Dune: Imperium

Your agents go where your hand tells them, and nobody else can see your hand.

The Great Houses of the Landsraad, the desert planet, and the spice everybody is prepared to behave very badly over. Paul Dennen designed it for Dire Wolf — the same designer as Clank! — drawing on Frank Herbert's novels and the Legendary Pictures films alike. You begin with a unique leader card and a starting deck identical to everybody else's; what you buy from there is the only thing that makes you different.

The clever part is that deck-building bolts hidden information onto worker placement, a combination that has no business working and does. You send agents out, but which spaces you can reach is dictated by the cards in your hand — so the table sees where you went and never what you were holding. Conflicts resolve from cards too, which means committing forces is really a guess about what everyone else kept back. An hour to two, and it plays solo.

Perfect for: Anyone who has wanted worker placement to involve rather more lying.

1–4 players | 60–120 minutes | Age 14+

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📖 New to the genre? What Is a Deck-Building Game? — how it works and which games do it best.

📖 Also new to worker placement? What is a Worker Placement game? — how it works and which games do it best.