Best Dune: Imperium Upgrades to Make the Spice Flow

Dire Wolf Deluxe Upgrade Pack

Dire Wolf, the publisher behind Dune: Imperium, knows we love our games and offers an official Deluxe Upgrade Pack. It runs about $60 and doesn’t change the gameplay, but makes the game feel more immersive.

It includes a set of 65 miniatures that replace cardboard pieces and wooden cubes, and comes in a deeper box to house your game and upgrades. You get 48 troops, 12 agents with colored base rings, 4 alliance tokens, and a Mentat miniature.

The pack also includes a hefty metal first-player sandworm coin and a set of trays designed to hold sleeved cards and components. (Though I ditched the trays in favor of a more flexible solution.)

Each player gets their own sculpted agents and troop figures, which really bring the game to life. Combat feels much more immersive when your soldiers are facing each other in the arena instead of just a pile of cubes on the board.

This Upgrade Pack is a great starting point for upgrading your copy of the game. But as you’ll see in the rest of this post, the community has taken Dune: Imperium upgrades even further.

Free Dire Wolf Dune: Imperium Companion App

Before we get to the fan Dune: Imperium upgrades, I have to mention the free app that goes with this game. If you play solo or with 2 players, you need to play with the House Hagal cards. The Companion app includes this deck, streamlining the automa process. It allows you to select expansions, modes, difficulty, your character, and your rivals.

At the low player count of 1-2, you’ll especially appreciate the Imperium Churn feature, which is new to this app. It periodically refreshes a few cards in the Imperium Market, helping cycle out cards you don’t want and keeping the market from getting stale.

LevityGames Dune: Imperium Stickers

The official minis have hit my table, but painting them is now on my to-do list. Until then, these vinyl stickers from LevityGames are delightful. I love that the agent meeples have unique front and back designs, each representing a different Dune faction’s uniform.

LevityGames designs fantastic stickers and brings Dune to life by adding front-and-back stickers to every resource token and worker meeple in the game, covering solari, spice, water tokens, cubes, and markers.

They offer several versions in their Etsy shop so you only pay for what you actually own – base game only, resources only, or bundles covering Rise of Ix, Immortality and Uprising. There are also gap sets to make sure nothing gets left out. The stickers are matte vinyl and repositionable, which is a lifesaver for the perfectionists among us.

Laserland Acrylic Water and Spice Tokens

On Arrakis, water is life. These translucent blue acrylic water drops feel worthy of such a precious resource. The spice tokens carry a subtle sparkle, which feels exactly right for the most coveted resource in the Dune universe.

LaserLand is my go-to Etsy shop for premium acrylic tokens and overlays.

Dune: Imperium Game Mat by GripMats

GripMats are one of my favorite game mats. They offer a huge variety of thematic and game-specific mats. The mat below is double-sided, has stitched edging, and measures 24″ by 28″. It features the base game on one side and the Rise of Ix expansion on the other. The color scheme matches the board, but is a bit more vibrant, which I prefer.

To give you a better idea of its size, the default cardboard game board is shown here atop the GripMat. As you can see, the GripMat is quite a bit larger, has a slightly different layout and includes spaces for card decks.

GripMats has a surprisingly diverse selection of Dune mats for all the expansions, with most being reversible. Their latest Dune mat designs are incredible, but they were released after I already bought my Dune GripMat.

Dune 3D Upgrade Pack

This set of 3D components by Fuzzie on Thingiverse includes highly aesthetic and practical in-game components and deck holders that streamline gameplay. I printed most of these pieces in Bambu Lab PLA Sparkle in Onyx Black.

Imperium Row Card Holders

This set of vertical card holders has small magnets embedded in the sides, so they snap together to make an orderly Imperium Row.

Player Stations

I printed out two player stations, and these are very stylish designs that keep all your cards and player components super handy.

Station Features

• Your Leader card is in the center, abilities are easy to read
• Draw and discard trays to the left and right
• Handy tray in front to store the game’s three resources
• Inserts for the 3 Agent meeples and 3 control banner markers
• Spot for your High Council token and army cubes
• Slots for the 4 Alliance tokens and the First Player token

I use the troop miniatures and 3D-printed Alliance/First Player tokens, so not all of them can fit, but I still love these player stations.

High Council Center Seats

The High Council Center Piece and Seats are also magnetic and snap together. This setup makes it much easier to remember when you’ve earned your spot at the High Council for 2 extra Persuasion during your Reveal turn.

Intrigue and Conflict Card Trays

Love how these keep the smaller cards organized and in place, allowing for both draw and discard piles.

The Conflict holder includes a magnetic Current Conflict Card holder, making it super easy to see what’s at stake in this round’s conflict. There are two versions to print, depending on your preference. I chose the holder to display it over the trays. Don’t miss out on those valuable Victory Points!

Conflict Ring and Player Barracks

Again, these are magnetized, and you can print up to 6 player barracks around the conflict ring. The barrack sections work better with cubes, as they don’t comfortably fit more than 4-5 troop minis, but it still looks pretty good.

There are a ton of Dune: Imperium upgrades to choose from, but this pack is my favorite!

Here’s a YouTube video from the designer, Fuzzie, showing how everything works. You can see how handy the magnetic features are for keeping things in their place. He chose to print everything in clean white.

Control Banner Markers

I upgraded the cardboard to these stunning control markers. Each player has three of these markers to claim control of an Arakeen city or area.

Faction Alliance Tokens

These four Faction Alliance Tokens really pop and are so much more fun to claim than the cardboard circles that come with the game. I printed everything in matte black, then painted the designs over in gold and other faction colors with a Posca pen. I’m not sure why I chose to hand-paint these, perhaps because the file source showed it as hand-painted, as did most of the Makes of it. Since then, I’ve printed so many multi-color prints, I’m thinking I should redo these.

If you have a printer with multi-color capability, these would look great printed in color. I’ve added a second option to the link list below for these tokens, with a pre-colored STL file.

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