How to play Dune: Imperium

Dune: Imperium puts you at the head of a Great House fighting for control of Arrakis — and it fuses two engines into one game. Your deck is your house's web of allies and schemes: every card you buy from the Imperium Row makes future hands stronger. Your Agents are your presence on the board: each turn you play a card to send an Agent to a space it unlocks — courting the Emperor, the Spacing Guild, the Bene Gesserit, or the Fremen, harvesting spice in the deep desert, or maneuvering troops toward war.

Every round one Conflict card dangles rewards before the table, and only players who commit troops can claim them. When your Agents are spent you take a Reveal turn: flip your remaining hand, count Persuasion to buy new cards, and count swords to back your soldiers. It is a race to 10 victory points across at most ten rounds — through battles won, factions courted, and an economy that hums louder every time you shuffle.

New to deck-building or worker placement? Here's the trick that makes this game click: every card in your hand is two different things. Its top half sends an Agent somewhere on the board; its bottom half is what it's worth if you keep it in hand until your Reveal turn. You never get both from the same card, so each turn asks: do I want this card's place, or its power?

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

• 1 game board — Arrakis and the Imperium as a map of agent spaces, grouped into the four faction blocks, the city/desert regions, and the Landsraad. Each space is locked behind a card icon, so the board only opens up as your deck grows.
• 8 leader cards — your Great House's head, each with a unique passive and a once-per-game signet ability. The hex icons on the card rate its strategic complexity; one-icon leaders (Paul Atreides, Rabban, Memnon Thorvald, Ilban Richese) are the recommended first-game picks.
• 67 Imperium deck cards — the market you build from, five face up at a time in the Imperium Row. This is where your deck's identity comes from, and the row refills the instant you buy.
• 24 reserve cards (8 Arrakis Liaison, 10 The Spice Must Flow, 6 Foldspace) — always-available purchases. The Spice Must Flow is the game's buy-a-victory-point card, and there are only ten of them.
• 18 conflict cards (4 Conflict I, 10 Conflict II, 4 Conflict III) — one per round, escalating in value. The deck is built to exactly 10 cards at setup, which is why the game can never run past ten rounds.
• 40 intrigue cards — hidden plots: some fire in combat as a nasty surprise, some are quiet endgame victory points, some break a rule once.
• Per player: a 10-card starting deck, 3 Agents, 16 cubes, 2 discs, score + combat markers, 1 Councilor token, 3 Control markers — the cubes are your troops (garrison and battlefield) and faction influence; the third Agent stays out of play until you hire the Swordmaster, and the Councilor marks your High Council seat.
• 15 water, 24 Solari, 23 spice tokens — the three currencies. Water gates the desert, Solari buys seats and services, spice is both money and the thing everyone is fighting over.
• 4 Alliance tokens + 1 Mentat + 1 First Player marker — the alliance banners sit on the faction tracks waiting for whoever climbs highest, and the Mentat is a rentable extra agent.
• 31 House Hagal cards — the automated rival that fills the empty seat in solo and two-player games: it blocks spaces and contests conflicts, but never scores.

Each round flows through five phases:

1. Round Start — reveal the top Conflict card, then everyone draws a hand of 5 cards.

2. Player Turns — clockwise from the First Player, each turn is an Agent turn or your one Reveal turn:

• Agent turn — play one card whose Agent icon matches a board space, send an Agent to that unoccupied space, pay its cost, and gain the space's effects plus the card's Agent box. Faction spaces also climb that faction's Influence track. Combat spaces let you deploy freshly recruited troops plus up to 2 from your garrison into the Conflict
• Reveal turn — when you're out of Agents (or choose to stop): reveal your remaining hand, resolve Reveal boxes, spend Persuasion on Imperium Row and Reserve cards (the row refills immediately; unspent Persuasion is lost), then set your strength: each troop in the Conflict is worth 2, each revealed sword 1 — with no troops committed, swords count for nothing

3. Combat — starting with the First Player, players with troops in the Conflict may play Combat Intrigue cards until everyone passes in a row. Then the highest strength takes the Conflict card's top reward, second place the next (third place rewards only with 4 players). A tie for first means no one wins the top prize — the tied players each take the second reward.

4. Makers — each desert space with a spice icon and no Agent on it accumulates 1 spice from the bank for its future harvester.

5. Recall — if someone has 10+ VP or the Conflict deck is empty, the game ends. Otherwise the Mentat and all Agents come home, the First Player marker passes clockwise, and a new round begins.

Along the way: the High Council seat (5 Solari, once per game) adds +2 Persuasion every Reveal turn; the Swordmaster (8 Solari) unlocks your third Agent; Intrigue cards spring plots, combat surprises, and endgame points; winning certain Conflicts grants Control of Arrakeen, Carthag, or Imperial Basin — a steady trickle of Solari or spice each time anyone visits.

A turn, played out. The Conflict card this round pays 2 VP for first place, and Ana has three troops in her garrison. Her hand holds a card that opens Heighliner (a big troop deployment) and another that opens Selective Breeding (a deck-thinning Bene Gesserit space). She has Solari for only one. Ana takes Heighliner: she deploys 5 troops in total, and Beto — who was planning to win the conflict with 2 troops and a couple of swords — quietly diverts to spice harvesting instead, because he can no longer catch her strength of 10. Ana wins the 2 VP uncontested. That's the round's real lesson: showing overwhelming force early often wins a conflict without a fight, because your rivals will spend their turns somewhere more profitable.

Reach 10 victory points and finish the round — or have the most VP when the ten-round Conflict deck runs dry. Ties break by spice, then Solari, then water, then garrisoned troops.

Points come from four rivers, and strong players fish all of them: Conflict rewards (the marquee VPs and treasures on each round's card), faction Influence (reaching 2 Influence with a faction is worth 1 VP — losable if you slip back — and the first to 4 claims that faction's Alliance token, worth 1 VP but stealable by anyone who climbs higher), The Spice Must Flow cards (a VP each, bought with heavy Persuasion), and assorted Intrigue endgame cards. Since combat pays only those who commit, watch each round's Conflict card early: sometimes the right play is total war, and sometimes it is letting the others bleed while your engine buys the future.

Three pieces of advice for a first game. Buy the High Council seat early — 5 Solari for +2 Persuasion in every remaining Reveal turn is the best rate in the game, and it compounds. Don't fight every conflict; a round spent building your deck while others trade blows is often the round that wins you the last three. And watch your starting cards drown you — those ten identical cards are weak, so cards that let you trash them (or that add Persuasion) are quietly worth more than they look on turn one.