The Inside Scoop on Gaming

Dune: Eye of the Storm CCG by Last Unicorn Games

It took 32 years to bring to fruition. Yet it was worth the wait. The latest CCG is out and it is almost all that I want from a CCG and also a lot more. Dune: Eye of the Storm shipped late last week, the last week in October of 1997, and I glad. I have been waiting patiently for this to happen ever since I first heard the hints and clues that it was in production.
I first encountered the book Dune in November of 1975. It is a wonderful coincidence that I got my first starter deck also in the month of November. So on to the game.

All that I have received so far is one Starter Deck. I stood in the hobby shop as the owners husband opened the shipping box and entered the pristine box of starters and Spice Packs, booster packs, into their system I thought and thought as he was doing this. Which of the 6 decks did I want to get. I have been putting some thought into it and I was contemplating a 2 faction deck. But I only had cash for one. So in the end I picked up the Spacing Guild as my first one. The other choices are Bene Gesserit; my second choice by the way; Atreides, Harkonnen, Corrino, and The Fremen. Still I had my first faction and was wishing I could have bought the other deck also. Well I opened the deck, driving home in the first snowstorm of the season I could not wait, and fell in love with the cards. For me there must be a strong visual grab from the start. That was one of the big hooks for me with Last Unicorn Game's other product Heresy: Kingdom Come. The artwork in those ads were enough to convince me to buy deck after deck and booster after booster. The artwork for Dune is wonderful. The card Weather Control is my favorite so far. In many cases it is incredible. The one complaint I have is that there is some artwork inspired by the movie Dune which in one of my least favorite adaptations. Still it does not detract from game play and I can always choose to work around those cards if I should decide to anyway. So here is one of the cards that I had gotten in my deck is The Guild Navigator. This is one small example of the rich, vibrant cards that you get with this game.

So after I got home safely I started reading the rules. They are in-depth and complex. This is a good feature of the game. Keep in mind that I have not played against anyone yet. Since I bought the first one in my area that I know of. So I read the rules several times and came to the conclusion that I was lucky I did not have the money to buy more than one deck. Since there are adversarial relationships between the different factions. So that if you have cards from one faction, The Spacing Guild in my case, you cannot have cards aligned with their opposing force. Which in the case of the Guild is the Bene Gesserit. So I almost bought 2 mutually exclusive decks. Well not entirely as there are a lot of unaligned and generic cards that I could have used. Still this is a factor to take into consideration.

The adversaries are as follows:

House Corrino
House Atreides
House Harkonnen
The Guild
The Sisterhood
Fremen
House Atreides
Houses Harkonnen and Corrino
House Atredies and Fremen
The Sisterhood
The Guild
House Harkonnen

So keep those in mind when you go to buy your decks. So after I went through the rules a bit I determined that I only had one card that I could not use out of the 60 that are in the starter deck. The Missionaria Proctectiva which is a Sisterhood, or Bene Gesserit, card. Not too bad, only one card that I could not use out of the entire deck. That pleased me but was puzzling also. Since the decks are pre-constructed to work within the specific faction why was there one card that I could not use at all? Something to wonder about and not at all upsetting to me.

The rules take a bit to get used to. There are a lot of factors to take into consideration. The main objective is to raise sufficient resources, Spice and Favor, to have your House admitted into the Great Council. What house you may ask? You are asked to choose a name and a sponsor, one of the six factions, to start yourself off with. Since the decks are separated by faction that becomes your sponsor by default. So for me I am going to be real original and House Kelson will be allied with the Spacing Guild, or Guild, for my playing purposes. So with that in mind I have planned to go the money route. Make Solaris, the money for the game, and thereby buy my spice and favor. This then is my main strategy. I hope it works.

The rules book is no where near the level of the rule book for Heresy. There is no color and and few illustrations of game play. This does make it a bit more difficult for the slow ones like myself. The examples are the best places to look to puzzle out the intricacies of the game. And there are plenty of intricacies involved with this game. Between determining who goes first to, how to work with the economic factors to combat there are many levels of conflict and play in this game.

Overall if you want strong interaction, good card art, great possibilities than check out Dune: Eye of the Storm and join me and the rest of the Landsraad Assembly in ruling Arrakis, the world known as Dune. Also if you are interested in setting up a Rite of Trade with me for the Missionaria Protectiva drop me a line and we shall talk.

Style: 4 (Classy and well done)
Substance: 4 (Meaty)