Apparently it may be available for purchase by the end of the month?
The board game adaptation of Frank Herbert’s Dune, first published 40 years ago and long out of print, is back. Publisher Gale Force Nine (GF9) says that this is just the beginning of its newly-forged partnership with the Herbert estate.
Via Fark.
I should mention it to the WashingCon people — no, wait, they’re undoubtedly aware of this. The person who wrote the Polygon article linked above has all the objectivity of an acolyte, given that he went out a few years back and made his own version of the game for three hundred bucks*. I cannot imagine that anybody as pumped about board games as the WashingCon crew is won’t know about this already.
Anyway: the game’s apparently out August 25th. And they also apparently didn’t really change anything about it, either.
Moe Lane
*I NOTE THIS WITH RESPECT, NOT MOCKERY.
Fantastic news!
So… is it… you know… any good?
The fanbase apparently crafts new copies of the game by hand, so I assume so.
I personally sold my copy back in the 90s (and for nowhere near $400) but from what I recall, it basically scratched the “Stab the other players in the back, Diplomacy-style” itch for groups. I think our group preferred stuff like Amoeba Wars because the player who sunk his points into his personal diplomacy skill still couldn’t roll well to save his life and Dune was random-adverse from what I recall.
Not for everyone of course, but I have some very fond memories of playing this around the time it came out.
Forty years. Crikey.
I remember playing that back when I was in high school, in my FLGS that was built in a geodesic dome — Viking Hobbies, in between Memphis and Millington, TN. We had a great time with the game, but the one thing I remember most was that one of the guys who was frequently around the store was also of Middle Eastern descent (Lebanese? Syrian? Not sure…), and he put some *menace* into pronouncing “fedayeen”. I had not had any real appreciation for the possibilities until then, for sure.