Dune: CHOAM & Richese

Board Game Geek Reviews

1. 8 out of 10

   cfarrell

   Now played both factions. They’re both good! I quite like Richese, which are pretty flavorful and quite unique. Don’t underestimate their treachery cards, which can be very powerful. Like most of the 2nd-line factions, they have trouble with money: little cash at start, no access to spice on the planet (no ornithopters), and a much less lucrative franchise than the Emperor or Guild. They really need to ally with someone with money. The no-ships are also kind of cool, allowing some interesting bluffing. But like many of the other expansion factions (Tleilaxu, Moritani, Ecaz) they’re a bit slow and need to hang back building up strength and hope the Emperor or Harkonnen don’t win right away. —- Only played CHOAM, but I really enjoyed it. More money even than the Emperor or maybe even the Guild, but even worse leaders. Also some small but very nice treachery card powers. They feel like they fit into the Dune universe and blend well with the other factions. They don’t offer the same novelty value as the Tleilaxu or Ix, they’re much more similar to existing factions, but they’re a nice variant for those who find the Guild kinda boring or the Bene Gesserit too frustrating. —- For those of us who have played Dune a gazillion times, more factions are always interesting even if they just provide a little variation and aren’t as robust as the core factions, or only come out occasionally. The Ixians and Tleilaxu weren’t exactly better than the core factions, but they provided extremely useful variety. Especially the Ixians, who I feel really help to balance the 6-player game. The CHOAM and Richese look pretty cool just because they’ve dialed the complexity back a bit from the last expansion. The Ixians actually had substantial gameplay advantages over the Guild, but they were finicky and tricky to play well. Both CHAOM and Richese look like they’ll be easy to substitute for the BG or Guild to mix up the game. For balance reasons, I do recommend that the Harkonnen, Atriedes, and Fremen always be in, plus probably the Emperor, and then use variant factions in the BG or Guild slot. Other options are of course possible; you can substitute Ix for the Emperor, for example, and that’ll work; CHOAM could maybe go in that slot too. But things can get dicey quickly. A Bene Gesserit, Bene Tleilaxu, Richese, CHOAM, Ix, Emperor game would be extremely strange. You could do it! But it would be weird. CHOAM specifically presents one problem for me: in the rules as written, your allies can cover any expense you incur … except for supporting troops. This rule is annoying and weird; I always just play that you can cover that cost as well (I actually prefer to play with unrestricted spice transfers as in the classic version of the game; but ymmv on that and I’m in the minority locally). But CHOAM now has that explicitly as their faction advantage. So … hmm. Not quite sure how I’m going to deal with that. Of the two new factions though, the Richese are clearly where I’ll start personally.

2. 8 out of 10

   Haschim

   More factions = more variety = always a good thing. The leader skill cards are subtle, but very useful, the stronghold cards mostly inconsequential. Not an essential expansion, but well worth having.

3. heli

   Like the new factions, but wish the leader skills had been left out. They seem too clunky to use, putting them in front of the shield, then taking them back, then putting them out again, and so on. Wish they had been just an "always on" feature that you could set it and forget it. Plus, some of them don't seem very thematic, such as a sword master, which would be an always on skill, not a one-time thing and for a particular battle only. Stuff like adding +3 is kind of boring as well. The genius of the game are its qualitative abilities. These quantitative ones are too boring. Plus, battle plans are complicated enough already. They should have ditched the wheels and just done everything with cards, actually.