The Worms Decide More Than They Should

Loved the original enough that I bought this basically sight unseen the week it hit shelves, sixty bucks, no hesitation. Worth every penny honestly, people spend that much on a night out and this thing is going to be on my table for years. It’s not really an expansion so much as a rebuilt version, new board, spies, contracts, and the sandworms, which change combat from a straightforward push into something closer to a blind auction where the doubler you’re holding matters as much as the troops.

That’s also where my one real complaint lives. Sandworm doubling makes conflict rewards swing hard, and more than once I’ve watched a player who had zero chance of winning throw their last hook or troops behind whichever conflict determined who actually did win, just because they were contesting a space that mattered to somebody else’s endgame math. It’s not malicious, it’s just baked into how contested the worm spaces get late, but it’s a real kingmaking lever, the person deciding they’re out of it still gets to decide who’s in.

Two player is a mixed bag depending who you ask online, some say it works beautifully, others found it a bit tedious and reach for the original Imperium instead at that count, and after a handful of two player games myself I lean toward the second camp, the combat emphasis here wants more bodies at the table pushing into those conflicts than two can really provide.

Price per hour math still works out fine for me though, even with the higher sticker than the base game, I’ve gotten dozens of plays out of it already and I’m not slowing down. If you already own the original and its expansions you might not need both, some reviewers call owning them redundant, but as a standalone I’d take this over the base game every time I set it up now.