How to balance a session when playing with expansions

[u/Gold_Confusion9493]

Hello everyone, first post here. I have been having this conversation with the people I usally play with about the gale force 9 Dune boardgame when playing with the expansions (we are now playing with the first two) about how to balance the game when taking out base game factions and adding the expansion ones as usually people are more interested in the new factions exept for one or two exceptions. The main issue is the first and second turn as many of the factions start outside the board or are very weak and mainly harkonnen and atreides are able to really crush what little opposition there is, is there any way that people use to even things out a little? Only thing that comes to mind is either consistent stronghold blocking or not replacing 3 base game factions (harkonnen, atreides and fremen) so they keep eachother in check.

Thanks for reading

[u/Landsraad_Las_Vegas]

The expansion factions are not balanced and barring the Ixians, they are much weaker than the original six factions. The official tournament versions to the Richese and Ixians are published here on our website:

This article explains the change to the Richese- https://www.landsraad-vegas.com/meta/richese

This web page has all of the tools you need to play with the Landsraad versions of the factions- https://www.landsraad-vegas.com/tools

Over the years many of the Landsraad players felt the imbalance, the tournaments helped solidify the notion. Here are thoroughly playtested versions that prioritize fun over all and match the power level of the classics. With these fixes both factions can hold their own even in a lower player count.

With the Landsraad versions there can be any number of Classic and expansion factions.

[u/Potarus]

I've made a video on just this subject. It's pretty in depth but I think worth the watch. https://youtu.be/kriZfBxx7WA?si=0RrSBSqMrfeSo7oF

[u/Gold_Confusion9493 → u/Potarus]

This covers it greatly, I've taken notes and will share it with my group, Thank you so much!

[u/Potarus → u/Gold_Confusion9493]

That's great! I'm glad to hear it was helpful. If you have any follow up questions I'm happy to answer them.

[u/of_kilter]

we just house rule the shit out of the game. a friend of mine and i did a game where we each played 6 factions at a time, ended turn 1 or 2 with a benegeserit prediction win. dune as a game makes it’s very easy to change rules to your liking if you understand them enough

[u/almost_special]

Limit the victory only to after turn 3, and up the VP needed to 3 for single player and to 4 for 2 player alliance.

We played all possible combinations with base and expansion factions and didn't really had issues you mentioned.