See The Gorgeous Dune: Eye Of The Storm Card Game From The 90s
The legacy of Frank Herbert’s Dune has stretched across many different media and iterations over the decades since the novel’s original publication. There was David Lynch’s film version (divisive at best), the Sci-Fi Channel’s obscure miniseries adaptations, director Alejandro Jodorowsky’s aborted film version, and, of course, the Timothe Chalamet-led franchise from Denis Villeneuve.
But one incarnation that might never have hit your radar was a collectible card game put out during the mid-90s. Dune: Eye of the Storm is a collection worth revisiting because the game’s artwork was beautiful.
Dune: Eye of the Storm was released in 1997 by Last Unicorn Games, and it pit “two or more players against each other, each in control of a minor house vying for entry in the Landsraad.”
The main objective of Dune: Eye of the Storm is to accumulate sufficient resources, primarily Spice and Favor, to have your House admitted into the Great Council. Players start by choosing a faction to sponsor their house, which determines their starting deck and initial strategy.
Is Dune: Eye of the Storm complex and confusing? Sure, but honestly, is that different from the actual universe itself? Not really. And, of course, the artwork is just top-notch,
Artist Mark Zug provided artwork for some of the cards, and his take on the Dune universe is striking, gorgeous, and just begging to be blown up and hung on my office wall.
Zug said that initially, he was told to base his Dune: Eye of the Storm art on the designs from Lynch’s film, but that edict soon changed, and he was told to instead “to avoid similarity to Lynch’s visuals.” Ah, licensing issues. You can see the Lynch callbacks in this image of a Guild Navigator.
I particularly love this image, which reminds me of Australian Aborigines for some reason.
You can see more of Zug’s Dune art work on his website.
