Rex is actually pretty awful

I got to play last night, and I am stunned just how terrible Rex is. The gmae ends up feeling like such an arbitrary and random set of rules just thrown together to produce a game. Trying to explain how all the pieces and powers work was a TOTAL FREAKING NIGHTMARE.

People who had played (Rex) before had been getting rules wrong during their 2-3 plays.

One other MAJOR blunder is that the very thorough strategy card summary from the old AH Dune is waved at in a single card that doesn't really provide any detail at all on the cards themselves.

The new board actually portrays movement easily, but makes it hard to discern the movement of the storm. And the board itself is huge, which suddenly almost requires an extra table to set up the game. There are some rule tweaks here and there which actually seem quite nice, and I think provide enough of the optional rules and collected house rules from the original game to be a nearly perfect set of rules, but everything else left me with an overwhelming sense of "why bother?"

I mean anyone who really likes Dune has it. Anyone who has heard of that legendary game is pretty likely to be turned off by this one.

Ha!

I just booted up F:AT to ask what folks thought of Rex.

I played Dune for the first time this week and it instantly shot into a top 10 slot, if not top 5. I was curious if Rex is a good substitute or should I track down Dune itself.

Jeff White wrote: Ha!

I just booted up F:AT to ask what folks thought of Rex.

I played Dune for the first time this week and it instantly shot into a top 10 slot, if not top 5. I was curious if Rex is a good substitute or should I track down Dune itself.

I haven't played it yet, and I will soon enough. But so far from the few of my friends who played it recently all seemed to say that it was a decent game, but they'd rather play Dune.

Can you use the game to just play DUNE though? Or did they fuck that up?

jeb wrote: Can you use the game to just play DUNE though? Or did they fuck that up?

Definitely not. You can pretty much use it to play Rex; you can't "undo" very many of the changes.

Sigh. I'd been picking up a negative vibe about Rex from other people who had played. It's a shame. People's main complaint about my copy of Dune is against it's old artwork, crappy chits and slightly battered state. I was hoping for FFG to work their magic on it. I can still see myself buying Rex but I'm not rushing out to buy it now.

We played last night, and I do like it. Having never played the original Dune, and having been outbid on numerous copies on eBay, Rex was high on my list. After two games, I'm willing to say it's quite good. It hasn't yet been extraordinary or anything, but I wouldn't pronounce it one way or the other until I've had a chance to play it with six people. Both the games I've played started with that many than gradually fell apart until I could barely scrape together five.

My only real complaint about the game is that the combat is kind of complicated from what it was in Dune. FFG likes to break things into steps, even if they weren't in steps to begin with.

"...and I do like it. Having never played the original Dune..."
You're dead to me, Nate.

SuperflyTNT wrote: "...and I do like it. Having never played the original Dune..."
You're dead to me, Nate.

Not for lack of trying dude, believe me.

So you've been actively seeking to be dead to me? LMAO