Get To Playing Dune: War for Arrakis

How It Plays

This guide covers just enough to start playing. Have the game in front of you and follow along!

Dune: War for Arrakis is an area-control war game. Your forces are Legions -- groups of units led by leaders -- that move between areas, fight battles, and contest spice. These short animations use plain colored blocks (Atreides green, Harkonnen red) to show the core moves.

Moving a Legion

A Legion moves between connected areas of the board -- advance to threaten spice, reinforce, or attack.

Battle

When a Legion moves into an area held by the enemy, a battle begins. You win an exchange by scoring more hits than your opponent: the attacker rolls attack dice for hits, the defender rolls to defend, and each net hit removes an enemy step. A block reduced to zero steps is destroyed. (Leader abilities, terrain, and special powers can override this -- but the dice are the heart of it.)

Hidden Deployment

Atreides deployment tokens stand hidden -- your opponent cannot tell what a token holds until it is revealed in battle or scouted. A single token carries the whole unit: when it flips, its icons are shown together on the one tile (an Atreides troop reads as two symbols in a row). This concealment is the heart of Atreides guerrilla play.

That Is the Core

Move Legions between areas, attack into enemy areas to fight, and use hidden deployment tokens to keep your foe guessing. The full game layers on spice harvesting, the Spice Must Flow track, faction powers, and leader abilities -- keep the rulebook handy for the complete sequence of play.