From: cfarrell@pacbell.net (Chris Farrell)
Subject: Dune: Eye of the Storm Review [long]

Well, I originally wrote this review for rec.games.trading-card.misc, but I
figured maybe some people here who don't generally play CCGs might be
interested in the game, given the occasional popularity of the Dune
boardgame. Then again, I may have been mainly motivated by the fact that I
ended up putting so much effort into writing it, I might as well cross-post
:)

Later,

Chris

--

As probably most of you know by now, the premise of the game is that each
player takes the part of one of the minor houses of the Landsraad.  The
goal of the game is to deploy both your own forces and the forces of your
patron Great House(s) in an attempt to gain entry to the Landsraad as one
of the Great Houses yourself.  To do this, you have to accumulate Favor and
Spice.  Your primary resouce for doing this is cash, or solaris; everything
in the game is deployed using solaris.  Your charters and homeworld
generate solaris, and you use these to deploy cards from your two decks:
your House Deck, which contains your own house's resources (men, material,
training, and operations or "ventures"), and your Imperial deck (personas
from your allied great house(s)).  During the game you will typically have
a hand of 7 House cards and an Assembly of 3 Imperial cards - both are
fully replenished at the end of the turn, and you may always discard as
many of either type of card as you wish.  The other key assets of your
House are your Favor and Spice; both are both most easily purchased with
solaris, although both can be produced (spice through mining directly off of
Dune, as you might expact, and Favor through winning Duels and Battles).
The first person to get to 10 spice and 10 favor during their House
Interval and tap their homeworld wins immediately.

The starting conditions can be customized somewhat, but typically you will
start with about 20 solari, 10 favor, and no spice; you can swap up to 5
of the solari to add some small amounts of favor and/or spice. You will
also start with the homeworld of the main house you are affiliated with;
this will generally give you 5 solari of income when tapped. From this,
you build your house.

The game then proceeds in turns consisting of three phases: The Opening
Interval, House Interval, and Closing Interval.

The Opening Interval is done simultaneously for all players, and includes
the untap phase, deferrment phase, and initiative phase.  Basically, the
initiative phase determines the order in which everyone will take their
turns in the House Interval.  Generally, the default is the highest favor
goes first and the lowest favor goes last.  Obviously, there are advantages
to be had by moving in the right position with respect to your rivals, so
there are cards which allow you to manipulate favor for the purposes of
initiative.  Particularly as you tend to close in on victory, you really
want to be going either close to first or close to last - and if you can
swing it, the infamous double-turns (where one goes last in one turn and
first in the next) can all but lock down a victory.  The only snag is an
awful rule that says that ties are resolved by flipping a card from your
house deck and comparing deployment costs (more expensive card goes first).
Especially with limited card sets, it is hard to watch one of your only two
harvesters go by to an initiative resolution pick.  I reccomend rolling
dice insteead.  I don't see any game advantage to using the cards and it
can be very frustrating to see critical cards burned in this way since your
deck never recycles.

Anyway, the real meat of the game is in your House Interval - while you may
be involved in conflicts and such in other players turns, the majority of
your activites will take place here.  You have a list of standard actions
you can perform, and you can deploy "ventures" from your hand to take
additional actions.

First, one mechanism that is new to Dune: the Guild Hoard.  This is
basically a very simple economic system.  The Guild starts out with a chunk
of spice, which they will sell at the CROE (CHOM Rate Of Exchange), which
will vary from 1 to 3 at start depending on the number of players.  As
players buy or sell spice and the size of the Guild Hoard fluctuates, the
CROE will go up or down, between 1 and 6.  Each player has the option to
either buy or sell up to three units of spice per turn.  This creates an
interesting dynamic as players who are harvesting spice from Dune sell it
to raise cash, while other players tend to buy it to get to their 10 spice
victory conditions. Of course, the more players you have the more the CROE
will fluctuate and the more opportunity there will be for manipulating it
for either your own advantage or other player's pain. Additionally, there
are many events whose effects are tied directly to the CROE, generally to
provide the Governor of Dune with some penalty or bonus.

All in all, the CROE is interesting. In the end it's a little simplistic
because it models only supply and not demand (if there are 8 units in the
hoard, the price is the same whether players want to buy 2 or 20 units),
but its still provides an interesting twist without the undue complexity of
trying to calculate a more accurate price model.

Other than buying and selling spice, you may also perform the usual
function of deploying cards from your hand - you just look at the number in
the upper left, discard that number of solaris, and play it.  Somebody
really must explain to me sometime how a single personal shield costs as
much as an entire battalion of the Atriedes' best troops, but it all works
after a fasion.  At any rate, stuff in your hand (house cards) will
generally be Personas of a generic type (like the Guard Commander or House
Mentat), battallions of troops or other bodies of people (like the CHOAM
Delegation), weapons and defenses for both individual personas and your
legions, and fortifications or other equipment for your holdings (the the
'Thopter Base, Harveters, Command Posts, and so on).

This deployment mechanism, however, applies only to "generic" men and
equipment, all of which everyone can have as many of as they want.  If you
want to deploy the unique heavy-hitters associated with a house (Leto, the
Baron, Paul, etc.), actual chunks of land (at this point, Fiefs are all
various holdings on Dune, like Arakeen or the Open Bled), or Charters
(revenue sources), you have to deploy from your "assembly" of three
imperial cards, kept face down next to your draw deck (although you may
inspect them).  This is done by picking a card and flipping it over to
start an auction for it.  High bidder wins - if it's you, you pay the high
bid and get the card.  If it's somebody else, they pay the difference
between the bid and the deployment cost and get nothing.  This mechanism
actually works a lot better in a two-player game than with lots of players.
When you have a lot of players, the primary motivation for bidding is to
keep duplicate personalities that you are using out of other player's
hands; if you have a Leto in your deck, you don't want somebody else
deploying theirs first.  In a 5-player game, it's not to hard to figure out
that if 2 people are playing Atriedes-based decks, these two players are
going to have some problems.  Otherwise, it's hard to justify spending a
couple of bucks to slow down yourself and one of the other 5 players.  This
concept of non-active players not actually getting anything for their high
bid is a bit unusual, perhaps somewhat artificially constrained by the
"Golden Rule" of card ownership common to all CCGs.

In the end, the bidding works out OK. I am certain a better mechanism
could be devised, however.

Once you've got all your stuff out, what do you do with it?  You whack
people with it, of course.  While at least one of the concepts behind the
combat system are quite interesting, this is where the game has some
critical problems.

You have 4 combat options (rites) available to you: Landsraad Rites (Battle
and Duels) and CHOAM rites (Intruige and Arbitration).  Each persona is
ranked (generally between 1 and 4) for their prowess in one or more of the
4 rites, and this rating dictates how well they can dish it out.
Basically, the rites differ in what they can target: Battle targets Fiefs,
Arbitration targets charters, and Duels and Intruiges target personas.  You
may engage in only one Landsraad and one CHOAM rite per turn.  Basically, a
combat consists of you "declaring" your attacking persona and the target,
the defender then taking any "declaration" actions (by default, just saying
"uh...OK", although tactics or special abilities may be used here), then
engaging (tapping) your attacking personas and personnel, engaging the
defending cards, and then resolving the attack.  Resolution is simple - add
up your attack strength as printed on the cards, and apply that "force" to
your choice of opposing cards (with the restriction that you can't kill of
the target Persona, Charter, or Fief until you've killed all the attached
troops and other attached forces) and if the force is greater than the
resistance (printed almost invisibly in the lower right hand corner), the
card is subdued (flipped over).

The key, and what makes the system not completely trivial, is that action
cards that affect combat can be played at every phase.  Tactics may engage
you before you have a chance to hit the Engagement phase and thus cancel
the attack, the defender may change the target of the rite, the attaking
player may use cards to declare additional rites, and so on.  This is
fortunate, because without these actions the combat system is pretty
bloodless and it's more or less impossible to actually get anything done.
I've gone through 3 phases of dealing with the Dune combat system.

First, I played a sealed deck game, when both players had very few tacitcs
to influence combat (and given that each tactic can generally influece only
one type of rite, basically never had the right card at the right time),
and it produced a crippling first impression of the game.  Basically, you
pick a target and deterministically whack it.  Virtually no strategy, and
nothing the defender can do to prevent his choice personalities from being
duelled out of existance.  Whoever starts to get an edge with the strongest
Duelling or Intruige persona rapidly controlls the board.

Then, we got a few more cards, and started to actually build decks and
survey the available combat options, key among which is the ability to
"counter".  If the defender can "counter" through a card or special ability
he can change the target of a rite, so instead of duelling with easy
pickings like Baron Harkonnen himself, you end up facing Feyd (bummer).
With all the cards available to affect combat, and the availability of the
"counter" ability, you start to think, "hey, this might actually work!".

 (Rules gripe #1: the rules for Dune are absolutely awful; nowhere more so
 than in the rules for countering, which is not a real good sign, since
 this is such a key game game concept and only takes about two lines to
 accurately explain.  The rulebook says that "Counter operations allow the
 defender to chage the target of the rite.  The defender declares any
 eligible persona as the defense leader ..."; clear enough, and as such,
 counter is granted to a defending _player_.  However, most of the card
 wordings clearly say that counter is granted to an individual _persona_,
 who can then counter - the defending player is not actually allowed to
 select any available leader as the rules clearly say.  For example, Count
 Hasmir Fenring says: "Kazimierz [sic] may counter during duels targeting
 Corrino personalities.  When countering, he gains +1 resistance."  This is
 a serious inconsistancy and leaves me confused as to how exactly this
 should work.)

Fast forward to having played now for a little while. You're going along
quite happily, and then at some point it is likely that you will face this
scenario: Your opponent, the Atriedes, has fortified Arakeen to the hilt -
a couple of battallions of troops, a 'Thopter base, command post,
whatever. You, as the Imperials, need to deploy your own Arakeen, and want
to cripple the Atriedes, so you send Shadaam IV with 4 battalions of
Sardauakar to take it out ... fair enough. You've got sufficient force to
subdue everyone, it's just a question of casualties, right?

Well, not quite.  Because, you see, the Atriedes will just use their Guard
Commander (who reads: "Guard Commander may counter during battle rites") to
reassign the target to either himself or someone else expendable who has
battle skill and who is cheap (depending on how you interpret the counter
rule).  You will, of course, crush whoever steps up and as the victor earn
1 favor for your trouble; but because "counter" allows the Atriedes to
physically change the target of the rite, rather than perhaps more logially
move additional personnel to help defend the target, your Saudaukar get
rerouted and never make it to Arakeen.  To heap insult upon injury, next
turn your wily Atriedes opponent can probably redeploy whoever you mauled
for a solari or two and repeat the whole process.  This is very
unsatisfying, and it forces you, as the attacker, to take out all defenders
with countering ability, no matter how insignificant, through Intruige and
Duels before you can send out your troops - an especially difficult task
given the normal limit of two rites (one Battle _or_ Duel and one
Arbitration on _or_ Intruige).  Without the benefit of tactics (and it
should be noted that there are as many tactics to foil your attacks as their
are to facilitate them), the plethora of cheap personas with the counter
ability makes it virtually impossible to get anything done.

Anyway, the price of being defeated in combat is subdual.  Like the rest of
the combat system, this is an effect that very nearly works.  Whenever any
rite applies sufficient force to a target persona, troop, or installation
to equal or exceed its resistance, the target becomes "sudbued", i.e.,
flipped over.  Then, in every Opening Interval, every card which is subdued
gets a defferal counter.  Essentially, anything that is subdued can be
deployed as if it were in your hand, for a price of it's deployment cost
minus the number of deferrment tokens on it (it must accumulate at least
one deferrment token before it may be deployed, however).  There are two
catches: first, you can't redeploy troops, installations, weapons, or other
upgrades until their parent persona or fief is back on-line; second, you
can't redeploy an imperial deck persona, fief, or charter if someone else
has deployed their own copy while you were out.

In an abstract sense, this works reasonably well.  When a personnel is
subdued by battle, they have taken casualties and need to be rested and
refit.  When a persona is subdued by intruige, they have been caputered or
otherwise incapacitated for a period of time and they need to be
extricated. This feels more reasonable than discarding stuff and waiting
for more copies to come up in your deck.

Where it breaks down is that it is almost impossible to actually get rid of
people permanently, no matter how badly you savage them.  The Guard
Commander who was trampled by 4 legions of Sardaukar can be back next turn
to gallantly guard the gates of Arakeen just as if he had been subdued by a
single House Mentat.  This makes it extremely hard to get rid of all of
your opponent's chaff.

It also just doesn't feel right when two major characters duel.  After all,
in all of the duels in the book, one party typically winds up dead (and
unless he's Duncan Idaho, we never see him again).  In the game, losers of
duels are just subdued like everyone else and can be back very rapidly.
This lacks a certain compelling do-or-die feeling of the duels in the book.

Now, it _is_ possible to discard vanquished targets through special card
abilities. However, we have only seen one such card - the Sandworm - so I
think it's fair to say this ability is pretty rare.

While there are a few more details to your House phase I won't go in to,
seeing how as I've gone on long enough, the one other key rule is that
unless a card or effect is a tactic (in which case the card will explictly
say when it may played), you can only engage it to produce its effect
during your own house interval - your cards are genrally locked (outside of
being attacked during rites) outside of your turn.  This greatly simplifies
the rules and eliminates virtually all nasty timing issues. This is a huge
plus. When first confronted with some of the odd timing issues present in
CCGs, most people will say "huh?". Getting rid of these is a good thing.

These are the basic guts of the House Interval. Everything else you might
want to do - harvest spice, redeploy troops, blow up the shield wall, have
visions of the future, and so on, is covered by card special abilities,
ventures, and tactics.

Ventures are just cards that, for a price in solari, allow you to take some
game action during your house interval.  Tactics are cards that, again for
a price in solari, allow you to modify some existing game action.  These
are another aspect of the game that is done quite well.  Every tactic and
venture card says explicitly when it can be played and what it affects; for
example, a tactic might be a "Tactic - Intruige - Declaration", which means
it can be played during an intruige rite, after the attacker has declared
the target of the attack but before anyone engages.  Everything is resolved
sequentially, so there are no timing issues, and life is generally good.

So these are the core concepts of the game.  There are a few additional
details (Events and some details about favor which I've largely glossed
over being the key ones). Most of this stuff is tried and true from FRPG's
other game, L5R, where it works well enough. Does it all work well
together as a game? Well, here are my personal impressions from my
experience to this point:

- While the plethora of Tactic and Venture cards does present the player
with a lot of options, the actual rules of the game are not complicated.
There is a fair amount of chrome, butif you have played any CCGs you will
be at least somewhat familiar with most of the mechanics.  Dune is getting
sort of a bad rap on the net for being very complex, but the real culprit
here is an absolutely atrocious rulebook.  Among other things, it appears
that the combat system got a significant last-minute overhaul and changes
either didn't make it into the rulebook or onto many of the cards - many of
the basic functional cards have texts which are out of synch with the
rules.  Additionally, a lot of the cards have fairly mind-bending special
texts which take a while to figure out or are open to some interpretation.
Now, virtually every CCG that I have had exposure to (not an all-inclusive
list, certainly) has had a lousy rulebook and problems with card wordings
to various extents; this is no excuse, however.  Now that the CCG market is
becoming more crowded with quality products and the games themselves are
becoming more accepted by traditional gamers, the general level of CCG
rule-writing and card-text-writing simply must be improved dramatically,
and soon.

- While a all of the mechanics are basically sound, whether or not they
integrate to describe the Dune universe is another matter entirely.  There
are many irritating details which make it hard to get behind the game.  The
oddity of the combat system is the most severe problem, but the whole
portrayal of the Fremen is another.  While in the book the Fremen possess
such critical advantages as a nearly endless supply of cheap, battle-ready
manpower that is right there on Dune, the Fremen in the game are for some
reason the most expensive troops to deploy to Dune, per point of battle
strength.  The whole bidding system, while again fundamentally sound, feels
very strange; the mechanism of bidding and paying money purely to deny your
opponent a resource is certainly a mechanism that would be used only in a
CCG. The premise - that of playing the role of one of the lesser houses -
is a potentially promising one, but in the end it's hard to swallow.  After
all, Duke Leto, Paul, Emperor Shaddham IV, Baron Harkonnen and the whole
crowd are under your direct control once you purchase them.  In the end it
feels much more like you are playing the major houses directly.

- The art is extremely mixed. There are a lot of decent pieces and a few
that are quite good, but as usual there are many that are plain bad (the
Imperials get especially short shrift). This is another problem the CCG
genre has to cope with, since obviously obtaining such a large number of
pieces and keeping any kind of consistant quality must be incredibly
difficult. I think clever CCG designers need to come up with some clever
way to improve the overall quality and keep out the real losers.

- Since this is after all a CCG, one has to include a discussion of
packaging in any review of the game. At the bottom level, the Dune
packaging is fair enough - while not generous, the 1:5:9 booster
distribution is typical with only ICE and Deciper really taking steps to
make these games less outrageously expensive.

The real packaging issue here is one of how FRPG is marketing the whole
Dune CCG product.  Dune is a 301 card set - pretty large, and expensive to
collect a substantial portion of the cards.  The kicker, though, is that
you don't get a set which covers even a significant portion of the first
Dune novel.  Basically, this set leaves off with the Atriedes occupation of
Arrakis, and as such is more of a prequel than an actual Dune game.

This is OK in and of itself, I guess. However, the fact of the matter is
that I think a lot of people will buy this expecting a complete Dune game,
which this is most certainly not.

The entire Dune story will be played out through the upcoming 3 expansions,
a concept that FRPG has used sucessfully with L5R. How well this works for
you will probably depend on how much you liked following L5R's plot and how
much disposable income you have, but it smacks to me of excessive
profiteering.  By the time the MECCG had 3 expansions, they were already
well beyond the scope of Tolkien's original works and into playing the Dark
Side - Lidless Eye was the third expansion.  IMHO, one 300-card set is
already a vast medium compared to traditional (non-CCG) games, and FRPG/LUG
could very easily have given us a complete Dune CCG in one set - after all,
ICE did no less in the first Middle Earth set.  If you talk to FRPG/LUG,
they will also talk about the difficulties of the rights to the book vs.
the rights to the movie, which is somthing to be considered (although why
anyone would persue the rights to the movie first is beyond the ken of most
anyone I know).  However, in the end they _did_ get the rights to the book,
and despite the already significant delays they had already experienced,
they would have done well to further delay the set and produce a complete
game rather than the small fraction of the Dune universe that we got.

With that off my chest, what's the bottom line?

While I can't condemn any aspect of the game as fundamentally broken, you
also won't find me praising any aspect of it as innovative or outstanding.
While the combat system is an easy target, the problem is not that it
doesn't work, per se, just that it's not very interesting and provides many
more restrictions than freedoms.  It's a workmanlike game - drawn heavily
from L5R, they did an adequate job of producing a decent enough game,
albeit without any real inspiration.  The obvious quality control problems
with the rulebook and card wordings (mostly tied to the combat system) are
really unforgiveable, but nothing that a good solid rewrite and some
official erratta followed by a patched up 2nd Edition couldn't fix.

However, in the end the game fails to capture the compelling form of the
novel for a few key reasons: first, a weak combat system that simply fails
to capture the life-and-death nature of all the struggles of the book; and
second, a simple lack of coverage.  For the amount of money you will spend
on this game, you will get surprisingly little.  Dune, like Middle Earth,
is Grand Opera played on a large scale - the Dune: EotS game covers very
little of the large Dune universe.

From: "Robert Rossney" <rbr@well.com>
Subject: Re: Dune: Eye of the Storm Review [long]

A good review, and a fair one.  Yet I am more optimistic.

> All in all, the CROE is interesting. In the end it's a little simplistic 
> because it models only supply and not demand (if there are 8 units in the

> hoard, the price is the same whether players want to buy 2 or 20 units), 
> but its still provides an interesting twist without the undue complexity
of 
> trying to calculate a more accurate price model.

This is incorrect.  Players must reset the CROE after buying each spice
token, and are limited to buying three tokens per turn.  So if there are 8
tokens in the hoard, the first will cost three solaris, as will the second,
but the third will cost four.  It's basically the same market mechanism
used in Crude/McMulti.

>  (Rules gripe #1: the rules for Dune are absolutely awful; nowhere more
so 
>  than in the rules for countering, which is not a real good sign, since 
>  this is such a key game game concept and only takes about two lines to 
>  accurately explain.  The rulebook says that "Counter operations allow
the 
>  defender to chage the target of the rite.  The defender declares any 
>  eligible persona as the defense leader ..."; clear enough, and as such, 
>  counter is granted to a defending _player_.  However, most of the card 
>  wordings clearly say that counter is granted to an individual _persona_,

>  who can then counter - the defending player is not actually allowed to 
>  select any available leader as the rules clearly say.  For example,
Count 
>  Hasmir Fenring says: "Kazimierz [sic] may counter during duels targeting

>  Corrino personalities.  When countering, he gains +1 resistance."  This
is 
>  a serious inconsistancy and leaves me confused as to how exactly this 
>  should work.)

I think "absolutely awful" is unfair.  The rules for Dune are remarkably
good for the first edition of a complex CCG.  The rules surrounding
Countering and the deployment of Ventures have some problematical
ambiguities.  But the *rest* of the rules are really quite good.  It's
tricky to learn the game from the rulebook - it really needs some sort of
introduction for new players - but once you're familiar with the
terminology, the rules' legalese results in remarkable clarity.

As it happens, a Countering persona must declare *himself* as the defense
leader.  This changes everything:

> Fast forward to having played now for a little while. You're going along 
> quite happily, and then at some point it is likely that you will face
this 
> scenario: Your opponent, the Atriedes, has fortified Arakeen to the hilt
- 
> a couple of battallions of troops, a 'Thopter base, command post, 
> whatever. You, as the Imperials, need to deploy your own Arakeen, and
want 
> to cripple the Atriedes, so you send Shadaam IV with 4 battalions of 
> Sardauakar to take it out ... fair enough. You've got sufficient force to

> subdue everyone, it's just a question of casualties, right?
> 
> Well, not quite.  Because, you see, the Atriedes will just use their
Guard 
> Commander (who reads: "Guard Commander may counter during battle rites")
to 
> reassign the target to either himself or someone else expendable who has 
> battle skill and who is cheap (depending on how you interpret the counter

> rule).  You will, of course, crush whoever steps up and as the victor
earn 
> 1 favor for your trouble; but because "counter" allows the Atriedes to 
> physically change the target of the rite, rather than perhaps more
logially 
> move additional personnel to help defend the target, your Saudaukar get 
> rerouted and never make it to Arakeen.  To heap insult upon injury, next 
> turn your wily Atriedes opponent can probably redeploy whoever you mauled

> for a solari or two and repeat the whole process.  This is very 
> unsatisfying, and it forces you, as the attacker, to take out all
defenders 
> with countering ability, no matter how insignificant, through Intruige
and 
> Duels before you can send out your troops - an especially difficult task 
> given the normal limit of two rites (one Battle _or_ Duel and one 
> Arbitration on _or_ Intruige).  Without the benefit of tactics (and it 
> should be noted that there are as many tactics to foil your attacks as
their 
> are to facilitate them), the plethora of cheap personas with the counter 
> ability makes it virtually impossible to get anything done.

But why didn't you subdue the Guard Commander in an Intrigue rite in the
first place?  In any event, the Guard Commander can't reassign the attack
to "someone else expendable."  He becomes the target of the rite.  With any
luck, he gets subdued.  That's one less countering persona.  

You also neglect to take into account the plethora of Events and Ventures
that are in the game just so that you can pick off those pesky Counter
cards.  Best Blade and Coriolis Storm, for example, let you subdue cards
outright, Twilight Assault lets you initiate more than one Intrigue rite in
your turn, Imperial Intervention and Pre-Dawn Ritual let you engage
personas.  Those six cards are just the ones that I got in the collection
of four boosters that I have sitting on my desk at the moment; I'm sure I
have more of these in my starter decks.

[Long discussion of the ability to redeploy subdued cards snipped]

> Now, it _is_ possible to discard vanquished targets through special card 
> abilities. However, we have only seen one such card - the Sandworm - so I

> think it's fair to say this ability is pretty rare.

Gom Jabbar gives this ability too.  There are also cards like Long, Cold
Night that let your discard deferment tokens assigned to subdued cards,
making it harder for them to come back into play.  

But the point of combat isn't to destroy your opponent's cards; it's to
make it harder for him to win the game.  If you lose sight of the actual
object of the game (get ten spice tokens and ten points of Imperial Favor)
and get bogged down in keeping the Sardaukar Legions subdued, and you're in
trouble.

> With that off my chest, what's the bottom line?
> 
> While I can't condemn any aspect of the game as fundamentally broken, you

> also won't find me praising any aspect of it as innovative or
outstanding.  
> While the combat system is an easy target, the problem is not that it 
> doesn't work, per se, just that it's not very interesting and provides
many 
> more restrictions than freedoms.  It's a workmanlike game - drawn heavily

> from L5R, they did an adequate job of producing a decent enough game, 
> albeit without any real inspiration.  The obvious quality control
problems 
> with the rulebook and card wordings (mostly tied to the combat system)
are 
> really unforgiveable, but nothing that a good solid rewrite and some 
> official erratta followed by a patched up 2nd Edition couldn't fix.
> 
> However, in the end the game fails to capture the compelling form of the 
> novel for a few key reasons: first, a weak combat system that simply
fails 
> to capture the life-and-death nature of all the struggles of the book;
and 
> second, a simple lack of coverage.  For the amount of money you will
spend 
> on this game, you will get surprisingly little.  Dune, like Middle Earth,

> is Grand Opera played on a large scale - the Dune: EotS game covers very 
> little of the large Dune universe.

I think a little perspective is in order here.  If you look at the Imperial
Edition of L5R, you'll find a pretty flat game.  No Scorpion Clan.  No
Junzo's Army.  No Monks.  No Naga.  No Phoenix Clan.  Enlightenment Victory
only open to people who have bought a *ton* of cards.  The "Shadowlands"
attribute completely pointless.  (Was it even *present* in Imperial
Edition?)  No Dark Scrolls.  No Regions.  No Kihos.  No Rituals.  Sure, it
worked as a game, more or less, but it really didn't become what it is
until a couple of supplements came out.

I think Dune works pretty well as a game.  It suffers a lot by comparison
to L5R because L5R is huge and Dune is, for now, teeny.  I think that a lot
of people who are down on Dune at this point are frustrated by the combat
system and are missing the essentials of the game, which is not primarily a
military game but a political one.  

To that end, I'd recommend the multi-player version over the two-player
version, definitely.  Play against someone with a nicely-tuned Bene
Gesserit deck.  Also, it's worth mentioning that the style of play for each
house is remarkably different.  Playing BG is a very different experience
from playing Fremen.  (It is very annoying that the weirding cards seem to
be so uncommon; in my collection of three starters and four boosters I got
three cards that make use of it.  Maybe I just got unlucky.)

There are some things that Dune roundly deserves to get knocked for that
you missed.  

The flavor text is *terrible*.  It's boring, obvious, and adds nothing. 
This isn't a small thing; much of the character of a CCG derives from this,
and Dune's is flat and uninteresting.  The CHOAM Dividends text, for
example reads:

   Dividends are parcelled out each quarter.  They are given to
   member Houses who govern one or more CHOAM company charters.

Now, doesn't that just make the vibrant Dune universe come alive for you? 
Sheesh.  And in at least once case (Carryall) the flavor text *directly
contradicts* the effect printed on the card.  Really, it would be better to
just omit the flavor text if it's going to be like this.

Similarly, the copy-editing for the cards is very bad.  There's a misprint
on the Dune card, for crying out loud, the one card that everybody starts
the game with!  The Forbidden Zone, (the Fremen homeworld), is not shown as
being a Dune Fief, which means that literal-minded players can argue that
the Fremen can't bring Fremen Allies into play.  There's a card called
Stanglehold.  

The problems with the flavor text and the copy-editing bespeaks a
carelessness that's hard to excuse in a well-capitalized project like this.

Nonetheless, I think that Dune has the potential to be among the top-drawer
CCGs.  I think that a lot of the subtleties of the political system are not
apparent until you've been playing it for a while.  Like L5R, I think that
it will, unfortunately, tend to first yield those subtleties to the people
who have bought a lot of cards.  If you have the discipline to, say, just
focus on building a Fremen deck, and trade away all of your other cards to
your Guild and Harkonnen friends, you can probably do pretty well; I have
yet to meet the CCG player who actually has this kind of discipline.

Bob Rossney
rbr@well.com