Overview

Rise of Ix is something we’ve been waiting for a LONG time. It seems to breathe more life into the tight Euro of Dune Imperium, that featured deckbuilding WITH worker placement on a desert planet. Cool combo for a gritty conflict, fighting on the planet’s surface itself within the 2 hours!

Features

Now, there’s more cards to deck build with, newer spaces to replace some old ones, a new unit called a Dreadnought, and more asymmetric powers- can’t go wrong with that, right? There’s even a space that requires 2 influence with the Shipping Guild to go on. It really seems like you can dial in a more concrete strategy now.

Cons & Nitpicks

Rise of Ix is an expansion that doesn’t follow a specific idea really, it just adds more of everything in a tight euro… which is something you have to be very careful of. Some of this new stuff makes the game more interesting, while usually at the same time dragging down another aspect of the core experience.

Adding in MORE cards into a deckbuilder, including more of the intrigue cards (especially the ones that give points) can lead to some serious problems with probabilities. Or how worker placement is oddly looser, since the newer spaces are better than the old ones, giving more areas to drop workers. And in fact, by encouraging players to go down their own strategies, we realized that turns can become more auto-pilot-y in a way that the original wasn’t.

And then the new unit, the Dreadnought!? It actually isn’t that fun to use and play against, because it is invincible, and stresses the ‘area control’ mechanic that wasn’t a major aspect of the game anyways.

In actuality, we’re disappointed in how there’s not more heightened stakes for fighting, or more nuances to the faction influence track.

Final Thoughts

Right, but this is an average recommendation from us. So if you don’t mind too much about increased randomness, or maybe even appreciate the lowered conflict, this could be a very accessible fresh view of Dune Imperium with more buttons to press! You can enjoy Dune Imperium’s universe and deckbuilding systems more, with technically more board states possible and more replayability.

It’s likely that 1-2 player groups like this increased playground of stuff more, and then just relish how the Dune card play meets worker placement combo-ing harder. We cannot understate how many new builds are possible, with tech specialties just influencing it all.