Played Dune Imperium uprising with 6 players today.
This is a big change from the normal rules. The game is really designed for 3 or 4 players, several pages of additional rules are required for 1, 2 or 6 (and 5 is impossible).
So the 6 player game is really a team game of 3 vs. 3. One player on each team is a Leader. I played as Muad'dib (Paul Atreides) and the player directly opposite me was the Emperor Shaddam Corrino IV. The players either side of me were my enemies - allied to the Emperor. The players either side of the Emperor were allied to me. The game still proceeds with clockwise turn order, so effectively it is alternating between the two sides.
I will caveat all this by saying that only me and the Emperor player had ever played Dune Imperium before, so there was a lot of learning involved for everyone.
In particular, the rules for what you can and can't share between players on the same team caused a few rules checks. And specifically how the Leaders interact with their Allies.
But we still had a fun time. The game came down to a decisive battle between Gurney Halleck and Feyd-Rautha, involving sandworms and lots of troops. The entire game was decided by this battle, and my side ended up losing by 1 point: 22 to 21. So, very close and very tense.
I think if everyone played again they would have a much firmer grasp of what to do.
But this experience has showed me a lot about how new players experience games. Especially how they feel constrained. Lots of conversations went like this:
"Can I do this?"
"No, you don't have a card with the matching symbol."
"Can I do this?"
"No, you don't have enough resources."
"Can I do this?"
"You could, but it technically won't benefit you in any way because of X, Y and Z."
"So what should I do?"
"Just do this - that's what I would do. At least you'll get something."
This is not specific to Dune, but it seemed to be prevalent because there are so many options and so many constraints that newer players just get totally overwhelmed and ask "what can I actually do?"
But this is still an extremely solid design. It's one of those games where you get near the end and want to totally rethink how you've been playing this whole time because all the layers of strategy finally align in your mind. The deck building aspect is something I've barely scratched the surface of - I'm still trying to figure out how to win conflicts and use my agents most efficiently.
Will we all play again? Hard to say. This group normally plays Axis and Allies Global 1940 or Twilight Imperium, and honestly Dune Imperium just doesn't compare to those in terms of table presence and intuitiveness of mechanics. But worth it to try at least once.