Margot Leader Guide for Dune Imperium: Uprising! 

4th position isn’t so bad. You get second action round 7 and first action round 8 so you can go a combat strategy and have a decent chance at landing the premium spots like hagga basin or heighliner. Someone like Gurney can be great as you can decide if you want to commit late turn 1 or 2, get decent buy power on one or both turns and threaten early revealing. If the row is bad, it can come good as 3 people in front of you will buy and hopefully cycle a juicy 5 or 6 cost into the row. Other leaders that work well are leaders who often take alternative early strats like Shaddam who values going to get water/spacing friendship who also likes a bad row as you can push alliances way easier, especially if the table is starved of faction access. Typically Shaddam players should be looking at getting 2 persuasion cards to augment their alliances with spice must flow. You can win quite easily this way if the row stays bad. Also Irulan might go for the Solaris contracts doesn’t mind 4th position. Can also cut down the deck so you only really need 1 good card if you go down to 7 cards turn 1. Leaders like Muadib who want to go fremkit early really suffer in 4th, especially if starved of good cards in the row. I probably reveal early 50% of the time in position 4. The power level of a card like strike fleet or public spectacle is way more important than whatever action you were going to take. If the row is dead, let others grab the garbage cards and take an action. If the row has a lot of good cards then early revealing is less important also.

Based on my 2 games w her, i think she's just really hard to use. Especially in the beginning, the ring is such a nuisance to fuel sometimes, as you need spice in order to actually use it. The lady jessica side's passive could be used to buy really good cards w a lot of card draw in espionage. The reverend mother side can be very powerful, especially espionage and desert tactics, but it needs a lot of water to make it work. I once got my deck to 7 cards w overthrow because of double trashing. So i would say she has the potential to be really good, but it is really hard to get to that point, with how much resources she needs

Firstly, thank you! For leaders outside of Margot, I typically go Feyd for similar reasons. Feyd has that hidden 2 spice that comes in handy at the end of the bottom track and can generate spies, albeit a bit slower but with the benefit they can go anywhere. Always go bottom tracks with Feyd! Otherwise I play Gurney a lot, but you are at the will of the combat gods as to whether you find matches or not. You are also super reliant on drafting cards with spy generation and combat cards, otherwise other people get it, then you don't crush combats. So often you either end up with a combat card deficiency or spy deficiency. Margot doesn't have that issue. Gurneys extra 1 buy can allow you to get good cards all the same, but has trouble cycling. Paul is a great leader to crush newer players if that is your jam. Play position 2 though and hope you dont draw both or neither of your access cards. Position 3 is safe also. Yes, the game has high variance, that's what makes it fun, otherwise I would play chess which I hate! Minimising the variance is about understanding averages of intrigues. One of the first things I did when I got uprising was group all the intrigues into combat/end games/coin cards/faction bumps/everything else. It allowed me to quickly give percentages of what are the chances of someone having a combat card, and if so, how many swords can I expect. It leant me to realise that if someone has 3 combat cards, if I expect that they have 3 swords, then that's probably right. For that reason, I always make sure I push 4 combat strengh, including my combat intrigues, past someone else if I want to win. It just puts it out of reach, unless they want to throw their premium 5+ sword cards. If a combat takes place that they could play an intrigue for 3 swords and they don't, I keep that in mind for future turns as at that point I can guess they don't have a combat intrigue. The same can go for keeping alliances with faction bump intrigues, or even chasing down sword master where I expect someone might have a coin card. That way when someone does it, I don't get too upset as typically I pick that its a possibility and plan accordingly. Combat rewards are where its at. If you are that 4th player that never gets in and never gets rewards, its going to be hard to win. Second and third place can be more important than first place. The combat that has 3 spice + troop and 2 spice as second and third rewards is really important to get a part of, provided you don't waste too many troops. 1 troop is bargain, but 2 troops is ok. Also, any combat that provides water allows you to keep going if you have worms already. The one that gives a contract for first with a trash but second gives water trash and spice is a good example of a good one for second if you don't get a match. Combats to avoid are typically the yellow ones unless its a match. The second and third place rewards are worth going in for as the value is insane. Just check your water situation first before committing on combats that do not give water as a reward. The combats that are the best value for first place are ones that give you 1+ VP. So a match + a faction bump is great. With worms, a match with 2 faction bumps is insane. Just avoid being short on water if you control the worm situation. A non-match with 2 bumps is pretty good. Anything that is not a match and no faction bumps is typically bad for first place. I hope this all helps!

@@garyboyer4269 Thanks for such a detailed reply! Lots of useful info here. I'll especially take into mind the combat placing - I sometimes feel I overcommit to first places and leave rewards hanging while not getting any points from them. I hadn't considered the comparative weakness of yellow combats vs the others.

Dagger

Not really. If you can push in, when in position, and get a point, great! Pushing 3 troops in out of position is asking to get smacked by someone coming over with 4 or an intrigue. I find if I draft good combat cards, I can cycle into them and win a combat when I am ready without risk. If you are going a spice must flow strategy, then you really have to bide your time based on your starting objective and hope you can push and win when no one else does. I find that doing this, someone typically will come over the top that has built a combat deck. My priority is definitely to draft into good cards first rather than fight too much turn 1 and 2. I think the exception to this is if I do have a round 1 match combat, I drew 2 daggers so my buy power is bad and I am either position 3 or 4. Then I push in hard.

Hmm that’s a tough one. I think Staban is probably one of those leaders, but for similar reasons to Margot. You start with an extra card cut so you can cycle, albeit at different locations. The draft is even more critical with Staban though. Feyd also has a similar play style but slightly less spies but an important card cut half way through. I have seen other players discover tactics with other leaders but haven’t explored it myself. One such tactic I have seen is with Irulan being picked when there is harvest spice contracts in the row as you can use your ring to throw a bought card to easily fulfil the contract. You still have to go to imperial basin or haha basin though. My other go to leader is Gurney, but Gurney can suffer from lack of spy generation. So as I play more I am steering clear of him as there are too many of those “feels bad” moments where I need spies and just cannot produce them. I hope this helps!

Just play uprising as it is