Dune: Variant Cards (1986)

A set of 8 new Dune Treachery cards printed on 1 sheet of cardstock with 2 pages of accompanying rules. These names and effects have precedent in the books or movie, primarily the books.

The cards are: Weather Scanner, Smuggler, Troop Carrier, Dust Chasm, Juice of Sapho, Imperial Conditioning, Break Imperial Conditioning, Weirding Way.

These were published in The VIP of Gaming Magazine, Issue #2 Feb/Mar 1986

Summary of Effects

Weather Scanner: Allows a non-Fremen player to examine the next weather token.
Smuggler: Steal spice from another player, stealing more for each desert territory you control.
Troop Carrier: Make a second shipment of troops to Dune, paying the Guild as usual.
Dust Chasm: Destroy all non-Fremen units in the space where a Spice Blow just occurred, and no units may move into or through the space this round. Fremen units which stay in the space will also be destroyed. Can't be played if a worm appears.
Juice of Sapho: After a player has committed their cards to a battle, look at the entirety of their remaining hand before making your own choice.
Imperial Conditioning: For one battle only, before players have committed cards to a battle, your leader cannot turn traitor.
Break Imperial Conditioning: Cancel Imperial Conditioning when it is played in your battle.
Weirding Way: Before any part of a battle occurs, play to double the casualties that battle inflicts on your opponent.

Suggested Use

Five cards without effects are included in the base game, and two more 'useless' cards are added in Dune: Spice Harvest and Dune: The Duel. This variant suggests replacing those seven cards with the first seven of the variant cards, and to, once someone has blown the Shield Wall, replace the Family Atomics card with Weirding Way and/or have that card function as Weirding Way.

An alternate method suggested is to buy an additional full set of Treachery cards and overwrite the normal effects with the variant card effects (pasting the new image onto the card, or for a more modern audience, using sleeves and inserts).

Interaction with other Expansions

The 'Reviving the Ghola'/Bene Tleilax expansion adds additional uses for the 'useless' Treachery cards. If the variant cards replace useless cards and that variant is also in use, they should be marked to indicate that they also count as 'useless' cards for the Tleilaxu's purposes. The alternate method is probably preferable if these are used together.