Week 16 Day 2 - Dune the Board Game (Game Walkthrough and Analysis)
0Today we took a diversion from QuakeC to talk about a board gave I've been enjoying playing recently - Dune. It was originally released in 1979, and yet even when playing it today feels amazingly modern and different. I have played a lot of it since acquiring it over spring break, and thought it would be fun today to run you all through the mechanics of the game and a couple turns so that we could see how it works and how they were able to pull off asymmetrical gameplay so well.
It's all too common in game design to make everything balanced by making everything weak. For example, giving a benefit like "You get +1 on attack rolls made with axes" to dwarves or something, whereas elves might get a +1 on bows. Dune, however, takes the exact opposite approach - every faction (and there's 6 in the base game, more with expansions) is *completely broken*. Like, they're literally overpowered. But somehow, they balanced out very well, and it becomes a game with a lot of thinking, tension and excitement.
See if there's something in it that will inspire you in your own games!