Dominion

This may not have been the first Deckbuilder game, but it certainly put them on the map and made the term common in the gaming lexicon. Dominion certainly may have its faults, but it has sold ridiculous amounts of copies and sits in many a gamers closet, and for good reason.

Not familiar with a deckbuilding game? Put on some sunscreen and come out from under that rock there and I will try and fill you in 🙂 Knowing what Dominion is and how it plays will pretty much define the genre for you.

Lets look in the box. There is a rulebook and some cards. 500 to be exact. There isn’t much else to the game. The cards are all nicely separated by type. Setup is a breeze, cleanup a little less so.

The game states it plays 2-4. I suppose it could support more, but the card stock is going to dwindle pretty fast. 3-4 is optimal, but two is really not out of the question. Figure on 45 minutes to an hour to play. Start off by putting each of the Treasure cards, Victory cards, Curse cards and Trash card into their separate piles. These are always out for every game, although the Curse cards are not always used.

In addition to these cards, there are 25 different Kingdom card decks. Of these, you are going to place out 10. These can be random or agreed upon by the players. This is what gives Dominion, and other deckbuilders, a unique feel to every game.

Each player is going to get 7 Copper cards and 3 Estates. So, what are these for? Every card has a value in the lower left corner. That value can be paid for by the treasure cards, represented at the beginning of the game by the copper cards received, and then used to build your deck throughout the game. The Estate cards, on the other hand, represent the ultimate goal of the game. These are worth victory points, 1 each in this case. At the end of the game, the player with the most victory points wins. There is a downside to these cards, however…

You have your 10 cards. Now you will shuffle them and pick 5. You may end up with 5 copper, enabling you to purchase one card to add to your deck worth up to 5. On the other hand, you may end up with 3 Estates and 2 copper. The Estates, while providing Victory Points to tally up at the end of the game do nothing at all until then except clog up your deck and give you useless cards in your hand. Any purchased cards go into your discard pile, along with played cards and those remaining in your hand at the end of your turn. Then you draw a fresh hand of 5 and await your next turn. Once your draw pile is exhausted, you will shuffle the discard pile to create a new draw pile.

Once you have some new shiny cards, your order of play is to play an action, if you wish/can, buy a card and clean up, where you discard and draw anew. The Kingdom cards generally provide actions of some type that you can enact. These could allow you to draw additional cards, give you additional money this turn to buy new cards, give you additional actions, allow you to purchase more than one card or even cause some kind of harm to your opponents. Your action phase ends when you cannot legally play any further cards. Some of the Kingdom cards are defensive as well, allowing you to counter a negative effect attempted by an opponent.

During the course of the game you will be, in addition to purchasing Kingdom cards, buying higher values of treasure cards as well as Victory Points. It may get to the point that those copper are causing more harm than good, or you want to get rid of some of those Estates because you feel you have better Victory Point cards in your hand and the smaller ones are just causing problems. In that case, some of the Kingdom cards allow you to trash certain cards. When you place a card in the trash, it no longer is available to draw. While a copper card, which costs 0 to buy, may be tempting to get every turn you can purchase nothing else, you need to keep in mind that if you have too many of any card, you will be seeing those cards pop up more than others. It gets to a point where you will want to have more chains of action cards played, which is impossible if you end up with one action card and 4 copper in your hand.

There is a good bit of strategy involved here, deciding what cards to buy, what cards to trash and when, how long to hold off purchasing victory point cards in favor of action cards and that sort of thing. You are on the clock, so you cannot wait forever. Once all of the Province cards (a type of Victory Point card) or any of the 3 supply piles of purchasable cards are gone, the game ends. The player with the most victory points in their deck wins.

As to the downsides, not everyone is going to enjoy the randomness involved with what cards you get every turn, although this really is mitigated somewhat by smart purchases. Some of the cards are not going to be favorites, and you really ought to be careful that you don’t end up with attack cards available in a game that defensive cards are not.

That being said, in my experience, the game is a good time. It is not hard to learn, doesn’t take that much time to play and presents a pretty different game every time. There are tons of expansions to this thing, so should you get tired of the base game and want more variety is is generally your favorite game store and $20 away. This is another one of those games that I think fits well in any gamers closet, unless they just cannot stand the game for some reason. Even if you have someone over who hasn’t gamed past Monopoly, chances are they will have a good time, although the Victory Point concept might throw them a bit the first time. If nothing else, I really think this is a no brainer when your local game store has it on sale. Pick it up and give it a try. I think you will like it.

What Is It About? – An Overview of the Game
Dominion is the patriarch of the deck-building genre, moving what was once “preparation” of modern card games into the game itself. From humble beginnings of a few estates and a pocketful of copper coins, you build your great Dominion.

The game is played from 2 to 4 players. Players take turns playing cards from their hands for actions and money to purchase more cards from a common supply. The game ends when 3 supply decks or the Province supply deck are exhausted. The player with the most VPs in their deck wins.

What Do I Get? – The Components in the Box
Opening the box may come as a surprise since it is a standard 12” x 12” game box but contains only 500 cards. However, the plastic insert is perfectly designed to organize and hold all the cards by type. Even sleeved cards, with some slight rearranging, can fit in the insert with little problem.

Cards are divided into the “basic supply” of coins, victory point cards, curses, and the trash indicator. These are used in every game. The “kingdom cards” make up most of the balance of the cards and are divided into 25 sets. In any given game, only 10 of these sets will be used. Sets can be selected randomly or with a pre-determined “scenarios” that highlight certain combos. The remaining cards are “randomizers” that can be used in selecting the sets. Be careful though: they look exactly like the real cards but have a slight change of color on their back.

What Do I Do? – Playing the Game
The game is extremely simple in terms of sequence of play. Easy as ABC! Players start with a hand of 5 cards. They may play one card for their Action. The Action is then fully resolved. They may then play as many Treasure cards from their hand to generate purchasing power for the Buy phase. Again, they may Buy 1 card up to their Treasure amount, placing it in their discard. Finally, they Clean-up there play area by placing all cards played (including any remaining cards in hand) into their discard pile. They finish their turn by drawing 5 new cards, reshuffling their discard to replenish their deck if needing to draw more cards. Play then continues to the player on your left.

The complexity comes from using the Action cards to generate more Actions, more Buys, more Coins, more Draws from their deck, or the “Event” on their cards that allows something to happen. The goal should be to build an efficient engine of card combos that lets you build up to the expensive Province card (8 coins) and drive the game to its conclusion.

The disadvantage of buying Victory cards is that they offer no Action and no Coin. In other words, they clog your deck and prevent your hand from having lots of options. A balance must be found when to switch from building your engine to buying your points. The game will end at the end of any player’s turn when the Province supply (8 cards in games with 2 players or 12 cards with 3-4) is exhausted or any three other supplies are exhausted. Victory cards are counted whether in hand, in your deck, or in your discard pile. The player with the most VPs wins.

What Do I Think? – Final Thoughts
As a former crack addict (and by crack, I mean the cardboard kind), I have wanted a good card game that wouldn’t drain my wallet with a rarity structure. Dominion has scratched that itch. The variety of combinations of Kingdom cards is vast with only 10 of 25 being used in any game.

The game plays very quick and is fairly easy to teach. The cards are text heavy though use standardized phrases to keep it as simple as possible. It is easy to introduce to new players, though it will take them some time to get familiar with all the cards. Games with experienced players go very fast as they know what they want and can play their turn lightening fast.

This game has held up for me, having first played it in 2008. I continue to play it daily on my Droid, getting anywhere from 3-5 plays in a day.

The only drawback with just the base set is that it can lack a lot of interaction between players. There are only 4 Action cards that allow direct conflict with other players and so if these are missing, it is just a race to the finish. However, there is always the possibility of buying a card away from someone before they have a chance to get it themselves before the game ends. This is mostly addressed with the expansions.

What Next? – Other Recommendations for this Game
Though not a collectible game, the expansions for this game continue to churn out at a decent clip. The most recent expansion, Dark Ages, is slated to be the penultimate addition to the game. Each of the expansions offers “more of the same” giving even more kingdom cards (almost to 200) making the combinations near limitless. However, each introduces one or more new mechanics that spices up the game without changing the fundamentals. I would rank the expansions as follows (click on the titles to see my review of those expansions):

Prosperity – Expands the game with bigger money (that does stuff) and bigger victory cards.
Hinterlands – Allowing you to do stuff when you gain the card.
Seaside – Introducing duration cards that last for two rounds, effectively increasing your hand size.
Cornucopia – Rewarding diverse decks over efficient ones.
Intrigue – A second version of the base game offering more interaction between players.
Alchemy – This is a strange bird that is more a standalone expansion given its dependence on a special Treasure (the Potion) but includes some very unique and powerful cards.
Dark Ages – TBD! This expansion offers more Kingdom cards than any other expansion and introduces quite a few new mechanics. This looks like a promising addition that will eventually top the list.

After first playing Dominion a few years ago, I couldn’t stop thinking about it on the drive home. Or the next day. Or the following. As I think back, this was due to Dominion exciting the part of my brain that was formerly excited by playing a number of different collectible card games (CCGs).

I played Magic from ~’94-’00 and for a few years after off-and-on, much of that time focusing on tournaments. The two main features I enjoyed with Magic were: (1) figuring out how cards worked together, then building and refining a deck, and (2) analyzing in-game positions and adjusting to what your opponents are doing.

Many games currently on the market address the latter for me, but Dominion was the first to non-CCG to address the former.

My friends and I would spend time basing decks around individual cards. We’d typically take cards that others deemed “worthless”, and design a strategy around it. Dominion allows for this sort of thinking.

With 25 kingdom cards in the base set (you use 10 per game), you have many different strategies you can develop, and practice pairing cards together. You’re not only adapting to your opponents, but you’re adapting to what the game makes available as well. While everyone starts with the same 10 cards, by the end, player’s decks can look very different.

This is a place where the popularity of Dominion may currently serve as a detriment. Initially, people were experimenting and trying many combinations. Over time, certain strategies emerged, and through the internet, a base of knowledge was formed. Now, instead of players learning all of this information for themselves, they can go and read what others have found. Instead of trying to “learn” what cards go together through play and testing, they “learn” from what others tell them, often without experimentation and verification.

As the internet became more prevalent in the mid-late ’90s, I saw the same thing happen with Magic, which in part led to my leaving the game.

If you like learning about strategy for yourself, Dominion can be a great game; if you have a like-minded group. Such a person may do well to avoid either highly experienced players that only care about “optimum” play, or groups that want to skip the learning curve and be told what the best/worst cards are (a problem I also see with Puerto Rico).

A major bonus of the game is how easy it is to learn, once you see how the deck building aspect works. From my experience, many newer players have a hard time grasping the concept when explained to them, but as soon as they see two or three mock turns, it makes perfect sense (something I’ve also seen in Killer Bunnies, and 7 Wonders).

I’d recommend initially limiting yourself to the base set until you’ve tried the cards, and then slowly adding one expansion at a time (if you’re looking for more challenge/strategy). In my opinion, trying to jump into a multiple expansion game (or teach a new player this way), while it may work, is more likely to limit your/their enjoyment of the game.

Dominion has become a cheaper (depending on how many expansions you buy!) way to scratch the itch of a former CCG deck builder, while also offering enjoyment to both experienced and novice game players. If you don’t mind the relative lack of interaction with your opponents, Dominion should be on your list of games to try!

The mechanics of Dominion have been well documented elsewhere, and far more thoroughly and elegantly than I could manage, so I will just quickly summarise. Basically, this is a card game where you start with only a few cards available to you and steadily build up your personal deck of cards by buying cards that give you either more buying power, the ability to take actions, or victory points. The victory points are essential, but buy them too early and you may find it difficult to get anything done in the game as they stay in your deck and can clog your hand up.

As has also been reported elsewhere, the theme of the game is pretty thin. In the core set (I have no experience of the expansions) most of the cards have pretty abstract effects like drawing extra cards or being able to play or buy more cards than your basic allowance. The artwork is variable and there is no flavour text on the cards, which may have been good for adding to the feel of things.

A set of 10 types of “kingdom card” is selected (from 25 available) for each game and depending on this selection (the number of possible combinations is in the millions) the game may end up being a near-solitaire race for the finish line or a vicious game of trying to stuff your opponents. My experience is that some of the attack cards (the Witch comes to mind mainly) can just make the game grind slower and slower, actually detracting from the fun rather than making for a good “take that” game.

So far I have been sounding a bit on the negative side, but I do really like playing Dominion. The cards mostly have simple effects, but can sometimes be combined to make powerful plays. The game has a lot of the fun of collectable card games but can be played from the box without having to construct decks, as you do this during play. The selection of cards available (not to mention the expansions!) mean that no two games will be the same (unless you want them to be). And my young daughter has enough of a handle on the game that we can have a fun game together.

I’ll probably end up getting an expansion sooner or later, but for now, this box has a lot of play left in it, making for great value in my mind.

So, I’ve finally done it. I’ve finally been able to play several rounds of the father of all deck building games. While I think the game is fun, I have some relatively big problems with the game which prevents me from enjoying the game fully.

First off, let me introduce the game for those new to this. Dominion, and all of its expansions, are a deck building game. As such, players will be buying cards from the a shared card pool to add to their deck. The objective of the game is pretty simple, have the most Points at the end of the game. You score points by buying pieces of land and playing certain cards throughout the game. During your turn, you can play 1 action card and buy 1 card from the center. With that said, the cards from the shared bank will allow you to draw more cards, play more cards, buy more cards or mess up your opponents strategy in some form or fashion. The deck building choices are pretty limitless, and you can focus your deck on any number of different things. Another unique part is that when you buy points, the points go into your deck and act as dead cards – if you buy too many small points then you load your deck with lots of dead stuff. So being able to build a deck that works well and functions smoothly is a key part of the games strategy.

The art of the game is ok, pretty standard flavor in my opinion. Its not bad, per se, but its not something that I find incredibly breath taking either. The card designs are really easy to look at and fairly intuitive to understand when you get the core of the game down as well. The rules o the game are incredibly simple too, making it easy for people of all ages and gaming backgrounds to pick up quickly and move on with.

Before I get into what I dislike about the game, I want to say what I enjoyed. First off, I love all the strategic options when it comes to building your deck. I have found that working all the angles of the game, you can really customize a deck to fit your needs and general play style fairly easily and comfortably. I also like how winning is also loosing in a sense, by adding the points to your deck. This makes the choices you make in buying points all the more important and makes it advantageous to buy appropriately instead of buying just to score more and more points. I also really enjoy the multi-player format, especially with an attack heavy set of cards in the center. The chaos that comes from it makes for a lot of exciting games really.

One of my problems with Dominion is that its really not much of an ‘interactive’ game. Sure, you could develop some of the center cards to involve more of an interactive quality, but a lot of the cards just don’t seem to encourage it – at least with the variations that I’ve tried. This makes the game feel like a solitaire game against the clock, at least to me. I’ve found the replay value to, while being heavy, not be as impressive as other deck building games I’ve played because of it. The lack of a ‘in your face’ mode may appeal to some gamers, but I tend to enjoy games where I am interacting with my opponent, at least a little bit.

I’ve played the game in both a 2 player and a 4 player mode, and the 2 player mode (while fun) seems to be lacking where the 4 player mode is more fun, even with the solitaire feel of the game. When you put a lot of heavy attack cards in the bank, you really start to feel chaos with a 4 player mode – where you are just waiting to be screwed over somehow. However, with that said, it places more value on certain cards in the 4 player mode than they have in 2 player mode. Moat, a card which protects you from attacks and allows you to draw 2 cards, is essential to buy early if you have it available in your bank in a 4 player game, whereas in a 2 player game you don’t really need it as much.

The last thing that I disliked about the game, is also one of its strengths. The game has many turns where you can just end up with simply having the most dead hands imaginable. Sure this can happen with other games of its genre, and its something that happens in almost every card game I’ve ever played, but something about the lack of real interactiveness of the game itself makes for these dead hands to be even more painful and boring than in other games, at least in my opinion.

With that all said, the game does possess a lot of replay value. I’ve played the game a lot of the past few days, and while I find the game fun, I don’t personally find it to be the next best thing to sliced bread. I feel that the lack of heavy interactive qualities make the game less than it could be, and I feel that for this game to really thrive you need to play it in the multi-player format. Its a fantastic game for fans of deck building games, I think, as well as new gamers or gamers who enjoy a less brutal approach to their games. It offers enough strategy and tactics to make more veteran gamers to continue enjoying the game over and over and I can genuinely see why many people keep coming back to the game, and comparing other games to it, on a regular basis.

Dominion is one of those games that comes out and completely wows people by doing something in a completely new way.

In Dominion’s case, this would be the competitive card game with the customized deck. Magic: the Gathering is where most of the world looks to see where this game type started, but MtG does one of the things that I hate with a fiery, red-hot passion: blind purchase.

You just never knew what you were going to get and had to spend a bunch of money if you liked to get complete sets (like I used to) or if you wanted to build a very specific deck. This is the classic definition of a money sink. You pour money in and the hole never seems to fill.

Dominion did away with that in a great way by giving you a bunch of each card, some great rules to govern game play, and you knew exactly what you were getting when you bought the game.

It was wonderful! You get that MtG style competitive play without having to forget that your wallet is for holding money and not just a scrap of leather you like to keep in your pocket.

And the game was made so well! You had a tray inside that box that holds everything perfectly organized and the cards are great quality. There’s just nothing really lacking with this game.

Except…

Well, each game you’re putting 10 cards out there that you and your fellow players will be able to acquire over the course of the game to build your deck. There’s the always available victory point cards and money cards too, but the 10 kingdom cards are largely what you’ll use to win the game.

They let you pull off neat combos and screw over your friends and all sorts of fun stuff that help you out. You win by having the most victory points at the end of the game, but the kingdom cards provide all your special options.

But that’s where things start going a bit off. 10 cards per game means you could see every card that comes with the set within three games (there’s 25 kingdom cards in a set). Eventually you’ll want a few more options just to keep things fresh and to keep things from being solvable (i.e. having only one course to victory with the winner being the first one to take that course of action).

So you buy the next release, and it’s awesome too! In fact, from what I’ve read only one Dominion expansion has been received with anything less than enthusiasm from the fans of this game. And really, it just sounds like it’s an expansion that doesn’t get mixed in with everything else as easily is all. Not really a big deal for me.

What is a big deal is that although Dominion is an absolutely great game, it’s near impossible to be perfectly happy playing just the base set. It gets repetetive after some time and so new cards are needed to keep things engaging.

And that’s where the game starts to lose me. I really enjoy the game, and haven’t had a bad game yet, but the idea of NEEDING to expand a game to keep it worthwhile has always turned me off. I like games where being played out just means I’ve been playing too much of it lately – that I just need to take a break from it and when the break is over, the game is back to being fun again.

That’s just not the case with Dominion, which means it’s a money sink just like Magic: the Gathering is, just at a much slower sink. If you’re alright with that, BUY THIS GAME IMMEDIATELY. Seriously. It’s a great game, and if you’re not like me, it’s going to cost you about $30 every three to five months.

If you are like me and you want expansions to be additional options, not required to keep the game good, stay away. Play your buddy’s copy every now and again, but find a game that’s got better longevity with a single purchase.

The High Points:
Very Well Made (the rules, the components, even the box storage)
Good Fun
Lots of Choices to Be Made
Easy to Find
Not Very Expensive
Plenty of People Who Play

Dominion was the first deck-building game, and when I first tried it I was really fascinated by the innovative way to construct a game. It’s no surprise that so many other games have borrowed the mechanics to lesser or greater extent.

I really like this game and every time I play it I’m thrilled to examine the options and combinations available. There’s quite a few tutorials out there, but in case anyone is new I’ll make a quick summary:

1. The object of the game is to gather cards with assigned victory points (mainly Provinces, Duchies and Estates), but the problem is that the cool cards with lots of vp cost a lot of money.

2. Each game you get a selection of 10 sets of cards available for purchase (there are 25 sets in the base game so the number of combinations makes the replay value very high). There are also certain base cards that are always available (copper, silver and gold and the vp cards)

3. Each turn you get a hand of 5 cards, and you begin the game with a base deck of 3 estates (worth 1 vp each) and 7 coppers (worth 1 money-unit each). You simply cannot afford the cool stuff.

3. When you buy stuff you don’t lose your money, but rather discards it. Therefore, if you use three coppers to buy a silver (worth 2 instead of the 1 a copper is worth), the silver goes in your deck and can be used on later turns when it shows up in your hand to pay for things. Obviously, since a province cost 8 and you only get 5 cards you could never buy that with coppers alone. But, grabbing some silver may allow you to eventually buy gold, and all of a sudden you can afford the cool cards (if you’re lucky enoguh the correct money cards show up in your current hand).

4. The basic rule is that each turn you can do one action (described below) and then buy one new card with the money in your hand.

5. To spice things up you can buy action cards. These allow you to do things like drawing more cards, gain other cards for free or discount the card/s you buy. Some of them even give you more actions, making it possible to play several cards in a row. The goal is to accumulate as much money as possible during your turn to be able to buy more good cards that will improve your hand and your options even more. This is really the core of the game, playing your hand is often quite straight forward, it’s the buying that is the difference between winning and losing. You want to balance money, cards that give you more actions and cards that let you draw more cards (and perhaps even cards that allow you to do sneaky things to your opponents).

6. The game ends when any three card piles are completely sold out or when someone buys the last province. Whoever managed to get the most vp wins!

Now, there are a couple of things that can be said as critisism of this game:

1) The theme is VERY losely draped on top of a beautiful game mechanic. When you play you don’t feel like a monarch expanding your Dominion. You feel like a geek trying to optimize your current hand. For most of the cards there’s no connection whatsoever between the title of the card and what it actually does. I can live with this, but some people get really annoyed with the lack of believable theme.

2) It’s more or less a solitaire. There are some cards that affect other players (stealing cards, making them discard cards from their hand etc.) but for the most part it’s you and your cards. Player interaction is not strong, and it’s more a race to be able to buy the nifty cards before anyone else.

3) Card chains can be silly. Players can keep playing cards that allow them to draw new cards and play even more cards… and before you know it there is 15-20 cards on the table. While some people may think this is one of the charms of the game it’s the one thing that creates downtime.

4) There are other deck building games out there that have developed the mechanic further. This is the first one to my knowledge, so many people find for instance Thunderstone or Nightfall to be more interesting and eveloped. This is not to say that Dominion is a bad game, only that other games may be the first choice if you like the genre.

So, back to good stuff about this game:

1) It plays quite quickly, and even when people play the really long chains of cards you only wait a minute or so.

2) It works EXCELLENT as a two player game, in fact I think I prefer it with fewer players.

3) The game components are really nice, beautiful artwork on the cards, and the box have individual slots for all the cards to make it easy to find the right card sets. There are also randomizer cards that can be used to determine what cards to use.

4) The vp cards themselves tend to balance the game, for they are what you need to win, but at the same time they dilute your deck so that it’s harder to get more cool stuff.

5) The rules are very easy to learn, and although one or two of the cards can be a bit confusing at first, you are up and running in less than 15 minutes even if you’ve never seen the game before.

All in all, this is a great game, and I really really recommend it. It has survived well over time, and I think it gives the offspring games a good run for their money. I own every expansion released of Thunderstone, but I still play Dominion as well.

For a father that turned 40 with not so much time to play games AFK I can tip you about boardgamearena:

http://en.boardgamearena.com/#!welcome

where you can play the game for free (including the expansion Intrigue). You will quickly see if the game is in your taste and it’s always nice to have another big box in the game collection. I know I have one.

Premise:
Dominion is the first ever (to my knowledge) deck-building card game. That’s not a game where you build a deck and then play (Magic: The Gathering); that’s a game where building the deck is the goal of the game, and the bulk of every turn. Each turn, you will use 5 of the cards in your deck as your hand, and play the “Action” cards among them to extract whatever effects they have. They might provide more card draws to use, more options for playing cards, or the power to mess with your opponents’ decks, or more coinage to spend in the next step. After those actions, you play the treasures you have in hand, and you buy new cards to add to your deck. The new cards you buy go first into your discard pile, and you will have to wait for your deck to empty before you can shuffle them up and make your new deck, including whatever card’s you’ve purchased and whatever you had already. The self-improving nature of dominion decks means that there are always choices to be made as to what might be better for your deck, what is good to deprive opponents of, and when might be the right time to start the final rush for points toward the end of the game.

Learning:
The mechanics of dominion are so elegantly simple that they take less than a minute to explain.
The goal is a bit more ethereal, as new players often have a hard time grasping what they should buy, or what sort of approach to the game should be taken. Not to say it’s difficult to learn though, just toughing it through the first game will get almost everyone into the right mindset and introduce them to the flow enough to play decently game 2.

Length:
Dominion takes no more than half an hour in almost all circumstances. First game might be a bit slow, as the new players will be asking questions every turn, but after that, gameplay is smooth, snappy and uninterrupted. You can get into circumstances where turns take quite a while, because of cards that chain one another until you’ve played your whole deck every turn. This is easily avoidable, by simply realizing it’s not the way to win, and by selecting cards that avoid the phenomenon.

Depth:
The base set of Dominion comes with 25 “Kingdom” cards which are the meat of the game. In a given game, you’ll select 10 of these (randomly or arbitrarily) and use those exclusive for the duration of the game. This variety and variation means that there are endless new combinations of cards and mechanics in each game, so the strategy doesn’t go stale quickly.

Strategy:
The best player will win 70% (approximately, by rough observation) of the time. Bad draws can kill a game for a player, but it is normally bad choices that lead to those draws. If you buy cards to put in your deck, and later regret drawing them, you most likely bought the wrong cards, or bought them in a bad proportion. Skilled players will know what sorts of cards their deck needs and what sorts it has enough of, which will minimize greatly the occurrence of dead draws.

Expansions:
There are (as of writing this) six expansions for Dominion, each of which adds between 12 and 26 new Kingdom cards to the base set, and some of which add other new components and ideas also. A full set of Dominion means 142 different Kingdom cards (not counting hard-to-find promotional cards) and 664 226 242 466 073 different possible sets of ten (thanks wolfram alpha). I have played all of the expansions, and I have enjoyed them all.

Conclusion:
Dominion is one of the best, smoothest, most replayable boardgames ever to see cardboard. Buy it. Play it. Love it.

The godfather of deckbuilders, yes it’s fun to play, yes it’s easy to teach, yes it’s a good introduction to gaming in general and deckbuilders in particular.

The idea in this game, like in other deckbuilders that came later, is the game play is divided into your deck, your opponent’s deck, and a central pool of cards. In Dominion, the central pool of cards is divided into ten separate piles of Kingdom cards, Victory cards, and coin cards. When the game starts your deck is only ten cards, seven coins and three Victory cards. The game ends when three piles of cards from the central pool are empty, or when the one pile of Provinces – the highest value Kingdom cards – is empty.

On your turn you take your hand of five cards and acquire cards from the central play area; at the end of your turn you take what’s left of your hand and everything you’ve acquired and put it all in your discard. Then you deal yourself a new hand. When your deck runs out, you take your discard, which now includes various goodies you’ve acquired from the central play area, and deal yourself a new hand.

The cards in the central play area are selected, at random if you choose, from a larger number of available Kingdom cards that come with the base set. The Woodcutter gives you the opportunity to make a second ‘buy’ on your turn and a couple extra coins to do it with; the Village lets you play two extra actions and gives you an extra card; the Thief gives you an opportunity to steal a coin from the other players. And so on.

Like chess, it appears to me Dominion can be reduced to an almost scientific right/wrong way to play, particularly if you’re working with just the base game. Or not, if you make the choice not to work your brain too hard; it can be a fun casual game for people happy to play fun and casual.

In chess, you *can* open the game as white with pushing the King’s Pawn up two spaces, and you may even win that way sometimes, but there are better and weaker opening plays. The same holds true with Dominion, particularly when playing without the expansions. With any set of Kingdom cards, some will be *right*, and most of them will be *wrong.*

So it can get tiring to replay, because, for me at least, it’s not a huge amount of replayability. Again, with just the base set. There are a host of expansions; we have Dominion: Intrigue also, and that adds a lot to the base game.

It plays fast, it’s easy to understand and to teach, it’s fun to play. My 11 year old is very good at it and I have complete confidence I could teach my 8 year old if she was interested, which she’s not.

Works best for two or three players; it handles four. Five is too many.

I’m not saying this is a bad game. I’m really not. It’s a good game and we enjoy it, particularly with people who are relatively new to gaming. Plus it plays fast, which is a big advantage sometimes.

But it’s not my favorite.

Pros: expandable, classic, great mechanics, easy to set up, fast, elegant, complex in its simplicity

Cons: dry, lacking in interaction, lacking in theme, too simple compared to its expansions

You’ll like it: if you like deck building, if you enjoy elegant mechanics, if you like puzzles, if you have never played Dominion before

You won’t like it: if you have played the expansions, if you seek direct interaction, if you don’t like games that make you think, if you hate cards

Difficulty: Dominion is one of those easy-to-learn hard-to-master games that can get you thinking for days about strategies and combos. It can be taught in five to ten minutes and it’s really easy to grasp. A few core mechanics, together with the variability of a random setup and the different interactions among an ever-increasing number of cards, unfold in a complex, brainy experience that, more often than not, will make you feel like a freaking genius when you manage to develop your very own winning engine.

Theme: You are supposed to be some medieval lord struggling to develop your kingdom by amassing riches and expanding your land. But nor the art nor the mechanics help to convey that feeling. Ultimately, you feel like a player devising strategies, buying and playing cards. That’s not a bad thing per se, and it could be argued that the real theme in Dominion is deck building itself. Further expansions, with improved and more focused artwork, can give a somewhat better thematic experience.

Mechanics: There is much written about Dominion’s mechanics. They are simple, effective and innovative. Each turn, you can play one action card and any number of treasure cards to buy just one new card. The goal is to amass more points than the opponent(s) before the game ends. Point cards are otherwise useless, so they just clutter your deck. There is, then, a trade-off: at the beginning of the game, buying the cards that would allow you to win is the best path to losing. You must first buy different action and treasure cards that might allow you to do better and more significant purchases. Each game, there will be, at least, 3 kinds of point cards and 3 kinds of treasure cards to buy; plus 10 random cards that are usually action cards. These action cards allow you to do different things, by giving you extra buys, coins or actions, or allowing you to throw useless cards from your deck or to add useless cards to you opponent(s) deck. It’s through the complex interactions between those kingdom cards that the game emerges: all players start the game in the same condition and are offered the same choices, so the first one in finding the best and fastest interactions will, most likely, be the winner (although the randomness of the card draw might have a say in the final result).

Interaction: Dominion has been termed a “multiplayer solitaire”. Although this is quite an exaggeration, it is true that the base game lacks in player interaction. Still, there are attack cards that offer direct conflict by allowing you to mess with you opponent(s) decks; while, at the same time, the game ending when certain card piles are depleted is an indirect, ever-present way of influencing other player’s gameplay and forcing them to reconsider their strategies. Still, if you are seeking for a more dynamic interaction among players, you’d do better by purchasing Dominion: Intrigue or getting the base cards plus some other expansion.

Closing thoughts: Dominion is a modern classic that has gotten better with each expansion. Sadly, those improvements have ended up making the base game appear stale and lacking. If you have never played a deck building game, you will still find the experience interesting and it will grant you endless hours of enjoyment. But, if you have the chance, it would be probably better to get yourself the base cards plus Prosperity or Hinterlands. These expansions are complex and interesting enough, while at the same time retaining the simplicity and elegance of the core mechanics that can be found in the base game. Or, if you are a few bucks short and can deal with a few mind-blowingly ugly cards, you could opt for the standalone expansion Dominion: Intrigue.