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Hot on the trail of one of 2021’s best-loved games comes Rise of Ix, the first expansion to Dune Imperium. While promising all the normal stuff, like more cards for all decks and improved variability. The Rise of Ix adds a few new systems and wrinkles to make even the most seasoned Dune Imperium player think twice about where to place his agents.
Firstly, there are tech Tiles, these tiles, which can be bought with Spice and give you either one-off powers, passive bonuses or endgame point dividends. Not only are these tech tiles great for making you feel different to everyone else but how you earn them is sumptuous, you can get discounts depending on which space you go to or even commit troops as negotiators, leaving them in the tech area to offer future discounts. It's all rather tasty!
Fill Your Opponents With Dread!
As well as the sought-after tech you can also commission Dreadnoughts to fight in your battles. They add a combat strength of three to your battles and are much more agile than your ground troops.
Rather than returning to your supply they stay on the board forever and can be used to hold spaces on the board if you win, drip-feeding your resources throughout the game. These Dreadnoughts really alter the battles and see’s players rushing to build them and dominate the battlefield.
Rise of Ix included a new shipping track too, you can move up the shipping track and whenever you see fit recall your marker, gaining all the rewards you have passed. This creates a nice little mini-game of trying to stay there as long as you can for the higher rewards but also offers you the chance of taking little bonuses when you need a resource bump or even a few extra troops for a significant battle.
Both the shipping track and the tech tile/Dreadnought sections of the board come on new board pieces that you slide over the top and next to your original board. It does look a bit higgeldy piggeldy but I suppose it's worth it for these fancy new systems. I would have preferred a different solution but what can you do.
Additions To The Old Stuff.
Along with all these fancy new mechanics, you get new cards for the main deck that include nods to the new systems. Along with that, you have Infiltrator cards which let you send your agents to spaces already occupied by other players. Which is awesome!
You have new ‘unload’ cards that give you reveal rewards even if you don’t use them on your reveal turns as long as you discard or trash a card instead. These cards are very powerful and did allow me to create a few little neat combos previously unseen in Dune Imperium.
The conflict deck has been spiced up with new rewards and goodies that feed into the new parts of the game. I even had a card yesterday that gave me a victory point if I won and a further two victory points if I had enough Solari and Spice. It gave me three victory points total and won me the game. It was awesome because I was getting thrashed by the AI up until that point and ended up winning on a Spice tiebreaker. Get in!
There are also extra leaders and intrigue cards to spice up the game-to-game shenannigans. All in all, I would say this expansion adds a desert-load of new content, and new systems and adds further wrinkles into every game of Dune Imperium. I also really enjoyed how easy it was to understand it all and add it straight into the base game, nothing is too complicated, even though it adds a fair amount of player choice. There are also a few new cards and rules to have an epic game, which goes up to twelve points instead of ten. All good stuff.
Components.
There’s not a lot to speak about components really, everything is roughly the same as the Dune Imperium base game. The cards are of good quality, as are the art and design of the cards. I do wish the Dreadnoughts and markers looked a bit better, especially when playing with the Deluxe Upgrade, the Dreadnoughts look a little basic next to the other Deluxe components. (I am looking forward to upgrading those too, shhh, don’t tell anyone!)
Rise Of IX, Final Thoughts!
I will say this right off the bat, I will never play Dune Imperium again without Rise Of IX. While it does not change too much the things that are added are brilliant. The Tech is exciting and powerful, the Dreadnoughts add a lot to battles and all the new cards and systems add more variety and decision space for very little overhead.
I wish the Dreadnought pieces were better, I wish the board overlays were done differently but they are small prices to pay for an expansion that adds so much to one of my favourite games of last year. Let the Spice flow!
