Powers Family Finishes 1-2!

This year saw a small uptick in attendance, and with the great participation from long-time veterans, recent additions, and a few first-timers as well, we had a record 16 boards in the three qualifying Heats. Thanks to everyone who plays and keeps this tournament thriving after so many years!

After fully adopting the new Gale Force Nine edition of the game in 2022, we’ve continued to monitor how the game is playing. In general, we’re keeping as close to the rules as written as possible, with a few adjustments to keep things tidier and more consistent. One significant house rule is our continued use of the Shield Wall as a sixth stronghold, but with its entry coming with the 3rd worm instead of the 4th this year, in an attempt to help encourage faster wins. And, after seeing Fremen again fall to the bottom of the pack, we included a new house rule this year to allow the Fremen’s ally to pay only half cost to dial troops at full strength. Would this make a difference? Read on...

Average duration of the qualifying games increased this year, to 6.4 turns in 4.3 hours. This is actually the slowest-playing year on record, unfortunately, beating out the previous low from 2007.

Seven of those sixteen games finished with 2-player alliance wins, and one finished at the bell with a 2-player Fremen default win (congrats Bastien Plastre-Jacques and Anthony Lainesse – that is a rare win to achieve!) Sadly, the other 8 games had to be adjudicated when time ran out for them. (All of those resulted in 2-player alliance wins as well.)

Lengthy play times seems to be kind of baked into Dune when a majority of the players play carefully, conservatively, and with heavy negotiation, but it’s something we’ve been battling to improve. No one likes to see adjudications after 5 hours of play. We will again be considering house rule tweaks to try to ensure games keep moving along next year, perhaps limiting games to just 8 turns and/or enforcing time limits.

Playing fewer turns is not ideal because there needs to be a certain number of turns to allow the game to develop naturally, and a majority of the adjudicated games did not reach turn 8 anyway. Something else must be done.

On one hand, there were zero Guild default victories in the qualifying round this year, which is something that had been becoming much more prominent in recent years, but on the other hand, this was mostly because the games most likely to wind up in default wins could not finish in time.

Including adjudicated games, 11 of the possible 15 alliance pairs posted a win (only Atreides/Fremen, BG/Fremen, Emperor/Guild, and BG/Harkonnen did not), a very interesting spread. There was a surprising dominance of Atreides/Harkonnen alliances this year, yielding 4 wins. Three of these were in 5-player games, and some said that this was a particularly powerful combo with the BG removed (which is the default for our 5-player games.) Something to keep an eye on.

Overall, Atreides, Harkonnen, and BG wound up as the top winning factions, in a dead heat (taking into consideration the number of games that excluded the BG.) Emperor and Guild were in the middle, with Guild taking a major nose-dive this year. And unfortunately, Fremen was very distinctly back at the bottom, even with a small tick up in win percentage. Apparently, the half-measure house rule to make Fremen a more attractive ally may not have been enough, and we will also be considering the possibility of a better buff for Fremen next year again.

Of special note, three players managed to notch 3 wins in the qualifying Heats: Aidan Powers (3 non-adjudicated wins, quite an accomplishment), and Tegan Powers and Joshua Coyle (2 wins and an adjudication each).

And so, the factions for the final game were chosen in order of qualification:

1. Aidan Powers chose the Guild, clearly wanting to play for the long game, particularly after all players agreed to play to the bitter end
2. Joshua Coyle picked Atreides
3. Tegan Powers took Harkonnen
4. Quinn Dyer selected Bene Gesserit
5. Michael Powers took Emperor,/li>
6. Bastien Plastre-Jacques got the Fremen (last picked yet again)

Yes, that’s 3 members of the prestigious Powers family appearing together in the Final! Michael, Aidan, and Tegan all have been finalists in the past, but never all together. This is also perhaps the youngest overall set of finalists in many years, with several old stalwarts not making the cut this year. Could this be signaling a changing of the guard?

Turn 1 of the Final kicked off with a sizable battle against the Fremen at the Cielago South spice blow, which resulted in mutual annihilation and no spice collected.

In turn 2, the Emperor/Harkonnen alliance made a solid attempt to win the game, foiled by the Atreides in Arrakeen and the Guild in Tuek’s Sietch. And the heat was on!

Turn 3 featured multiple battles, leading into a spicy turn 4 with the Shield Wall in play and battles in 5 of the 6 strongholds. The new Emperor/Fremen alliance had a great shot at an early victory! But it was not to be – they were wiped out in each of their three battles, leaving the Emperor with everything in the tanks except for one leader captured by the Harkonnen! (Michael later confided that he had made it to the Final playing much more aggressively than usual, so he kept this up in the early Final. Unfortunately, it just didn’t pay off this time.)

Through turns 2, 3, and 4, alliances shifted frequently. Guild and Fremen stayed solo for a bit while Atreides went through three different allies, finally settling with the Guild. Ultimately the BG landed with Harkonnen and Emperor landed with Fremen.

In turn 5, the Harkonnen/BG alliance was fighting in 5 strongholds for the win. Harkonnen wound up holding Carthag, Tuek’s Sietch, and the Shield Wall by herself at the end of the turn, but unfortunately the BG failed to hold on. That could have been a Harkonnen solo win, but would she have been able to get there without the BG Voice? Impossible to say, but it was a moment of greatness there for Tegan at any rate.

Another nexus came up in turn 6, and with the Voice and probably the strongest force remaining in play, Quinn’s BG became the belle of the ball. After much discussion, the BG and Guild allied, and then they and the Fremen/Harkonnen alliance proceeded to try for a win. This surely appeared to be the turn one alliance could win, but instead this time the BG ended with Carthag, Arrakeen, and Sietch Tabr while his ally’s meager force in Habbanya Sietch was wiped out in a lasgun-shield explosion to save the game!

In turn 7, the BG remained allied with the Guild, despite comments concerning a potentially winning BG/Atreides alliance. (Later, Quinn explained he was trying to maneuver into a prediction win position at this point.) BG/Guild were again fighting for the win, this time narrowly missing to a surgical defeat to the Harkonnen in Sietch Tabr. (The Emperor remained mostly off the board through this point, recovering, but bankrolling cards and revivals for his ally. Card prices had gone very high as all players were attempting keep a crucial weapon out of the BG’s hands. This careful maneuvering to keep cards out of the BG’s hands continued for several turns.)

During turn 8, the table conspired to conceal a crucial Karama card from the BG/Guild alliance, saying it was a Truthtrance instead. The Guild finally realized what was up and played his Karama to buy the other Karama. (Aidan later noted that he had been originally dealt the Karama and had been saving it the entire game.) BG/Guild again made a valiant win attempt, this time defeated by Harkonnen in Tuek’s Sietch and Fremen in Arrakeen.

In the turn 9 nexus, the BG finally switched to Atreides to secure the largest stacks of tokens in good position and the Voice/Prescience combo and Guild wound up with Harkonnen. This time BG/Atreides went for the win, but only after clever moves at the table forced the largest Atreides stack to the Shield Wall, where he’s having to fight both Fremen and Harkonnen. This turn was brutal, with Habbanya Sietch being cleared and Harkonnen and Fremen agreeing to lasgun-shield the Shield Wall for the sole purpose of cleansing it of Atreides. The BG appeared to finally be exhausted heading into the last turn.

But in turn 10, the BG still had a crucial decision to make: Coexist or not in Habbanya Sietch when attacked by the Fremen. This was a heart-rending, potentially king-making, decision in the moment – coexist and allow Harkonnen a chance to fight for the win, or don’t coexist and allow Fremen a chance at a Fremen default win. By calculation, the BG could not win the battle either way himself. In the end, Quinn decided to flip a coin and coexisted. (Later, it was said that this probably didn’t matter, as the Guild’s Karama could still have been used to prevent the Fremen default victory.) With no possible wins remaining on the board after all was said and done, the game ended in a Guild default victory (despite Atreides holding Carthag, Tuek’s Sietch, and the Shield Wall himself – too little a bit too late!)

So, congratulations to Aidan Powers for his first glorious Dune victory. This was also the first Dune championship brought home to the Powers clan in general, made all the sweeter by Aidan’s sister-ally, Tegan, taking second place. A very well-earned and hard-fought championship – thank you to all!