First and foremost, a mise en garde: English isn't my native tongue. It's not even my 2nd language. I'll do my best to avoid as much typos and errors as possible, but if you see anything of the sort, feel free to tell me in the comments.

Second, this guide is aimed at 4 players game with draft leader selection. Most of this guide is broad enough to be useful in other circumstances, but some aspects like leader choice are noticeably different in a 3 players game, so be careful.

Third, it's my first guide ever, so sorry for the walls of text. If there's enough interest, I'll try to add images and format it into something more palatable.

Before diving into specifics, there is a golden rule for this game you need to burn into your mind and always remember:

There are no rules, everything is situational.

This means that everything, and I really mean EVERYTHING, stated below shouldn't be understood as rules to blindly follow in every circumstances but as general guidelines having sometimes exceptions. Dune Imperium is a subtle game with deep intricacies and consequences to every choice and action, which rewards above all else your adaptability and opportunism, not your ability to apply a curated strategy over and over.

In draft selection, the players select their leader by starting with the 4th player and going upward. This is meant to somewhat alleviate the small advantage of going 1st or 2nd.

Some leaders are considered better than others, and the general consensus among the best players is that the Baron Harkonnen has the highest winrate. Here's a small tier-list for reference:

A tier
-Baron Harkonnen
-The Beast
-Leto

B tier
-Helena
-Ilban

C tier
-Ariana
-Paul
-Memnon


This doesn't mean that you should always pick the Baron when he's available. It's a little bit more subtle than that.

First, the strength difference between leaders only matters at the highest level of play. Even worse, leaders who need resources to use their ring like the Baron and Leto can be traps for beginners. So it's much better to pick a leader you can play well at your current skill level than a leader who is only good if you already have a good understanding and knowledge of the game. If it's your first game and you have never seen an Intrigue card in your life, avoid playing the Baron.

Second, there are two informations available at the start of the game which should influence your choice: your playing position and the Imperium row. Those are very important informations to consider and should influence your leader choice, because they can situationally give some leaders an edge. For example, Helena is a better pick than the Baron if you are going last and there's strong and expensive cards available on the Imperium row.

It would be way too long and complicated to go into details here, so I'll stick to general guidelines for beginners and maybe do a Leaders detailed guide if people are interested.

-Helena is the most beginner-friendly leader, despite her 2-pip rating. And she's also quite good overall. If there's one leader every beginner should learn to play first and prioritize picking, it's her, not the Baron.

-Since your drafting turn depend of your playing position, you will need to learn to play more than one leader. You should start with Helena, the Beast and Ilban, because all 3 are on both the easier to play and strong sides of the spectrum. Later on, when your are more familiar with the game, you should add the Baron and Leto to the list. Those two are indeed among the strongest leaders available, but need more game knowledge to be used well. Finally, if you play to win, you should avoid Paul, Memnon and Ariana most of the time.

-If you are playing in 1st or 2nd position, you should favor agressive and proactive leaders who can capitalize on the somewhat deterministic first two fights of the game, like the Baron and the Beast. The general idea is that if you see a victory point (VP) as a combat reward during the 1st or second round, go all-in on Hardy warriors. If you are playing in 3rd or 4th position, you should favor reactive leaders who can adapt to other player's actions, like Leto and Helena. Ilban is versatile enough to be decent in all positions, so consider him as a backup plan if the previous leaders are already picked.

-If you see good and expensive cards in the Imperium row, you should consider leaders who have an easier time to grab those: Helena of course, but also Ilban (through the Mentat space) or even Paul (drawing cards = more Persuasion).

If there's one confusing thing in this game for beginners, it's the deceptive nature of the easiness to get VPs. When I play the tabletop version, I often see people get VPs quite fast at first, and then slow down or even halt right before the finish line, around 8 or 9 VP. This is due to the uneven value of the VPs.

The first VP is already given in a 4 players game, so you only need 9 other VPs to finish the game. However, among those, the 4 VPs available for reaching 2 influence on the faction tracks are way easier to obtain than anything else, which is why people getting those by simply going through the motions of the game get the wrong impression that VPs aren't that hard to get. Nothing could be more wrong, because once you have those, there are no more freebies, and you will have to work hard to get (and sometimes keep) the remaining 5 VPs you need to reach 10. The next 4 sections will cover all the ways to get those points.

Because the VPs awarded for reaching 2 on the influence tracks are so easy to get, everyone should aim to get those. However, it's easier said than done, because your Seek allies card gets trashed after use, leaving you with only Diplomacy to access the faction spaces. Since you need to go 8 times in total on faction spaces to get all 4 of the VPs available there, you will need more than Diplomacy to do that, because you won't have enough time to play this card 7 times over the course of a game. Here's what you should consider:

-The less faction access you have on the cards in your deck, the more you should value buying a card with faction access.

-The less influence you have on the tracks, the more you should value gaining influence through other means (combat rewards, intrigue cards and so on). And should you get those, you should prioritize reaching 2 on influence tracks you are behind instead of going all-in for an alliance, especially if you feel you are behind on influence in general.

Alliances can also give you VPs, but those are more volatile, because they can be stolen if someone goes ahead of you on the influence track. And even if you manage to keep your alliance should you be challenged, you would have spent precious resources to keep what's yours, resources you might have needed elsewhere. Challenging alliances is by nature very situational, so there's only one advice I can give that remains true in all circumstances: don't overreact and get emotional if you lose an alliance. It's always distasteful to suffer a slight, and our first instinct is to get back at those who have wronged us. Having an alliance stolen by another player can be infuriating, but don't let emotions cloud your judgement: ascertain the situation rationally and don't commit to reclaiming your alliance if you aren't sure you can do it or if it's not even worth it in the first place.

The spice must flow (TSMF) card is one of the most interesting aspects of the game for me. It's both the best and the worst card in the game. Best because getting a VP when buying it is a very strong option available for everyone. Worst because buying it damages your deck for the remainder of the game. The best course of action is to have a balanced approach towards TSMF: neither ignore nor overcommit. Ignore TSMF and you will have a hard time winning most games. Get too much TSMF and one day, you will draw 3 TSMF and 2 convincing argument, which will make you lose your whole agent phase and certainly cost you the game.

The best way to approach TSMF is to transition into buying it in the midgame, after spending the first turns purchasing cards to improve your deck. However, this card won't fall into your lap: you will need to work a little bit to get it. To improve your chances, here are all the options available:

=>High council is a huge help, and most of the time the first step you should take before even considering buying TSMF. Without High council, it's best to stick to buying cards and do something else with your agent actions.

=>Drawing cards helps a lot too, but only if you have built your deck accordingly (more on deckbuilding later). Selective breeding and Research station are good ways of drawing more cards, but before going on those spaces, always click on your deck and check what are the remaining cards to draw. If you need one more Persuasion to buy TSMF and the only 2 remaining cards in your deck are Daggers, drawing won't help you.

=>Hall of Oratory is a situational space which can be the difference between a 9 Persuasion reveal and a 8 Persuasion dud. It's an excellent way to "pseudo-recycle" a dagger in hand into something more useful. Besides that, it's a weak space overall which should be avoided otherwise.

Finally, the more TSMF you have, the more important it becomes to trash them, in order to keep your deck functional. Don't worry, trashing a TSMF doesn't remove the VP you got by buying it.

In Dune, conflicts aren't really a fight. You don't attack other players assets directly, you only compete to get ranked prizes. In other words, you should think of it as being an auction, with your troops being your bidding power.

Conflicts are overall a volatile affair in this game. It's a good way to either get easy VPs or crash and burn if you are careless. Here's a short breakdown for those who aren't familiar with the board game:

The conflict deck is made of 10 conflict cards. The first one is a tier 1 conflict card. Then there's 5 T2 conflict cards, and finally 4 T3 cards. However, there's more than 10 existing conflict cards:

There are 4 different T1 cards, and out of those, 2 reward a VP for the first place.
There are 10 different T2 cards, and out of those, 5 reward a VP for the first place.
There are 4 different T3 cards, and out of those, 3 reward 2VP for the first place.

So because there's more T1 and T2 conflicts than the amount of conflicts in play in a given game, it means that you will see different conflict cards from one game to another during the first 6 rounds. This will make combat more or less rewarding depending of the rewards offered, the extremes being no VP for 7 turns or a VP every turn, with most games being somewhere in the middle. On average, you will see one conflict VP every 2 turns.

This means that you should neither completely ignore combat nor commit everything to it, even if you play a combat-oriented leader like the Beast, because you can't predict if there's gonna be VPs later down the line. Never underestimate variance.

Besides that, it's hard to give general guidelines for combat, because it's one of the trickiest aspects of the game, involving a lot of bluff, strategy and mind games. Here's what's mostly true in all circumstances:

-The first two combats are the most predictable, because everyone has the same starter deck and no intrigue cards, and you can predict what your second hand of 5 cards will be after seeing your first hand. Because of that, going Hardy warriors and deploying 4 troops is a strong opener, especially if there's an early combat VP available and you have your daggers in hand. After that, combat becomes much more unpredictable, so be prepared for taking risks and unexpected setbacks if you want to continue down this road.

-Much like with alliance stealing, don't get emotional if someone overbids you. Remember, it's an auction, which means that you should always ask yourself how much you are really willing to pay for a given prize. I often see people getting triggered when someone else deploys more troops after them, and they go all-in, burning a lot of resources in order to reclaim the first place. Often, neither of those people win the game at the end, not even the conflict winner, because they have invested too much into that conflict. Sometimes, even a first-place VP reward isn't worth sacrificing too much of your resources. Having the wisdom to settle for the 2nd place for a fair amount of troops instead of overcommitting for the first place is one of the most important skills to master in this game.

-You don't have to win to profit from combat. You start with 3 troops in your garrison, so even if you don't plan to do much fighting, you can always spend a couple of troops to grab a 2nd or 3rd prize for a very cheap investment. Sometimes, it's better to get some spice for a meager 1 troop than a VP for 10.

Intrigue cards are random by nature. Sometimes, a single combat intrigue card will be the difference between victory and defeat, in a decisive combat first and for the outcome of the game afterwards. But some other times, you will get something borderline useless, like 2 Solaris when you have already bought your Swordmaster and High council. However, on average, intrigue cards are worth it, especially for the price of a single action. Which is why you shouldn't make your priority to chase those, but never say no to grabbing one if there's nothing better to do.

Among the intrigue cards, the best ones are those giving you VPs. As stated before, VPs are deceptively hard to get, so having even one of those can be a fantastic shortcut to victory. A VP for 7 Solaris or 4 spice is an excellent bargain, and should you get one of those, cashing it in should become a main objective. Just don't do it too early though, because early game, Solaris and spice are usually better spent on other things like ameliorations (for example, avoid paying 7 Solaris for an early VP if you don't have your Swordmaster). The general rule of thumb is to aim to finish the game with your intrigue VPs, so plan accordingly.

Besides that, the most important tip for Intrigue cards is to make the best out of the ability to keep up to 3 Intrigue cards in your hand before being vulnerable to Intrigue steal through the Secrets space. I'm specifically talking about all the cards giving you either resources or influence. I often see people play those immediately for convenience and cashing in spice, Solaris and so on. This is wrong, because a hidden Intrigue card has a bluffing value when it comes to combat. A decent player should think twice before challenging in combat someone holding three Intrigue cards. So keep your Windfall in hand until you reach 6 Solaris, and only cash it in right before going to Swordmaster. Just be careful to not get an unexpected 4th card, usually through combat rewards or reveal abilities, because it will leave you vulnerable to having one being stolen.

It must be said. Dune Imperium isn't really a deck building game. Deckbuilding is an important aspect of it for sure, but it's not as strong as it seems. There's only 10 turns, and most games end on turn 7 or 8. After turn 5 or 6, you are often not even guaranteed to see a newly-bought card even once. Which means that even your starting cards will only be played 4 or 5 times at best.

In other words, deckbuilding is mostly the second best thing people do before being able to buy TSMF. You should of course aim as much as possible at getting the best cards available, but it shouldn't be done at the expense of something else, like keeping your Diplomacy card for reveal or not buying TSMF whenever available. After turn 2, TSMF should be picked over anything else whenever possible, even over Kwisatz Haderach or Lady Jessica.

That being said, since everyone gets to do a reveal round each round and you can't buy TSMF every time, let's see how to make the most out of the reveal phase.

First, you should consider your place in the turn order. If you are revealing first, it can be worth it to allocate some resources to improve your Persuasion this round in order to get a good card. If you are revealing last, don't even bother: by the time it's your turn, the Imperium row will be very different, and you will take what you can, not what you want. Keep also in mind that getting the Swordmaster or the Mentat can disrupt that turn order by delaying the reveal turn for some players.

Second, you should consider the current turn of the game. There's no clear guideline, but overall, the more advanced a game is, the more worthless the cards in the Imperium row are. Past turn 5 or 6, only the buying bonus of a card really matters, since you aren't even sure to see the cards you buy before the game ends.

After that comes the card choice. The Persuasion cost of a card is usually a good indicator of its strength and value, and most of the time, you should strongly consider getting the most expensive card available instead of getting more cheaper cards. However, once again, it's a little bit more complicated than that, for two reasons.

The first one is because cards aren't perfectly balanced. There's a consensus among the best players that some cards are clearly too good for their cost, like Shifting allegiances for example. The opposite is also true, with some cards being a bit overvalued. For example, Chani is considered one of the worst 5 Persuasion cards, and most good players will pick some good 4 Persuasion cards like Guild ambassadors over her. Once you learn which cards are overperforming or underperforming, you will be able to make better choices.

The second depends of what you are trying to do. Overall, for most of the cards, the swords are at odds with the Persuasion when it comes to reveal, usually it's one or the other. Which means that you will often have to make a choice between gearing towards regular TSMF purchases or combat strength. So for example, if there's already one heavy hitter in the game with lots of troops in garrison and strong combat cards, getting combat-oriented cards should be valued lower. Personally, I'm leaning on the Persuasion side of the fence, since getting TSMF is a much more reliable way of getting VP than winning conflicts.

Often, people focus on the agent effect of cards. However, the reveal part is as important, if not even more. After all, you will usually reveal more cards than you will play. Which is why the Persuasion value on reveal of a card is one of the most important aspect of a card. And the difference between 1 and 2 Persuasion is tremendous and should be one of the main deciding factors of your choice. Here's some guidelines if you aren't sure what to get:

-A card giving 2 Persuasion on reveal is almost always worth buying, since not playing it and revealing it gives a good amount of Persuasion. If you want to buy TSMF, and you should almost always want to, you should prioritize cards with 2+ Persuasion.

-If a card doesn't have at least 2 Persuasion, it doesn't mean it's a bad card. Only that it's a "to play" card, one you should prioritize playing over revealing. Here's what you should ponder in order to be able to evaluate the real value of such a card:

=>Does it have a strong agent effect justifying playing it over most other cards in most circumstances? Kwisatz Haderach is the best example of a "to play" card, having the strongest agent ability and the weakest reveal effect (literally nothing).

=>How many "to play" cards do you already have in your deck, considering that Diplomacy and the Ring are already "to play" cards? If you already have a lot of those, getting more increases your odds of getting too much "to play" cards in your hand and having to reveal some of them.

=>What are the access symbols of the card you are considering buying? The more access a card has, the better are the odds to be able to play it. Thufir Hawat for example has excellent space access and is guaranteed to be always playable. Dr Yueh on the other hand can only access blue spaces, and those are few (only 4), hard to access (needing 2 water for Research station or 2 Fremen influence for Sietch Tabr) and usually overcrowded late game once everyone has 3 agents, which makes it both a bad card to reveal (1 Persuasion only) and a bad card to play (hard to access blue spaces reliably) for all leaders (except Helena of course).

-Don't forget that you can always buy Arrakis liaison for 2 Persuasion. Since it gives 2 Persuasion on reveal, it's always worth to buy it provided there's nothing better available. It's an excellent filler overall which will greatly improve your ability to buy TSMF down the line and a better card than most other 2 Persuasion cards not giving 2 Persuasion on reveal. I never hesitate to buy one of those everytime I don't have enough Persuasion to take something else more expensive.

-Remember, buying cards is optional. Early game, buying cards is a big improvement for your deck, since your starting cards are terrible. Consider this: Dr Yueh, a 1 Persuasion cost card and one of the worst cards of the Imperium row, is still a strictly better version of Reconnaissance (both are identical except Dr Yueh also draws a card on play). In your starting deck, only Diplomacy, Seek allies and the Ring can be considered good cards.

That's why the first cards you buy will "dilute" your bad starting cards and improve your deck, but there's also a point where your deck is so good than adding more cards can "dilute" the good cards you already have and make it worse. It's hard to give specific guidelines here, but overall, the better the cards you have already bought are, the less you should buy more cards. Usually, avoid buying cards that are worse than all other cards you have already bought past a certain point, let's say 4 or 5 cards. And late game, should you miss a TSMF buy by one or two Persuasion, it's not bad at all to not buy anything and let 7 or 8 Persuasion "go to waste".

Trashing card is an important feature for improving your deck, but some people not familiar with deck building games find it counter-intuitive. After all, isn't destroying a card a bad thing depriving us of a resource?

Let me reassure you: it's not. The more cards you trash, the more you will see your other cards. And if those cards are strong cards you have bought, you are literally improving the value of those, since you will see and play them more often.

You should trash at almost every opportunity. However, there's not enough turns to be played to make trashing a strategy worth pursuing, which is why it's not something you should actively pursue. But if you get the opportunity by doing something else (playing a card, winning a conflict, going on Selective breeding for another purpose), never pass it up. Especially if you have very strong cards in your deck.

Here's a trashing list priority for reference. Remember, you can always click on your deck and discard pile to see all the cards you currently have.

=>Daggers and TSMF should be trashed in priority and without a second thought. Neither give Persuasion on reveal, which means they are reducing your odds of being able to buy anything, especially more TSMF. Daggers are clutch during the first two rounds conflicts, but later on, one sword doesn't do much and accessing green spaces becomes much less useful once you got your Swordmaster and High council seat.

=>Dune and Reconnaissance should be trashed most of the time, but be careful to not lose some space access entirely.

=>Convincing argument can be trashed sometimes if you have enough 2 Persuasion on reveal cards or a lot of TSMF that you can't trash, in order to reduce your odds of getting a hand with no space access, but usually, it's best to keep those.

=>Most leaders should never trash their Ring, but there are some rare late-game situations where a Ring power doesn't do much anymore and can be trashed since it only gives 1 Persuasion on reveal. It's especially true for Helena once your deckbuilding is done and it's TSMF time, but it can also be the case for Leto (if there's nothing to gain on the Influence tracks anymore) and Ilban (if it's late game and there's nothing left to buy with more Solaris).

=>Diplomacy should never be trashed except extreme circumstances, like having Kwisatz Haderach, Jessica and Gurney Halleck in your deck and aiming to thin it as much as possible.

Remember that you should also prioritize trashing cards in your discard pile or in play. Be more careful with trashing cards in your hand, since it can deprive your of some precious Persuasion.

I'll finish this guide with some tips about the flow of the game. With more than 20 spaces on the board, Dune can be a daunting game for beginners, with overwhelming possibilities. And with 2 then 3 actions per player, available spaces will greatly vary from one round to another. So if you have no idea what to do, here are some general guidelines:


-The first objective should be to get your Swordmaster, especially if you want to fight. Without it, you will leave the last word of every conflict to players having it, which means that they will be able to overbid you with ease if you haven't overcommitted to the conflict. The Swordmaster shouldn't be strictly valued as a 3rd action, since action values goes down over the course of a round: the first action is the strongest, with lots of options available, whereas the last action usually means getting what's left on the board. In other words, the third action provided by the Swordmaster will never be as good as the first action you take during a round.

Nonetheless, it's still a very strong improvement to get, and one you should aim for most of the games. Here are some general guidelines about the Swordmaster:

=>Try to get your Swordmaster as soon as possible, because the earlier you get it, the more you will profit from it. Much like getting cards, Swordmaster value goes down as the game progress, and can even become worthless if there's only one or two rounds left to play. So if it's turn 6 or later and you still haven't got it, consider not buying it at all, and fall back on getting the Mentat instead.

=>Avoid spending your Solaris on anything else early game if possible. The High council seat especially should never be purchased before the Swordmaster, since you need your 3rd action as soon as possible, whereas a 2 persuasion on reveal bonus is only useful later in the game, in order to buy TSMF.


-Because getting the Swordmaster means getting Solaris first, it drives most of the early-game "meta". There's two main venues allowing you to reach 8 Solaris:

=>The first and most obvious one is to aim for the Solari spaces: Wealth and Secure contract. If you are playing first or second, you should prioritize getting one of those.

=>If you are playing 3rd or last, you can fallback on getting Stillsuits and a second water. This will give you priority on getting 4 spice on the Great flat during round 2, which can be turned into Solaris through either Sell melange or Conspire.

Keep also in mind that sometimes, conflict rewards give you Solaris. Those can be very handy shortcuts in order to reach 8 Solaris faster.


-There's a Swordmaster rush strategy always available for the Beast and 50% of the time for Memnon:

=>Round 1, go to Hagga basin. If you are playing Memnon, only do it if you plan to play your ring this round.

=>Either during your second round 1 action or your first round 2 action, go to Sell melange. Since the Beast starts with 1 spice and Memnon can produce it with his Ring, you have exactly enough spice to get 8 Solaris. Which means Swordmaster round 2.

This strategy is fairly strong, but has some drawbacks too. First, the earlier you play, the better your odds are to not be countered by someone else going to Hagga basin first. Second, executing it can mean sacrificing an opportunity to play your Diplomacy card, which can hurt your progress on the influence tracks down the line. Third, this will sometimes fail simply because of variance, if you don't have your yellow and green access cards at the right time. And fourth, getting a Swordmaster so early often means having a weaker reveal turn, since you will reveal one less card. This will affect your ability to buy cards and your overall deck strength.

So be careful if you are considering this and carefully evaluate all your options, it's by no means the best thing to always do.


-Besides the Swordmaster, there are two other early game objectives worth pursuing:

=>Early conflict, especially if there's a VP to grab easily while everyone else is busy. Early conflict usually means going Hardy warriors, but if you have your daggers in hand and there's no Baron in the game, going Carthag and deploying only 3 troops can be a valid and much better alternative. Most good players will avoid the risk of overcommitting on Hardy warriors against someone having 3 troops in the conflict and holding an Intrigue card. Baron players are an exception though, since they are heavily incentivized to go Hardy warriors in order to trigger their Masterstroke.

=>Getting a strong card on the Imperium row. Helena and Paul are especially good at this. Consider this: your starting deck is made of 2 cards with 2 Persuasion, 5 cards with 1 Persuasion and 3 cards with 0 Persuasion. On average, this means that the Persuasion value of the first two hands is slightly below 3 Persuasion, and never above 5 without card draw or Persuasion bonus. So if everything else is taken (Wealth and Secure contract are taken and someone went Hardy warriors and deployed 4 troops), and you have at least one Convincing argument in hand and no daggers, you can go on Arakeen and then evaluate your options, like going Hall of Oratory if you have drawn a dagger. This way, you can get 5 or even 6 Persuasion with ease, usually way above everyone else not committing to the same strategy. The more 5 and 6 cost cards on the row, the better this strategy is, since it's highly unlikely all 3 other players will be able to buy all the expensive cards before you.

Also, keep in mind that one smaller objective should be to simply play your Diplomacy and Seek allies card whenever possible.


-One last advice: if you feel that you need to draw cards or have cards drawing you more cards in hand, try to draw as early as possible during your round, in order to avoid drawing a card you should have played with your last action. Drawing but not being able to play a Diplomacy or a Ring is quite bumming.