Do You Need Dune: Imperium Immortality? - TCbH Expansion Review

0:00 father the sleeper has awakened hello everyone this is Jack from the cardboard Harold and today we are talking about the latest and greatest expansion the second expansion to Dune Imperium which is titled immortality this is an expansion that like rise of IX before it introduces us to a brand new faction within the Dune universe or rather a brand new faction to Dune Imperium that is well established and documented in the grotesquery that is the later Dune books this being the teeliaksu so if you're up on your Dune lore you know that the ixians are the technologists who are kind of breaking some of the butlerian Jihad proclamations against thinking machines kind of verging into murky territories well the teliaksu were like we don't need technology to do our work for us why don't we just make human beings even better and their respect responsible for a lot of the genetic monstrosities that definitely cross a line beyond the typical I I guess uh human evolution into the different groups of people that we see the Benet Jesuits are doing the breeding program the men tatts are doing their human calculator thing well the teliacs who are making little flesh blobs out of other flesh blobs and I'm not going to get into too many spoilers but the bottom line is they're into all that gross nasty stuff that you can expect out of a dark and grotesque sci-fi

1:33 series that Dune actually evolves into and super philosophical as well but let's talk about what this expansion is so there are three primary elements that are added with this expansion that are more tertiary they're they're more of an add-on than rise of IX was kind of like a replacement you have the central teleactsu board that as you take research actions which have now been integrated in a board overlay as well as a card that replaces the Dune the desert planet in your starting deck which is cool we'll get into that in just a little bit and some other Intrigue cards and cards added to the Imperium deck that you can acquire bottom line anytime you take a research action you move right on the track often you have a choice of moving up or down from your current position and you get progressively better rewards As you move along the track ultimately getting to some really dope benefits on the side and unlocking triggerable effects with the single or double DNA symbols if you've met those thresholds now on top of this board is your allegiance to the teeliaksu just like the factions that are on the side of the board that you can align yourself here you don't have an allegiance that you can claim but you do get uh I'm first to be Allied to them benefit of two extra spice but otherwise

3:03 you just get points and other benefits as you climb the track and it's a new Avenue for people to push now the last little element of this or at least the last major element of the expansion is that the teleacts are these genetic masterminds that are creating all sorts of gross things and many of the rewards in the game are going to create specimens little jelly blob tokens that come from your troops you put them onto the section of the teleactsu board that are then spent on a new row of Imperium cards that are only acquirable during the reveal phase using these jelly blobs that have a myriad of different effects they're very powerful they can only be purchased with jelly blobs and they get integrated into your deck just like any other card and introduce a new mechanic which is grafting where if you have a card that allows you to graft you can play it along with one of your other cards during an assignment phase where you're playing a worker and not only do you get both the worker assignment benefits of the two cards that you played but now the worker can be assigned to any of the locations on either of the graphic cards which at first sounds a little bit wonky and it is actually kind of hard to line up the combos that you think possible but when you are able to reliably have these combos pop off

4:33 they are potent and they are exciting and it is so satisfying now the last little of Note new thing that isn't really a major part of this expansion but is hilarious to bring up is the fact that you now have family atomics each player gets one of these tokens that once during the game they can deploy their family atomics to clear the Imperium row of cards that you can acquire into your deck because the markets get stale and this has been a consistent complaint since the game originally came out they were like fine fine we'll give you a token and once per game any player can get rid of these which is exciting it's welcome and hilarious that it took this long so I'm glad it's here so immortality the integration of the game My overall thoughts about the expansion are that it is welcome it's interesting it's compelling but it does have the feelings of making a game wider without necessarily making it any deeper if that makes sense one of the criticisms that you could have of doing Imperium is that with each successive expansion and even problematic in the base game alone is that it's a deck building game you are assembling all these different cards hopefully with the idea that they're going to synergize together and by putting so many new cards in the game you're diluting existing mechanics now I really like that the the specimen related cards from the Axolotl tanks

6:05 which I love that there are some deep pulls from the Dune lore even if it's just kind of evocative and doesn't give you any context I mean who thought they'd be putting chair dogs in this game anyway I love that these cards are not integrated in the Imperium deck and you can kind of optionally interact with and it gives you more tools to kind of play with throughout the game but I I do think that ultimately it kind of spreads about the focus of the game it is all that much harder to lob onto reliable combinations and instead makes the game a little bit more tactical than it is strategic which is kind of like a preference thing but I really think that a stroke of Genius that kind of saves this expansion is that you don't have to spread your worker Focus to go and chase after the research because you have these cards that are integrated in your starter deck that are just as good as dune the desert Planet the card except it also automatically triggers a research action when you utilize the card regardless of where you end up going and gives you some golas or I guess specimens to use with any of the Axolotl tank cards as part of your reveal so what this results in is even though there's this kind of like spread out focus of the the cards that synergize in your deck you ultimately have more power as you play You're gaining more stuff it accelerates the

7:36 pace in which you can access different options that hopefully will work together which I think is really the strength and selling point of this expansion and is the only way that you could have all this possible content on the table especially when combined with rise of vix but between the fact that you have this automatic integration of the teeliaksu board through your starter deck and the fact that if you want to separate out the expansions you have to painstakingly take out cards from an Imperium deck and from the Intrigue card deck it if you have both you're going to play with both and it's not really that much overhead to manage is this a mandatory expansion I don't know and I also don't know if I'd recommend it over rise of x if you want a more substantial change that kind of strengthens The Core Concepts of the original but balances out the economy more then I think X is still going to be the best bet it also adds more characters this is a slighter expansion however if you are wanting something that is an easier addition to the game and accelerates things the kind of baked in elements of immortality are going to be the way to go ultimately I have both I like both I'm going to play with both and I'm not sad that it's going to make the game that much more complex and large and enjoy charge but these are a lot of preferential things that you are going to have to think about and that's our review but let me

9:06 know what are your favorite types of expansions the more stuff expansions the stuff that just kind of widens out a game giving you more options like this do you like the overall Big Fix type of expansion so I think rise of X is more in line with put it in the comments below let's have a discussion about it and as always thanks for watching thanks for supporting thanks for being an awesome Community you know that I've been Jack for the cardboard Harold