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The WBC Dune tournament welcomed back players this year with a full move to playing the new GF9 edition of the game, which was published in 2019 just before WBC went on hiatus. This edition is 95% the same as the old Avalon Hill edition, featuring just a handful of changes to faction powers and general rules. Many of the ambiguities that had been clarified by rulings over the years in this tournament now have answers from the designers in an official FAQ. The relatively few differences in rulings really didn’t lead to any major confusion among the players at all; everyone adapted well.
Players were offered the chance to choose to play with the Ixians & Tleilaxu expansion, but there were no takers. Most of the players were either old regulars or relatively new to the game, and both classes of folks seemed to not want the additional complexity.
Happily, game times dropped overall this year, back to an average duration of 6.5 turns in 3.8 hours. Only one game required adjudication due to not finishing within the 5-hour time limit, which is a big improvement over recent years. The reasons for this are not easily determined. Contributing factors may include the fact that most of the games wound up being 5-player this year, changes in the updated game rules, or new players bringing a new mix of experience levels. In any case, the average duration of about 35 minutes per turn has continued to hold pretty firm for many years.
Since many of the house rules used in previous tournaments have essentially been adopted into the new official GF9 rules, the only significant house rule retained for this year’s tournament was the Shield Wall becoming a 6th stronghold after seeing the 4th worm appear. The purpose for this rule is to create additional opportunities for a non-default win starting at a semi-random point in the mid-game. We have found that with very experienced players, 5 strongholds are typically not enough to prevent a large percentage of games ending in Guild default wins. Other than that, house rules were mostly limited to just a handful of clarifications on Karama use, Truthtrance use, and Bene Gesserit advisors.
The first round consisted of 11 qualifying games. Simply due to the number of players appearing for each heat, only 3 of these games (in heat 1) were 6-player games; the rest were 5-player games. One of the 6-player games required adjudication and one of them ended in the only Guild default victory of the year, taken by Aaron Soto. There was also one solo win, a relative rarity in this tournament. This was a turn 3 Harkonnen win achieved by Glenn McMaster.
The rest of the games all finished with 2-way alliance wins. These wins were divided into 2 Fremen-Guild (one adjudicated), 2 Atreides-Emperor, 1 Atreides-Fremen, 1 Atreides-Harkonnen, 1 Atreides-Guild, 1 Guild-Harkonnen, and 1 Emperor-Guild.
And so, this year saw Guild as the most-winning faction, closely followed by Atreides, Emperor, Fremen, and Harkonnen were in the middle of the pack, each with a couple of wins. BG trailed with no wins at all in the qualifying games, but this was probably primarily due to BG being the faction left out in all but one of the eight 5-player games. (BG remains the overall most-winning faction over 20 years of records, but by an increasingly small margin as the win rates of all factions continue to converge.) A number of players remarked that they felt that Atreides was extra powerful in the 5-player games – this may be something to watch.
For the final game, in order of qualification:
- Jake Dyer chose Atreides (perhaps due to his strong performance with them in one of his 3 qualifying wins)
- Bill Dyer selected Emperor (because it’s one of the two factions with which he has not yet won a championship, he said)
- Lee Proctor (appearing in his 9th final in a row) took Guild
- Jack Doughan chose Harkonnen
- Glenn McMaster took Bene Gesserit
- Tegan Powers (first alternate) got the Fremen
Final Game played out turn by turn:
Turn 1: Emperor shipped a small force to Tuek’s Sietch and the Guild promptly withdrew. Fremen and Atreides collected spice and bribed Harkonnen to keep everything peaceful.
Turn 2: Harkonnen was going last, which is frequently a threat in the early game, so players coordinated a couple key blocks to ensure that there was no quick Harkonnen win.
Turn 3: Opened with a double worm. Atreides and Emperor quickly allied followed by Harkonnen and BG. Fremen and Guild remain unallied to assist with blocking if necessary. Up to this point there had been very little shipping, and everyone knew the Guild was broke. There was a lot of talk hoping that there would not be a 4th Guild default win in a row.
And then another double worm! Suddenly the Shield Wall was in play (per our house rules) much earlier than anyone had expected. The Atreides and Emperor were in the driver’s seat due to card knowledge, spice, and going last - but any limited opportunity to go for the win was quickly extinguished with Harkonnen kicking Emperor out of Tuek’s Sietch, the BG and Fremen blocking 2 strongholds, and Harkonnen and Guild blocking a third. Harkonnen also left a single token next to the Shield Wall telegraphing Family Atomics.
Turn 4: With the storm covering Fremen-controlled Habbanya Sietch opportunity remained limited, but the Emperor managed to recover Tuek’s Sietch back from House Harkonnen.
Turn 5: The storm fortuitously moved 6 to cover the Emperor-controlled Tuek’s Sietch while also allowing Atreides and Emperor to move last. This triggered more blocking. The BG also made an aggressive move against Atreides in Arrakeen, even though Atreides knew that the BG had no weapon at this point. There was also some caution due to the approaching storm and the ominous single Harkonnen token next to the Shield Wall.
Turn 6: After a nexus, the Atreides-Emperor alliance remained, but Harkonnen allied with the Guild and the BG allied with the Fremen. Harkonnen fled Carthag for the safety of Sietch Tabr and thus kept the pressure up that the Shield Wall might blow at any time. By the end of the turn every faction, except Guild, had one stronghold with the Shield Wall understandably empty.
Turn 7: Finally, the Shield Wall is destroyed by Family Atomics, with Weather Control also played so the storm covered Harkonnen-controlled Sietch Tabr. A nexus occurs and after some deliberations the Atreides and BG decide to combine the strength of Prescience and Voice. The Guild and Emperor ally to form a rich alliance. The Fremen and Harkonnen ally with a good board position. During the bidding, the BG finally picked up a weapon by purchasing one with a worthless card as Karama. The Atreides-BG immediately made a light attempt to win the game (although it would have required a traitor call in Carthag against the Emperor). The most consequential battle, however, was in Habbanya Sietch where the Guild shipped just enough troops to out-dial the BG’s 3 tokens. Critically, the BG voiced the rarely used “do not play a worthless card”, sabotaging the Guild’s plan to discard two worthless cards and control next turn’s treachery card bidding.
Turn 8: The first 2 cards up for bid were worthless and picked up by the BG. This gave the BG two Karamas in addition to the real Karama held by Atreides - how would their alliance use them to maximize their chances? During revival, the Emperor used his alliance power to purchase extra Guild tokens returning the Guild to near full strength.
Harkonnen, moving first, attacked the Emperor in Tuek’s Sietch and also moved a couple of tokens on to the Shield Wall stronghold. Given the Emperor-Guild wealth and troops, but lack of Guild on planet, this was not the turn for them to attempt the win. However, they were in a good position for next turn - if they could maintain their battle strength. Which led to a fateful decision to exit Tuek’s Sietch and cross-ship to reinforce Carthag. With the benefit of hindsight, it would have been better to leave a token behind to block the stronghold from the Atreides – but the thought of losing two leaders to Harkonnen was too high a risk.
House Atreides, already in Arrakeen and on the Shield Wall, worked out that they had just the right number of tokens to ship to Sietch Tabr, move 3 tokens from Shield Wall to Tuek’s Sietch and retain one token on the Shield Wall. They would be battling Harkonnen in 3 places but given the Voice/Prescience combo and their 100% card knowledge, they knew they had just enough to win in those 3 places. The BG solidified the win attempt by shipping a solid stack to the empty Habbanya Sietch.
With the Fremen and Guild to move, the two alliances scrambled to try and prevent the win. It was also discussed about when the Fremen’s Truthtrance should be played to see if the BG predicted an Atreides or BG win this turn – it was, unfortunately, decided to wait until absolutely necessary. After huddling with their Harkonnen ally, the Fremen came back to the table and only moved 1 token to Arrakeen. Atreides was battling the Harkonnen-Fremen alliance in 4 places and with only 4 leaders and no Cheap Hero. It was clear that the Harkonnen and Fremen believed they could prevent the win with a traitor call. They could even win the game if they got a traitor call in the first battle and Atreides lost his battle cards. Again, with the benefit of hindsight, it would have been better for the Fremen to ship enough troops to Arrakeen to out-dial the Atreides as a backup plan.
Then, with a full Guild deployment to Habbanya Sietch, the stage was set with critical battles in every stronghold except Carthag.
It was at this late stage that everyone remembered that a Karama could be used to prevent Harkonnen from calling traitor on behalf of his Fremen ally (with the updated GF9 rules.) The defending factions also realized that the Atreides had a safe leader. Still, Harkonnen actually had two Atreides traitors, so to win in both Sietch Tabr and Tuek’s Sietch, Atreides would have to choose just the right leader to protect with his Kwisatz Haderach – a 50/50 choice. He chose correctly, which led to Atreides winning all 4 of his battles. (This was an amazing repeat of Jake’s win with 4 strongholds as Atreides in the first round, an astounding feat.)
But wait! The BG pulled out his prediction - “Atreides in Turn 8” - and the table suddenly realized that they had forgot to use the Truthtrance to question the BG about their prediction. The Bene Gesserit was actually the winner, with his Atreides ally unceremoniously demoted to second place.
Congratulations to Glenn McMaster for achieving his 4th championship in a really tense and active game, and for doing it in one of the rarest ways. The Bene Gesserit may not have won a qualifying game, but they made up for it in the final.
Looking ahead, we will definitely continue using the GF9 edition of Dune. The rules updates work well, and the active support from the designers is very welcome. While I continue to maintain a (reduced) set of additional clarifications, there were no new rules issues noted this year, so we have a fairly strong base to grow from. For simplicity, I will most likely just exclude expansions going forward, since there was really no interest among the players in using them. And finally, I am now considering the possibility of favoring 5-player games in the tournament as a potential means of keeping games shorter and biasing toward “real” wins. I will probably monitor this for at least another year, however, before making that or any comparable change. (Other ideas to shorten game duration include eliminating binding deals and introducing a house rule to eliminate low-cost blocking of strongholds.) As always, your thoughts are welcome – please post in the boardgamegeek.com forums or contact me directly.)
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Brad Johnson [20th Year]