Dominion - Tips & Strategies

What is a Terminal Action card?
This is any Action card that does not give the +1 (or more) Action(s).

Do not overload your deck with more of these cards than you can ever possibly use. This is the biggest mistake made by newer players. Even if the Action cards all seem pretty awesome, if you can only play one of them from your hand, they are just as bad as Curse cards .

Counting Cards:
Unless you have cards that give more than just a +1 Action in your deck, you will not want to buy more than 1 Terminal Action card per five cards you have in your deck. This does involve keeping track of how many cards you have.

Your first and second turns will have copper as either 5/2, 4/3, 3/4 or 2/5. Be certain that your first two buys lead to an opening strategy. If the Chapel card is available, I will always buy it with my 2 or 3 copper hand, then attempt to trash away my estates and coppers while gaining silver or some other card that powers subsequent buys. Getting to a deck with 3-4 silvers, a Chapel, and 1-2 other action cards and nothing else makes for a really strong opening.

I notice a lot of comments about this game directed to one strategy that seems to rule them all. To start out this is usually the ‘Big Money’ strategy. To new players getting money and pretty much ignoring the action cards seems to do very well every time. Because of this people seem to lose interest too early.

So, how can you get out of this rut? I think the best way is to try out different things. Sure, they might fail and you will get a horrible score, but I bet you’ll have more fun doing it than your opponents who just buy money every turn. This will bring about a couple of things; first, some of the card combos you try will actually work (just try to avoid letting this be your new win-all strategy); second, other people in your group will start venturing out as well. Once people start experimenting with the cards and learn that there are several things that will easily beat ‘Big Money’, the game will be much more enjoyable.

One very helpful tip that our group has done to encourage exploration is to play with the same setup multiple times. We typically play on our lunch break, so we’ll pick our 10 cards, and then use that same set for the entire lunch hour. We always get 3-5 games in and this gives everybody a good chance to try different things out. Or when they try something that almost works, they can tweak it a little to see if they can make it work better. Doing this I feel brought our group up to a high level quickly and we don’t get stuck in ruts.

Try something new, it might just work!

Trash a Copper card from your hand.
If you do, +3 Copper.

This is one of my favorite cards in the original deck as I can find the most use for it. First, it lets you easily get the cannon fodder of copper out of your hand and always replace it with silver. At the very least this is what you will reap.

You may be thinking, “Hey, the Mine also does that?” Yes, this is true, but here is the extra benefits of the Moneylender. One, it cost lest allowing you to get it into your hand earlier in most cases. And two, it allows you to trade it in for NOT a silver. Perhaps you have already added enough money to your hand, or you are really in need of a certain Action card, or best of all, it will add three Copper to your hand to allow you to grab the last Providence. The Mine will not allow you to do any of those and it cost more.

Especially, the Moneylender allows you to keep your deck slim while building better cards into your hand. This is always the first card I put into my hand once I can afford it!

I hear many people say that when other players start buying victory cards, you have to do the same. I think this is a misconception, perpetuated by players who wait too long and only realize it when their opponents get the jump on them. If your original plan was sound, an opponent buying a Province shouldn’t ordinarily cause you to change it.

Basically, you should be taking the shortest path that gives you “enough” victory points to win (typically one more than your fair share of Provinces). The “shortest path” does not change just because the other guy buys an early Province, and if you are already on the shortest path, any change to your plans will only slow you down.

Put another way, falling behind in points may be bad, but panicking and ruining your economy is worse. If your opponent is making a mistake by greening too early, you should capitalize on that error, not duplicate it. If your opponent is greening before you because he’s ahead of you (or perhaps just using a different strategy), trying to match him but running out of steam before you have enough points is just going to guarantee his win. And if your deck is good enough to get enough points, you should start buying them whether your opponents have started or not.

So buy green cards when it’s right for you–not when it’s right for your opponent.

In April, Rio Grande Games came out with their Base Cards, which are simply the Treasure, Victory, and Curse cards from either of the base sets. While one use for these is to replace some of your worn out older cards, this also allows you to play any of the expansion sets as standalone games.

IMPORTANT: This means that your gaming group only needs one copy of the base set. If you want to be “The Friend Who Owns Prosperity,” you can just buy that and the Base Cards and be ready to go. If someone else already owns Intrigue and the Core Set, great! You can be a specialist instead.

Most games are won with Provinces. A Province costs $8, which means that with a 5-card hand, you need your average card to provide at least $1.6 in order to afford a Province that turn.

Thus, as a rule of thumb, gaining a Silver is generally better than gaining nothing (it will push your average value towards $2/card, which is above the magic threshold), while any card noticeably weaker than Silver (in particular, Copper) is likely a card you’d rather not have in your deck.

Buying Silver when you don’t want anything else is generally safe. There are also several cards that lend themselves to quickly amassing a large deck full of Silver (e.g. Bureaucrat), and this is an effective strategy in some games.

However, beware the exceptions!

1) If your opponents are regularly playing Militia (or similar cards), leaving you with only 3 cards in your hand, you need to average $2.67/card for a Province.

2) In a game with Colonies (from the Prosperity expansion), you’re probably targeting $11 instead of $8, which moves the threshold to $2.2/card–just a hair above a Silver.

3) Some strategies depend on drawing a specific card (or combination of cards) more than on having a certain amount of money.

In these situations, a Silver may become worse than nothing before the end of the game. You will probably still need a few to get your economy going at the beginning, but judge carefully when to stop, and avoid cards like Bureaucrat that will continue gaining Silvers forever.

When teaching Dominion to new players, play with the same kingdom cards at least twice so they can familiarize themselves with the card text and combinations. Changing the kingdom cards too soon can overwhelm a new player, particularly if they don’t typically play cards games with lots of text.

I have found that the easiest way to describe turn order to new players is ABCD.
A: Action
B: Buy
C: Cleanup
D: Draw
The simple alphabet mnemonic keeps things straight and simple and always reminds players to draw new cards at the end of their turn!

We always have an argument about what cards to use in the game, and the random option doesn’t always give a good mix.

Our House Rule is that each person can choose 2 or 3 cards to play in the game, depending on the total number of players (4 players: 2 each, 3 players: 3 each) then the remaining cards are filled up with cards that fill a gap, or something that’s missing. We always want to have at least one card with Buy, one card with Action, etc.

There are two caveats to this House Rule:
1. Each person picks all their cards from the same expansion. For example, we can have 3 cards from Prosperity and 3 cards from Hinterlands, but players can’t split up their choices. This helps bring the flavor of each expansion.

2. We don’t do this for Alchemy or Seaside, because they have too many cards dependent on other cards from those sets.