Dune (card game)

Publishing history

In 1997, the card game Dune: Eye of the Storm hit the market, a joint effort between Five Rings Publishing Group and Last Unicorn Games. The license they secured from the Herbert Estate and Universal Studios originally covered only the 1984 David Lynch film, but by December of that year it expanded to include all of Frank Herbert's novels, with the game itself drawing from the first three books: Dune, Dune Messiah, and Children of Dune. Designer Owen Seyler chose painted card art rather than film stills.

The base set contained 301 cards, sold in 60-card starter decks and 15-card booster packs. Six starter decks existed, each tied to a political faction, with half the cards fixed and the other half random. Ally and Homeworld cards appeared only in starter boxes, but not every Ally card was guaranteed in a single starter—Piter de Vries and Liscia Theirese were examples of cards that could be missing, which created a trading and collecting element. A handful of promotional cards were sent to anyone who requested more info before the game's launch, all marked with "Preview" on the left side of the card face.

Five Rings planned quarterly expansions. The first, Judge of the Change, arrived in December 1997 with 152 cards, sold in 60-card half-fixed starter decks and 15-card boosters. It introduced two new factions—the Spice Miners Guild and the Water Peddlers Union—along with a new card type called decrees. Later that year, Wizards of the Coast bought Five Rings, and the game took a sharp turn.

Under the Rolling Thunder program, small expansions called Chapters came out every two months. This was meant to keep collecting lively, but it led to many duplicate cards in boosters and a constantly shifting competitive scene. In 1998, Wizards released two full sets: Dune: Judge of the Change, with 183 cards covering House Atreides' arrival on Arrakis, and Dune: Thunder at Twilight, with 178 cards about House Harkonnen reclaiming the planet. The game's tough mechanics, however, proved too complex for younger players, and the Dune CCG collapsed.

Two more expansions were on the drawing board for 1998—Dune: Second Moon Rising, focusing on Paul Atreides' rise, and Dune: Fall of the Padishah, covering the emperor's defeat—but the game was canceled before they could be printed.