Dune Imperium was already a top shelf game for me, so my bar for the standalone follow-up was unfairly high, and Uprising mostly clears it while also asking more of the table than the original ever did. Contracts, conflict types, spies, a shield wall you can destroy, sandworms you tame or get run over by, it’s a lot more mechanical texture layered onto the same worker placement and deckbuilding chassis, and the designer keeps finding new ways to squeeze value out of a system I thought was already tight.

The worms are the thing everyone’s arguing about and I’m going to add my voice to the pile. Doubling a conflict bonus is a huge swing, and in a couple of our games it felt like the table’s actual plans mattered less than whoever got lucky with worm timing. We’ve house-ruled a small variant, everyone starting with a spice buffer, that’s smoothed it out some, but I’d rather the base rules had gotten there first. Setup takes longer than the original too, more trays, more decks to shuffle, which matters to me on a weeknight even though the payoff once everything’s out is real.

What I keep coming back for is that this doesn’t replace the base game so much as sit next to it, my group still pulls out plain Dune Imperium when we want the leaner version, and reaches for Uprising when we want the heavier modern-euro feel with more moving parts. That flexibility, one box functioning as two different games depending on mood, is worth a lot. Four stars, with the worm caveat noted for anyone who hasn’t hit it yet.