHOAM contracts pay you for going where you were already headed. And with six players the board flips: two rival warlords — Muad'Dib and Emperor Shaddam — each command a team of three in the game's most theatrical mode. It is the same brilliant engine, hotter, sandier, and more treacherous.

Starting here rather than with the original? You need only two ideas. One: each card in hand is two different things — its top half sends an Agent to a board space, its bottom half is Persuasion and swords if you keep it until your Reveal turn. You never get both, so every turn asks whether you want the card's place or its power. Two: rewards go only to those who commit. Swords are worthless without troops on the battlefield, and the biggest prizes in the game are simply unavailable to players who stayed home.

What's in the box, and what each piece does at the table:

• 1 two-sided game board — the 1–4 player map on one side, the 6-player team map on the other. Spaces are locked behind card icons, and the new observation posts hang off many of them as spy real estate.
• 9 two-sided leader cards — 18 leaders in total, each with a passive and a signet ability. Their hex icons rate complexity; take a low-icon leader for a first game.
• 69 Imperium deck cards — the market, five face up at a time. Uprising's row is thick with spy icons and desert cards, which is why the new systems feel available rather than optional.
• 18 reserve cards (8 Prepare the Way, 10 The Spice Must Flow) — the always-buyable stack. Prepare the Way replaces the original's Arrakis Liaison, and the ten Spice Must Flow cards are still the game's straight-up victory-point purchase.
• 16 conflict cards (3 Conflict I, 9 Conflict II, 4 Conflict III) — built into a 10-card deck at setup, so a game is at most ten rounds. Winners now keep the card for its battle icon.
• 5 objective cards — dealt one per player, and half of your scoring: pair an objective's battle icon with a won Conflict card to flip the pair for a victory point. The objective card also names the first player.
• 44 intrigue cards — plots, combat ambushes, and endgame points.
• 8 sandworms (4 plastic, 4 wood) + 4 Maker Hooks — the headline addition. Hooks are a permanent unlock bought at Sietch Tabr; a worm in your battle is 3 strength and doubles your Conflict rewards.
• 1 Shield Wall token — the wall that keeps worms out of Arrakeen, the Spice Refinery, and the Imperial Basin. Any player can blow it up, once, permanently — and it stays blown up for everyone.
• Per player: a 10-card starting deck, 3 Agents, 3 Spies, 16 cubes, 2 discs (score + Councilor), 3 Control markers, 1 Combat marker — the spies are the genuinely new resource: they sit on the board between turns and turn a blocked space into an infiltrated one.
• 20 water, 28 Solari, 27 spice tokens + 4 Alliance tokens + 1 First Player marker + 1 Feyd token — the economy, the faction banners, and the pieces the leaders' abilities hook into.

The round is the same five-phase engine as Dune: Imperium — Round Start (reveal the Conflict, draw 5), Player Turns, Combat, Makers, Recall — with new weapons woven through it:

Spies. Card icons place your Spies on observation posts connected to board spaces. On a later Agent turn, recall a connected Spy to Infiltrate — sending your Agent to a space even if an enemy Agent is already there — or recall one right after placing an Agent to Gather Intelligence and draw a card. Blocking is no longer absolute, and everyone knows it.

Sandworms. Visit Sietch Tabr to claim Maker hooks (a permanent unlock). Then desert cards can summon sandworms straight into the Conflict: each is worth 3 strength, and if at least one fights for you, your Conflict rewards are doubled. The Shield Wall blocks worms at Arrakeen, the Spice Refinery, and the Imperial Basin — until any player detonates it, permanently.

Battle icons and Objectives. The Conflict winner now takes the Conflict card; match its battle icon (crysknife, desert mouse, ornithopter) with a face-up Conflict or Objective card and flip the pair for 1 VP. Victory is minted from pairs, not handed out per battle.

CHOAM contracts (optional module): grab a contract at the Landsraad, complete it by doing what it names — visiting a space, harvesting spice — and collect the payout.

At six players, allies fight individually (strengths never combine), Commanders activate their teammates with arrowed Agent tokens, the Reinforce and Trade icons move troops and goods around the team, and Shaddam curates a private Throne Row of cards only his side may buy.

A turn, played out. Beto took Sietch Tabr, the one space Ana needed — in the original game, that was the end of the conversation. But Ana placed a Spy on that space's observation post two rounds ago. She recalls it, infiltrates the occupied space, and claims her Maker hooks. Two rounds later, in the Conflict over the Imperial Basin, she summons a sandworm: 3 strength on top of her two troops, and because at least one worm fights for her, her rewards are doubled. Beto had more swords. It didn't matter. The lesson: in Uprising spies don't win turns, they buy access — and access to the desert systems is what doubles your score three rounds later.

10 victory points, checked at the end of each round's Recall phase — or most VP when the Conflict deck (10 rounds; 9 at six players) runs out. Ties break by spice, Solari, water, then garrisoned troops.

The VP rivers shifted from the original: raw Conflict-reward points are rarer, replaced by battle-icon pairs (Conflict cards matched with Objectives), alongside the familiar faction Influence thresholds and stealable Alliance tokens, The Spice Must Flow purchases, contracts, and Intrigue. Sandworm doubling makes the late deep-desert Conflicts swing violently — a hooked, worm-backed army can double a haul that ends the game on the spot. At six players, a team's score is the sum of all three members (Commanders start at 4 VP, Allies at 1), so feeding your Commander's private track and trading resources across the team scores as surely as your own battles.

Three pieces of advice for a first game. Place spies early and spend them late — a spy sitting on a post costs you nothing and quietly removes the word "blocked" from your vocabulary in the round that matters. Buy Maker hooks before you think you need them; they're a permanent unlock, and the doubling only pays on Conflicts you're already contesting, so late hooks are wasted hooks. And read the Shield Wall as a clock, not a wall — someone will detonate it, and the round after that, every worm-capable player becomes twice as dangerous in the game's three richest locations.