Dune board game becomes the Kwisatz Haderach with a comprehensive new edition of the rebooted classic in 2025
Bene.
The rebooted Dune board game will release a new edition next year, offering the modern polishing of the once-obscure ‘70s tabletop adaptation of Frank Herbert’s epic sci-fi novel alongside its three revamped expansions.
The rebooted Dune board game released in 2019, four decades after it was originally brought to the tabletop by Cosmic Encounter creators Peter Olotka, Jack Kitteredge and Bill Eberle. The box-office bomb of David Lynch’s movie adaptation - for which the board game saw a re-release in 1984, along with two expansions - combined with licensing difficulties, saw the board game go out-of-print for decades, with original copies fetching steep prices at auction and fans creating their own print-and-play editions of the acclaimed title. (Its seminal gameplay was also reused in the universe of Twilight Imperium in 2012’s Rex: Final Days of an Empire.)
Since returning to tabletops under publisher Gale Force Nine, the Dune board game has seen the release of three expansions offering additional factions and rules variants - Ixians & Tleilaxu, CHOAM & Richese, and last year’s Ecaz & Moritani - as well as a faster-playing, rules-lighter spin-off from the typically hours-long game in Dune: A Game of Conquest and Diplomacy, released to accompany the first part of Arrival director Denis Villeneuve’s latest big-screen take on the series in 2021.
With Villeneuve’s Dune: Part Two arriving in cinemas next month, Gale Force Nine has revealed its own plans for the next instalment in the Dune board game series. Dune: Kwisatz Haderach will bundle the original game with its three modern expansions in a new edition, due to launch on crowdfunding site Gamefound in early 2025.
The game’s subtitle comes from the in-universe term used to describe Dune protagonist Paul Atriedes, representing the mythical messiah figure sought by the mysterious and manipulative Bene Gesserit (who are also one of the playable factions in the board game).
Dune: Kwisatz Haderach will be the third in a series of board games headed to Gamefound from Gale Force Nine over the next year or so, joining dice game The Adventures of Conan this April and a ‘Final Frontier’ collector’s edition of Star Trek Ascendancy later in 2024.