TDG: Dune Imperium: Immortality

0:00 foreign and welcome to the discriminating gamer you know I only ever learned 25 letters of the alphabet I don't know why ladies and gentlemen today we're going to go ahead and take a look at Dune immortality and expansion for dune empirium

1:20 we'll get back to the review in just a moment I want to take a minute to ask you to check out my other channel that is Cody Carlson PhD where we talk about history books on history military history I even post some of my lectures for my classes on there please check that out please subscribe to that channel and now back to the review student Imperium immortality from direwolf is an expansion to Dune Imperium that adds the Benny Telex these kooky genetic manipulators genetic Engineers who are looking to add some spice and sugar to your game of dude you're gonna get a lot of new things this expansion you're going to get a family atomics marker you're going to get a new Dune benicolax board you're going to get about 30 new Imperium cards of about 18 or so benefilax cards you're going to get I think 15 new entry cards and a few other little bells and whistles besides for first of all when playing with this expansion you're going to get rid of the two Dune desert Planet uh starter cards and instead you're going to add the starter cards of experimentation into your starter deck now as you play the game some different things are going to occur as I say you're going to set up the the Ben collects board you're also going to have a research station overlay you place on the research station spot on on the board now as you're playing through this you're going to have some different symbols pop up that's going to affect how you play the game whenever you play a card or gain a reward with the research icon on it what that means is you're going to move your marker one space forward on the benetilax board and a lot of times you have choices and

2:51 they're going to give you different rewards different things that you can you can gain throughout it when you get to about the third level you're also going to get some kind of permanent ongoing rewards you're going to get genetic markers which will give you access to more abilities on cards and then also if you buy the benchtelax cards you're going to be able to put those on the top of your deck if you make it to the end of the track you also get to whenever that research icon marker pops up you get it just draw another card you also have above the the the track there another track it's just a straight line but there are victory points on that track and there's access to different rewards like spice and other things and this is associated with the beetle whenever you see the The Little Beetle symbol you get to move your guy along you're gonna move your marker along that track and you also have the Benny collects deck right next to it now you're going to put out two random Benny collects cards and then you're gonna also have the reclaim your forces card which can never be purchased it always remains there essentially how this works is you are also throughout the course of the game going to get this Cube symbol and if ever get the cube symbol you get a place one of your uh your forces either your Cube or your figure depending on which Edition you're playing with into onto the to the board off the side you can spend those for currency to essentially buy uh the Benny to LAX cards the laksu cards there and these cards are going to Grant you different powers different things they come into your deck normally like I say unless you're you get to that spot on the track where you can put them on the top of your of your deck when you get them but they allow you to do some different and interesting things in the

4:22 game but you also have the reclaimed forces card which just sits there and a reclaimed forces card essentially lets you do one of two things you can either if you if you go there if you you spend your um your your cubes your guys to go there essentially what you do is you need to gain two troops for your Garrison or you can get a beetle symbol and again move along the beetle track so moving along the beetle track is very important because it gets you those extra points and you don't need to take it to ride now some of these new cards have a graft ability so essentially whenever you play a graph card you can't play it alone you have to play a graph card with another card but you go ahead you play those cards together and you can send an agent to any space on either of the cards and you get all the abilities from those cards there's a few other little things going on with graph but that's basically it now as I mentioned every player also has a family atomics token any player at any time on their turn can play the family atomics token and what this does is it essentially eliminates all of the cards in the Imperium row you set them aside you discard them and then you put out five new cards so now you have these new cards to draw from in order to purchase the game also comes with some new house Hegel cards and of course markers for these new tracks and that is essentially what this new expansion brings to your game of Doom Imperium so my friends and I played this recently I played the full thing we played with rise of IX and with immortality and there's a lot going on the game actually feels quite different from just the base game in fact when you're playing the base game of doing Imperium it seems like it's all about those battles those

5:54 conflicts now they're still important but what we found as we played was if there weren't victory points up for grabs they we weren't as we weren't as up for fighting as as you are in other games of doing Imperium there's so many places to go especially if you play this with the rise of IX and immortality there's so much more going on here but with respect to immortality um first of all um I really like the family atomics thing that was cool because a lot of times playing there's just no cards you're really interested in so that's a great way to cycle through the deck and there are so many cards now that stack is so high now um so it's good to be able to to to to cycle through those a lot more easily with those family atomics now as far as research goes it's interesting to going along that board is pretty interesting because you get it's another way to get like smaller little rewards along the way that can can really help you out when you need it and then of course the Beatles track is really really important it's it's again there's like two victory points on that track up for grabs as well as some smaller things there as well so that's really important but I really like the new cards this this that are on they're on play here um I really like the Benny collects cards because they're unusual they're they're they're they're really fun and interesting cards and then of course the Imperium ones are really cool as well that this game brings as well as the intrigues some of the entry cards are pretty cool but what I really like too is that graft it's a way to kind of like

7:24 make cards into Super Cards and you get different abilities and you get different rewards and go to different places so I think graft works really well and it's it's a really fun now like I say playing with everything here playing with rhizovics and immortality um it's amazing it's not it's not overwhelming you would think it would be it's not the systems integrate really really well but the only issue really from that perspective is there's so much more to do and there's so many things to choose from and it's kind of it's almost you kind of get some analysis paralysis because it's kind of hard to choose a strategy when there's so many cool things you can do and so many Avenues you can pursue so so that's interesting in fact I know one of those people are playing I was playing with said he was focusing more on the rise of Vic's stuff than the the immortality or the base game stuff because he was trying to get more Technologies and stuff so I mean that's a viable solution um which makes me wonder should I play this again without rice just the immortality I suppose I could but honestly I kind of like all of those different choices and I think what this game does what any good expansion does is it gives you more stuff to do without getting in the way of what's really cool about the game now like I say you can still pursue those combats there's nothing holding you back but um there's just different choices there and there's no one magic key to Victory here so your legitimate you're legitimate in your quest to find out what these different things are doing I really like playing with it all I thought it was a to me it felt like a more epic game and it felt even like a more thematic game in a lot of ways

8:55 um to me uh because just bringing the genetic stuff with it with the benefit to lacks and I'm a big fan of the book so it all kind of kind of fits here my only real criticism here and this is not even a gameplay criticism is storage I bought the deluxe um version of doing Imperium and I can't fit all the cards in that tray now so I've got to I've got the um I I got rid of the rise of Xbox because the rise of X stuff all fits in there just beautifully but with all the new cards from immortality it just doesn't all fit in in the in in that box so that kind of bumps me out that I gotta have two boxes now first world problems but I that's it that's my only real problem I really think this is a great expansion I think this is a great game um and if you like doing Imperium I think you'll really get a kick out of it it will add as I say some more spice and sugar to your game so the recommendation for doing Imperium immortality is buy it well thank you ladies and gentlemen once again for joining us on the discriminating gamer as I always ask you to please leave a comment for us on YouTube on board game geek on our Facebook page we're on the discriminatinggamer.com I ask you to please like us on Facebook subscribe to us on YouTube and follow us on Twitter I'd also ask you to please ladies and Gentlemen please please please please please subscribe to this channel I really wanted to see it grow and I appreciate all of you so far who have helped me uh get to that point so thank you so much but also too I'd ask you to check out my other channel that is Cody Carlson PhD where we talk about military history books on history I post some of my lectures up there please subscribe to

10:25 that I would appreciate that as well please give a thumb to this video on Board Game Geek um again it helps us out you know ladies and gentlemen I I got kind of nervous because I heard uh just the other day that locally there was a kidnapping at the at the elementary school it was it's all right he woke up please holy cow so he got screwed out of his victory last time he spent six spikes for them