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At the beginning of the game, your deck will consist of 10 cards, and since your starting hand size is 5, you will be able to cycle through your deck quickly.
So, don’t be afraid to discard any cards that you do not want to use on your next turn. Many newer players hold onto too many cards rather than cycling through to the cards that they need.
One of the perks of the Kickstarter Campaign for Eminent Domain was a set of 9 bonus planets (3 Prestige, and 6 Utopian planets).
Many copies are circulating that include these bonus planets, but the full rules for these planets were not included (due to timing).
It is important to note that Utopian planets have special abilities making them much more useful than they may first appear.
Prestige Planets
If you’ve played with these, you’re almost certainly playing them correctly. There are no extra rules beyond the basic planet rules; these are worth more points than other planets.
Utopian Planets
The first ability of these planets is pretty straightforward. When Producing, you can choose the resource type to place on the planet.
In addition, Utopian Planets can count as an extra world when using Research.
What does this mean? When you have a Utopian World, it can count as one more of any planet type you have out, when counting how many of a type of world you have for Research to get Technologies. To get the level 2 and 3 Technologies you need 2 or 3 of a given planet type, plus enough research power (light bulbs).
As an additional note, you can only increase this planet count by 1, regardless of how many Utopian Planets you have.
These planets can help you diversify your planet portfolio and help get you to those higher level Technologies!
Don’t worry about trying to gear up your deck to handle any and all roles. Some players I’ve noticed want to be able to follow the role selected every time. It’s handy but its not necessarily gonna help get higher amounts of VPs.
To acquire the planets either focus on military or colonize and research out the other style from your deck fairly quickly in the game.
A few surveys might not hurt, but don’t worry about that one too much especially if you are going the military route.
Then either specialize in one of the other two areas. Research or Production.
Research is straight forward. Production is a little more finicky as its nice to have a little more survey capability to really streamline your planets to have production capability.
pay close attention to the level 2 tech cards that you could be getting… Some of them allow for a completely different style of game play and opening up winning strategies of their own.
For example, check out the Weapon Emporium… The ability to trade fighters for influence is a very powerful effect which opens up the arms dealer strategy.
A great way to practice your strategies is to play solo. You only need to make a few rule changes to the game in order to play. The goal is to score the highest amount of influence in the allotted time.
1. Start by deal out your standard starting hand, and a random starting planet.
2. Each card deck will consist of nine cards except Warfare and Trade/Produce. These will only contain seven cards.
3. Your maximum hand size will increase by one. This simulate you dissenting from your opponent’s role selection.
4. At the end of each turn remove one influence token from the supply. When all of the tokens are gone the game is over.
First (or second) turn when you get your free card, what should it be and why?
Well if you’re first player and noone has gone before you, play to your hand more then your planet! yes, the technology available to you will be based on what type of planet you have but all three types are decently good at helping any strategy at tier 1, which is something most players ignore.
Few facts to consider:
The faster you get that first planet flipped, the sooner you can effectively use your research cards.
If you have Policies +military it might be a good idea to trade policies for military
If you have Policies +1xcolonize it might be a good idea to trade policies for colnize, but you really don’t haveto.
Scan as a first action can get you what you need for the role phase/help you setup your second hand for what you want so don’t be afraid to retain/throw away policies on the first turn
Just remember to aim for that first flip asap, and then aim for a two card research hand to be able to get a tech, it makes a big difference being able to start your clock/research sooner considering how fast the games go.
Most games that I play, I concentrate on getting the most out of every choice I make. In the case of Eminent Domain, that means getting the most out of every action, role, and follow. One of the obvious places to benefit is with survey.
For example, if my opponent surveys for 5, then they will only keep 1 planet. If I can follow with 2 cards, then I am making the most of my other roles and matching their getting of planets. This is good, but be careful… Holding onto those 2 survey cards will severely limit your ability to do ore things in the game.
On top of that, if you are taking the survey role, then in the future you will be looking at more planets and be able to get the planets that best match the strategy you are using for any given game.
Both ways have their merits, but as I spent more roles surveying and getting the right planets, I was surprised at the difference in e end result. Try both, and see what is best for you.
It’s tempting when you’re first learning the game to flip your starting planet right away. But don’t be in a rush! That may not be the most efficient use of your early turns.
For example, if you are going to utilize a strong military strategy, instead of wasting a research action to discard your colonize cards and wasting fighters on a planet that provides no benefit (beyond potential research opportunities), piggy-back on someone else’s colonize role to park your colonize cards under your starting planet. Not only does this get them out of your hand early in the game, but you can also score the planet late in the game for an extra edge!
In all the games I’ve played with new players, I found it easier to ignore the technology cards for the first game or two. Once they get the way the turns work, and how you can strategize with them, then you can introduce the technology cards.
I feel it evens out the first few games when you have more veteran players who know how they like to go for the victory points.
Eminent domains only source of chaos is by default the planet deck, we wanted to increase this a little bit without just unbalancing the game, so what we did was create a stack of a ‘destiny’ deck. You take two cards from each Stack and one Politics card and you shuffle them up.
At the beginning of each first player turn (rotating one counterclockwise every cycle, meaning if you have normal play going clockwise in a three player game, on the third turn the third player will be the first player): You flip a card from the destiny deck and it is now a ‘role’ for all players (in which no one is the leader). It does lead to some interesting statistics and shakes the game upa bit. Enjoy!
There are a few way to get a longer game out of Eminent domain, here are three we have used:
1) end game after 3 piles are over + add blue tokens into regular tokens.
2) Play with 1.5 sets of cards (does require you to buy two sets)
3) Increase technological requirements to +1 planet of what they are (for t2 and t3)
mixing and matching these will lead to a longer game if you so desire! NOTE: prestige planets tend to be a bit overly strong in longer games, so taking them out of these games is sometimes a good idea.
In our playthroughs, my group noted that especially with the Utopian planets in the mix, it was really frustrating to survey and not get planets you need. We decided that it may be worthwhile to make two piles of planets. When you lead or follow with Survey, you may choose either pile, one at a time. You -must- declare how many cards you are using before, but this allows a little more control.
Last night I had a gaming session with two players that NEVER played a single deck building game. I was worried that Eminent Domain would be too daunting for a first time player.
I took Seth Jaffee’s advice and played without the tech cards to begin ( Eminent Domain Light ). Not only did they learn the game well, but they loved it! Everyone quickly understood how to play, learned every cards purpose, and even developed strategy quickly. They wanted to play again.
Instead of putting all the tech cards into play for the next game, we only did level 1 tech cards. The game after that, we introduced level 2 tech cards. It was until a few games after that when we finally added the level 3 tech cards. Slowly but steadily adding tech cards ensures that every player learns EVERY card. Nobody gets “overwhelmed” with the options.
After my first play of Eminent Domain I thought, “That was okay.” I didn’t think there would be a whole lot of replay value because there are not that many different cards with which to build your deck. However, the beauty of this game is that the focus is not just about building your deck, but optimizing your choices, by following your opponent’s role as often as you can. You are truly playing against an opponent (as opposed to playing multi-player solitaire). The more you play, the more you will catch on to the subtle stategies in this game.
I like the War strategy for the win. Use technology to get out all the colonize and produce/trade cards and then just survey, war and tech up. I find that the strategy for fighting planets will eventually slow down and you won’t get as many planets but if you continue to tech up you will be able to get your remaining points to win through the points on the technology cards. My favorite tech when choosing War as a strategy is Scorched Earth. Perfect for getting a lot of planets fast and if you have no produce or trade cards who cares if there is no natural resources on the planet.
OK, this is not the strategy for pacifists or woosies. Get this: if you plan to go the military route, get rid of those annoying Colonize cards as early as possible. Take the Research action to get rid of your first two Colonize cards, and never take more. After that, then you will probably do a lot of Military roles to get ships and save one to use as your action to Conquer your planets without letting anyone follow.
Also necessary:
Early on, take survey roles to get more survey cards, allowing you to follow that action. In order to conquer worlds you must have them in your Empire.
Focus on worlds that add: military icons, research icons, and survey icons.
Also: Research role should be taken at least once. Three researches let you follow for a 1st level research gain. Focus on Military, Survey, and Research techs.
Here’s a tip: try this as a two player game. The two player experience of games that list players ‘2-X’ is often lacking, but not in this game. The length of time and the buildup are just about right, and I actually prefer the two payer play of ED more than the three player. It’s simplicity makes this a great coffee shop game. But definitely keep this on the list when you just have one person to play with you, since it definitely gets it right!
One thing I have found is that many hands will get clogged with sub-optimal cards, especially getting toward late game. While it is hard to justify spending your action on removing cards, definitely consider this mid-game. If your are a colonist, the Colonize cards will definitely proliferate. Keep them under control! The action you’re investing earlier will yield great returns later in the game.
The amount of technologies is a little bit daunting for a deck building game.
First off, definitely play a game without the tech to get a feel for the game.
Second, try playing with a limited number of randomly chosen technology cards. This will make people less familiar with the game less intimidated by the number of cards they must read and understand.
Having played once (thereby making me an expert :-P) it seems a good use of Politics is to choose a Research card, as it opens the early opportunity to follow research (impossible at the beginning of the game without settling a world with a research icon).