How to play Dune (2019) on TTS

Basic guide on how to use Central419 & Krell's mod for the Gale Force 9 Dune board game (2019) and its expansions. (Not a rules explanation)

Introduction

This guide will teach you how to use the following mod to play Dune (2019) on Tabletop Simulator:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1972622978&searchtext=dune+2019

I will not be describing the rules for the game in this guide. It probably won't make much sense if you aren't already somewhat familiar with the game itself. I am also writing this assuming you have at least a basic knowledge of the controls for Tabletop Simulator. The purpose of this guide is to explain how to use the mod, nothing more.

You can find the game rules online for free from GF9 here (The rulebooks are also included in the TTS mod):

Base Game[www.gf9games.com]

Expansion 1[www.gf9games.com]

Expansion 2[www.gf9games.com]

Official FAQ[www.gf9games.com]

I may describe a few common houserules used for quality of life, as a treat.

Obviously all credit for the mod goes to its creators Central419 and Krell, all credit for the game goes to Gale Force 9, and the designers of the original, Avalon Hill, and any other credit goes to whoever deserves it the most as determined by single combat. Use this guide for whatever you want.

Setup (Pt. 1)

When you first load up the mod, it will look like this:

At this point, you should have everyone you are playing with join and select a seat. Each color corresponds to a base-game faction (Not necessarily for scripting purposes, but for readability it's best to use the same color for the same faction):
White - Harkonnen
Orange - Spacing Guild
Green - Atreides
Yellow - Fremen
Red - Emperor
Blue - Bene Gesserit

But if you're playing with expansion factions or with players getting their faction randomly (described later) it doesn't matter where people sit initially.

Once everyone is seated, you should agree on what expansion content will be allowed. You can find all of the extra tokens and cards you might need, as well as rulebooks, in the three boxes at the top right of the board, as seen here:

For this example, we will play with tech tokens, sandtrout, the cheap hero traitor, and the expansion 1 treachery cards, except shield snooper and poison blade. We will not be playing with stronghold cards or leader skills. We shuffle the Sandtrout into the Spice Deck to the left of the board, and shuffle the added Treachery Cards into the Treachery deck just above the spice deck. We also move the Treachery deck onto its deck pile instead of the discard pile where it starts.

We set the Cheap Hero Traitor aside for later and place any unwanted expansion content back into their boxes (or delete them).

Now you should choose which factions are going to be in the game. You can choose however you like, but a common method when playing with expansions allowed is for each player to 'draft' a faction they want to be present by pulling one of the faction tokens above the board into the center, as below:
In this example, Atreides, Harkonnen, Bene Gesserit, Fremen, Emperor, and Bene Tleilaxu are drafted. We can put the unused faction tokens into a box or delete them.

For readability, we should change any colours to those appropriate for their factions, for expansion factions, typical colors are:
Teal - Ixians
Purple - Tleilaxu
Red or Brown (if Emperor is in the game) - CHOAM
White or Pink (if Harkonnens are in the game) - Richese
You can do this by selecting the Hidden Zone tool on the left (third down, or f3) and clicking on a faction's hidden zone:
Make sure to also select the hand tool under the Zone section (same as where the hidden zone tool is) and change the player's hand to the corresponding color:
Any players who were in seats that changed colors must reselect their color. Note that no faction may be the black color, since that color is able to see into all hidden areas to act as a gamemaster or spectator.

After you change hand colors you may be bombarded with errors. To fix this, the host or any promoted player must simply flip over all faction tokens and double click the number on the reverse side, resetting it:

Setup (Pt. 2)

Now we can figure out who is playing which faction. Again, you may use any method you like, but a common method is to use this convenient randomizer in the bottom left of the board:
The button on the top side randomizes the seating position, and the button on the reverse side randomizes player colors. To randomize, press the button on each side 3 times (only once is actually necessary, but a variation of the Gambler's Fallacy tells me to do it thrice)
Once you have randomized factions, players may offer to trade their faction with another player. If they trade, they should swap seats to each other's color.
I recommend you delete the randomizer button once you're finished with it, or someone might accidentally click it during the game, and that would be very disruptive.

Next, everyone should take their faction token and place them in the slots in front of them around the edge of the board:
This will spawn each factions items, including player shields, troop tokens, battle wheels, starting spice, leader tokens, and any faction-specific items like the Harkonnen leader cage or Atreides treachery tracker. Traitor cards for all leaders will be automatically deposited at the center; Since we are playing with the cheap hero traitor we add it to the pile:

Now we can deal traitors. If you are playing with the Harkonnen Mulligan houserule (Harkonnen can redo traitors if they draw 2 of their own), I recommend dealing 4 to Harkonnen before anyone else to see if they qualify for mulligan, and then after that dealing to everyone else. (In this example we don't deal to Tleilaxu since they don't receive traitors normally):
Quite the Harkonnen traitor hand! Of course, since I'm playing the Harkonnens, I don't discard any of my four, but each other faction should return four of their drawn traitors to the deck. We pass the traitor deck to the Bene Tleilaxu, who draw their 3 face dancers and keep the deck nearby for reshuffling them:

Next, we deal the initial "pocket" Treachery cards. Of course, the Harkonnen get two:
It's a good idea at this point to ensure that the numbers on the tokens are linked to the correct players. These numbers represent the number of Treachery cards in each player's hand:
The number gets linked to the first player to pick up the token, and can be reset by having the host or a promoted player double-click on the number.

Next, all factions place their starting troops on the board:

Finally, me and the Bene Gesserit dial the initial storm on our battle wheels (using battle wheels is explained in the "Battle Wheels" section.):
14! Since there are 18 storm sectors, that's equivalent to the storm moving back 4. To move the storm, click the storm icon in the center of the turn tracker to the top left of the board:
Left clicking moves the storm forward, right clicking moves it backward.
Since the Bene Gesserit are first in storm order, they receive the unallocated Heighliners Tech Token.

You have have now completed the initial setup for the game.

Moving through phases

To denote the current game phase, move the Shai-Hulud token along the phase icons above the board:
The phases, in order from left to right, are:
-Storm
-Spice Blow
-CHOAM Charity
-Bidding
-Revivals
-Shipping & Movement
-Battle
-Collections
-Mentat Pause

To the left of the phase icons is the turn tracker. At the end of each turn this should be advanced to denote the current turn.

Storm Deck

The Fremen hidden zone will contain the Storm Deck. When they are allowed to, the Fremen should shuffle the deck and drag one card outside of their hidden area, which will be the next storm movement. Fremen can press Alt+Shift to look at the face-down side of the card.
The storm can be moved as described at the end of setup.

Spice Blows

The spice blow deck area consists of the deck, prescience slot (for Atreides prescience) and the two spice blow slots:
At the start of shipment and movement, place the next spice blow card face-down on the prescience slot. Atreides can use Alt+Shift to secretly view it.

Spice blow cards are scripted for spawning. Each one has a button that spawns spice in the correct territory:
Be aware that the button cannot be clicked if the card is part of a pile, so you should click it before placing it onto the proper slot.

Bidding Phase

The treachery deck area contains four slots as well. From left to right:
-Discard
-Deck
-Auction cards
-Current card

At the start of the bidding phase, place the required number of cards from the deck into the auction slot:
You can now hit "Next" to place each card in sequence on the current card slot:
As with the spice blows, Atreides can press Alt+Shift to look at the card.

When the bidding phase is selected, all faction tokens will be automatically flipped to display the number of cards in each player's hand, which is public during the bidding phase.

When a card is on the current card slot, the bidding wheel will appear:
You can left-click the number in the center to up the bid of the person to whom the spur points, or right-click to decrease the number. Once the desired bid is made, you can click "next" on the wheel to turn it to the next person. Right clicking will send it backwards.
Once the wheel returns to someone without having been outbid, that person wins the current card for the amount of spice they bid. they can take the card by clicking "Take" above the current card slot.

Using Battle Wheels

The large faction icon in your hidden area is your battle wheel:
You can flip it like any other object to reveal the controls:

Battle wheels are automatically set up for advanced combat with spice dialing (Except the Fremen battle wheel, since the Fremen do not have to pay spice for forces). If you wish to change this you can press the "ON" or "OFF" button next to the spice dialing control:

To dial a number of forces + spice, you can left-click to increase (or right-click to decrease) the number for troops and the number for spice on the left, and the total will automatically be calculated at the top:

Factions with special 2-strength troops such as Emperor or Fremen are able to dial those forces on their battle wheel:
Spice will automatically be assigned to 2-strength forces first, for optimal strength for your spice.

Leaders and Treachery Cards can be dropped from above into the battle wheel:They can be removed again (Last-in first-out) by dragging as though from a bag.

Picking up the entire battle wheel will automatically flip it to the hidden side:

These slots to the left of the board can hold the battle wheels for easy viewing:

To reveal your battle plan, hit reveal at the bottom of the hidden side, or mouse over the wheel and hit 'r':
Take that, House Corrino!

Harkonnen Leader Cage

This cage in the Harkonnen hidden area is used for their capturing of leaders:

To use it, have the person you're capturing leaders from drop all of their living, not-elsewhere leaders face-down into it:
You can then shuffle it like a deck of cards by pressing 'r', and take one of the leaders from it into your hidden area, flipping it over to look once there:
Nice, got Hasimir!

You can also use the cage for shuffling other random objects, if you ever have need of doing that.

Atreides Treachery Tracker

The Atreides hidden area contains this useful tracker tool to help you keep track of who has which cards:
To operate it, first position it where you want, then flip it over and it will look like this:
Click the button that says "Click Here" (duh). This will set up the board:

The two black tokens in the very top right can be flipped over to reveal tokens for the Ixians and Tleilaxu (There are no such tokens for CHOAM or Richese, so I guess you'll have to improvise for those):

Since we are playing with Ix instead of Guild, we will replace their token correspondingly:

Each black card token can be flipped over to denote an unknown card:
Or you can drag a known card from the bottom deck tokens into their known hand:
At the bottom there is also a space to keep track of discarded cards, if you wish.

In one of the expansion boxes, you can find a supplement containing tokens for the expansion cards:
It is activated just like the main tracker, with a button on the back. You can then move the tokens into the known hand slots like the regular ones:

If you don't feel like you have enough room in your hidden area, you could ask the host to expand the area (or do it yourself if you are the host) to give you more room. Alternatively, you can just take notes on paper or via your own method. Remember, only Atreides is legally allowed to take notes on cards, everyone else just has to try and remember with their puny non-mentat brains.

Finding people to play with

If you're looking for people to play Dune with, there's a Discord server linked in the mod: https://discord.gg/rRGEfn4

There you can find a group of people to play and discuss this or other Dune board games like Dune: Imperium or Arrakis: Dawn of the Fremen.