Staban Tuek

Staban Tuek, heir to the smuggler kingdom, plays the board's shadow economy. His drawback is printed first: Limited Allies removes Diplomacy from your starting deck — nine cards, not ten. In exchange, Smuggle Spice pays you 1 spice whenever another player sends an Agent to a Maker space you're spying on, and his Signet Ring (Unseen Network) places a Spy with a kicker: on the Landsraad post, pay 1 spice for 3 Solari; on a Faction post, pay 2 Solari to draw an Intrigue card.

Three complexity icons: his value is built from spy placement, post geography, and reading where rivals will harvest.

Blanket the Makers with Spies and let rivals' harvests pay your tithe — in a spice-hungry game every Deep Desert and Hagga Basin visit rings your till. The signet keeps the network dense while converting spare resources into Solari and Intrigue.

Spend the smuggled wealth flexibly: worm summons, Persuasion-heavy Reveals, or infiltrations at exactly the space a rival thought was safe. Staban wins slightly behind the spotlight — richer than he looks, with a spy always where it hurts.

• Spy the Makers first — Smuggle Spice only taxes posts you occupy; Deep Desert and Hagga Basin are the busiest tollbooths
• Weigh recalls carefully — every Infiltrate or Gather Intelligence recall dismantles a tollbooth; the signet exists to rebuild the web cheaply
• Nine cards cut both ways — losing Diplomacy thins your Faction icons but speeds your cycling; buy replacement Faction access early
• Convert through the kickers — Landsraad-post signets are a spice-to-Solari exchange; Faction-post signets buy Intrigue. Alternate by what the round needs