Dune Imperium: Uprising: The 6 Player 3v3 Team Game
July 3, 2025 | ≈ 1721 words | Dune Imperium: Uprising
Thoughts on what it’s like being forced to play the same game 4 times
“A mysterious leader on Arrakis called Muad’Dib wages war from the deep desert and poses a threat to the supply of the most valuable substance in the Universe: spice. And unbeknownst to the Emperor, Muad’Dib is making a play at the Golden Lion Throne itself!”
This is the first line from a comparatively miniscule block of text to detail the rules of the Dune Imperium: Uprising’s 6 player variant. A 4-5 hour 3v3 team vs team extravaganza for a normally 2 to 4 player deckbuilding + worker-placement hybrid. Attached as a separate 4 page leaflet to the base game’s 20 page rulebook, the following 4 pages describes a set of rules to allow for 6 total players to the battle for Arrakis. Let me put it this way, this is like having a 15,000 word recipe for making sourdough bread, breaking down the chemistry and science of the creation of bread, then at the end saying “Addendum: if you want to make sourdough pizza just add tomatoes and cheese!”
If it wasn’t made clear from my thoughts on deckbuilding (click here) I generally don’t like the onboarding or learning process for deckbuilders. There’s a disconnect for be between what I want to do and the actual part which is deconstructing the actual rules of deckbuilding (drawing, discarding, adding, subtracting, reading. A lot of reading) and applying that to make your deck function. Since 2021, few games have changed my opinion on deckbuilding, but I’ve since stopped trying to fit a square hole into a round peg. In other words, I’ve fully bought into the gameplay loop of add card, trash card, draw the best hand to do the most stuff and transition into victory points. The list of deckbuilders I personally enjoy is essentially my top 3 favorite deckbuilders: Path of Light and Shadow, SPQF, and a far far third is Cubitos. Ironically, Cubitos was the game that finally convinced me to stop playing deckbuilders poorly, and start playing to completely break the game and make a completely unfair deck. The closest game that comes close to this is Slay the Spire, a solo video game that also has a system of constantly trickling in gamebreaking passive abilities to build a deck around (which also has a physical board game now). Long gone are the days of meandering through the liminal period of the terrible starting deck and mediocre half-synergistic piles. Now we are Chapeling (read: Trashing) away our entire deck and out of the ashes building a flawless and themeless drawing engine to print points like we were Cuba. It’s 2025, Dominion has 16 expansions and today we’re going to talk about
Dune: Imperium
A beginning is the time for taking the most delicate care that the balances are correct.
I never read Dune btw. My first time playing Dune: Imperium was uneventful. 2021, playing with a great teacher and clocking around 2 hours, I played a very standard worker placement deckbuilding hybrid game. Cards are allocated to worker placement actions or held onto for secondary effects focused on purchasing power or military power for point. Yes, point. In a game that goes to 10 points, getting 1 could be enough to deviate the normal engine building plan. However, like other hybrid deckbuilders, this is less Dominion and more Wingspan, looking at a menu and picking a card that suits your current needs, while providing a benefit maybe 3 more times. The gradual building of a fine-tuned block of cardboard has been modernized to the “hey maybe the starting cards are good too” model of deckbuilder design. Thus, a relatively straightforward resource gathering worker placement deck-management game ended with a grand finale of pushing points until it could no longer fit. I thought maybe it’s good enough for another go, but I’m not compelled. The combat is fine within euro standards, a simple temporary strength value comparison that resets each round. Clean. Refreshing, even. But combining two of the driest mechanics into a game just makes trying to play well feel so incremental and mechanical. At the end of the day, I didn’t care about spice or water or the Kwisatz Haderach. Who cares.
Fast forward two years.
Paul Dennen creates the sequel game in conjunction with the new Dune movie coming out in theaters. All your favorites are back. Timothée Chalamet, Josh Brolin, Zendaya. Not Jason Momoa that guy is fuckin dead.
Paul me is none to do. Why would I want to play the The first was mediocre. The second seems identical with a worker sharing mechanic tied to a new resource. Once again, who…
thought the 6 player game would teach Paul about the joy of relying on your teammates. Fully crystallized in fact. Captain Sonar. Codenames. Decrypto. The competition just elevates the stakes and organically forms the proper mindset for a game about…not fucking taking that spot that your teammate needed. Oops.
Dune 2: ooooOOOooooOOOOooo
One of the new additions to Uprising is the ability to gain Spies. Place a spy on an action and on a future turn, you can spend it to place your worker on that action whether or not there was a worker already there. Spicy. Why is this important? Well, in the first game, there was a crazy space that basically said, “If you take this spot, you get a point this round”. Remember in a 10 point game, doing that every round is a pretty big deal. Really, the space was called Heighliner. The details are actually that the space lets you get 5 garrisoned troops, and troops are used to increase your strength value to win the combat at the end of the round. Winning combat give you a reward, and in the latter half of the game that’s normally a point. In Uprising, not only do points come earlier and faster, in a 6 player game there’s 6 people adding troops into the battle. So imagine the Spy, placed at the Heighliner, patiently waiting to be used to counter another player’s Heighliner. Heighliners for everybody.
Most importantly, the biggest new addition to the 6 player game is the addition of 2 asymmetric players. One, the emperor of the known universe and controller of the Harkkonen, Shaddam IV leader of House Corrino aka Christopher Walken (no not joking). The other, Desert Mouse aka Muad’Dib aka Timothée Chalamet aka Kwisatz Haderach aka leader of the Freman. Each of these players play normally except, they do not score points via the normal means in the game. They have no access to points in combat, and cannot score points by going up the guild tracks. Instead, they play support, pushing up one of their other two teammates throughout the game and sometimes unintentionally committing them to progress they weren’t expecting.
Not expecting? Well didn’t I mention no one knows your plans?
Wheels Within Wheels
Finally, why do we care so much about a 6 player deckbuilding worker placement game?
Let’s list some common interactions within the genre of worker placement and of deckbuilding.
- “You took the spot I needed!” Open drafting 101, take the spot so that it blocks others from taking it.
- “You already have your extra worker?” More actions is more better. More actions earlier is more better earlier.
- “You took the card I needed!” Drafting 101, take the synergy piece the opponent needs, it’s a good card anyway.
- “You’re playing your whole deck!” Deckbuilding 101, drawing your whole deck is good.
Dune: Imperium for sure has all of these aspects within, a sign of a good worker placement deckbuilding game. But add in 2 more players and no other changes, and suddenly it becomes a game of mental twister trying not to tumble into your teammates.
Taking your teammates spot becomes round ruining. Getting an extra worker can save your team from a bad situation and make you a hero. Taking your teammate’s card can be game ending. And playing your whole deck can…save your team from a bad situation. A lot of saving needed in this game it turns out.
So now we have a choice. You can do the obvious thing and ask your teammate “Do you need that spot? I’m about to take it and if you want I can leave it for you.” and very kindly leave that space open for your teammate.
Obviously, this puts a very very large beacon for the next player in turn order who just so happens to be on the opposite team. Part of the rules of the team variant is that you’re nestled in between two members of the opposite team. So in case you wanted to do something nice or have a great plan, you’ll have to do that the turn after someone who is trying to ruin all your plans and before the turn that someone is going to ruin all your plans.
The other option? Become a mind reader.
No, literally.
Part of the magic of the first game was realizing the pain of worker placement. Oh dear I hope no one takes the spots I needed oh damn my own teammate took my spot I guess I’ll complain and whine to them. Then, you try to start seeing the future. You know what you have to do, and what the other team is trying to do. Each player has 2 workers, so you compute each possibility and determine what you can and can’t say to your own team to alert them that plans are in motion. Either you’re playing linebacker for your team or the wide-receiver scoring points.
No quarterback.
And plus, anything you say to your team needs to be said in public. Crosstalk fully enabled.
There’s not much more about 6 player Dune: Imperium that is special mechanically. Everything comes down to how much you care about team play and if you think that mind reading in board games is cool.
Almost feels like instead of representing an entire guilds, you’re a singular fortune telling space witch speaking in riddles and predestined to win a board game.