Dominion
Rio Grande Games, $44.95
Ages 13+
Imagine you’re a monarch. Imagine that you want to expand your territory and fill it with better things—more commerce, bigger castles, stronger armies. It’s the (admittedly unjust) spirit that imbued medieval times, and it’s the purpose of Dominion, a card game for two to four players.
Fairly popular among board game enthusiasts, Dominion is a so-called deck-building game. In other words, players all have their own decks, and game play consists of building those decks, getting better and better cards that bring them closer and closer to victory.
There are a few varieties of cards available. There are action cards, which let you take a specific action. There are resource cards, which let you buy new cards. And there are victory cards, which give you victory points. Whoever has the most points when the game ends win.
Each round of the game includes three steps. You start by randomly drawing five cards out of your deck. Those cards form the hand you have available for the turn. The first thing you can do is play one of your action cards—they let you do things like play additional cards or draw more cards to your hand for this turn, which may give you more options.
Second, you can use whatever resource cards are in your hand to buy new cards. Better cards cost more, so a large part of the game is deciding where to invest your resources. Do you want to stockpile resources in the beginning so you can save up for better cards later? Or should you buy specific action cards that increase your chances of drawing a great hand faster—or that may sabotage your opponents.
Third, you take all the cards in your hand and discard them, and then draw a new hand from your personal deck. Once you’ve used your entire deck, you shuffle it and start again. That way, as the game goes along, your deck is getting stronger and stronger.
Dominion includes a ton of card types. In fact, you won’t use all of them in any given game. Each time you play, you’ll select certain cards to use and leave out the rest. As a result, you can have a different experience every time you play.
We spent an afternoon trying Dominion. Here’s what we had to say.
Matt, Content Manager: Good morning, fellow monarchs! You’ve had a night to reflect, so what did you think of Dominion?
Adele, Staff Specialist for Distance Education Programs: This might be one of my favorite deck-building games! The cards allow for so many creative strategies and it was fun to watch those unfold.
Catherine, Graphic Designer: I had low expectations after reading the rules and trying to remember them all (and, um… maybe didn’t end up remembering all the rules perfectly), but once you start playing, the game moves quickly and is a lot of fun!
Matt: I’ve actually never played a deck-building game before, minus Pokemon like twenty years ago, but I really enjoyed it. Seems like the kind of game that’s fairly easy to get into, but that you can also get really deep into if you want.
Catherine: Especially with the addition of expansion packs, and multiple ways to set up the starting stacks of cards
Matt: Even with the standard game, there are tons of card-types we didn’t use at all. Adele, since you’ve played before, how different is the experience once you start playing around with different set ups?
Michael, Recruiting Specialist: I very much enjoyed that there seemed to be no wrong way to play and enjoy, even if every strategy doesn’t pan out for more than a moral victory. [Editor’s note: Michael’s strategy including giving away his victory cards on one occasion. We’re not sure why either.]
Adele: The card options can be a bit more unbalanced when you randomize the starting supply piles. But that can present some fun challenges, especially when you’ve got multiple attack cards on the table, or ones that curse players.
Matt: I really appreciate games than build in ways to switch things up like that so it doesn’t get stale.
Adele: Michael, your buy-all-the-moats strategy was pretty great! The Moats are cheap compared to other cards, you were pretty much guaranteed not to be affected by any Militia card, and it granted you a +2 cards from your draw pile. Combine that with Village card for +2 actions and you had the potential to get a lot of treasure cards in your hand to buy Victory cards.
Michael: Ah, potential…hence my moral victory solace. 😉 As we informally discussed during the play, I also think an interesting variation would be to allow the “buy” of more than one card provided the total cost does not exceed the amount of treasure one holds in that active hand.
Matt: Plus the moat-heavy strategy led to some great jokes about the real-estate market.
I think my favorite part about this game is that there are so many different winning strategies. Michael’s worked because the Moat cards were the only defense against attacks in our set up, so he could (more potential) have then bought all the Militia cards and controlled the game by always attacking the rest of us. But Adele ended up winning anyway by—well, I’m not really sure what the strategy was because she was clearly better than the rest of us.
But point being, it’s not the kind of game where everyone is fighting to get the same cards. Everyone could be targeting different things, which creates some interesting tactical battles.
Catherine: Absolutely! And as someone who didn’t really have a strategy, it was still a lot of fun to play just by following the basic goal of “get more money to buy more stuff,” even if that did leave me tied for last place (hi, Michael!).
Adele: I think my two-point victory was a liiiittle bit unfair since I have played before, but I also made a strategic choice to end the game when I did since I knew, Matt, you had the treasure potential to buy another Province and I didn’t want to risk it.
Michael: Actually, the lack of a last place was nice, since Catherine and I strategically vacated the fourth position. THAT is some strategy. 🙂
Matt: Do y’all have any thoughts about how TIPsters in particular might feel about this game? Or any last thoughts about who might be interested in it?
I would say it feels like a good middle ground between something very complex like Magic the Gathering and something entry level like Settlers of Catan.
Catherine: I’ve never played either of those games so can’t compare, but I could see TIPsters who are into storytelling enjoying this game—you can narrate your actions and purchases, and some might enjoy spinning a story about their militia or merchants or multiple estates, etc.
Adele: Well, I’d say the game is going to look different each time, especially with different players, so you’ll always have something new to contend with. If you get bored easily, this might be one to add to your game shelf.
I think it’s a great option for TIPsters who love to dive deep into strategy, mapping their moves and maximizing their resources, but I also think it’s a perfect choice for a TIPster who hasn’t explored many Euro-style board games that call for a strategic approach. Definitely don’t be intimidated by the all the cards on the table. It’s easy to play so just jump in and see what you can do with the deck you build!
Oh, and remember: the aim of the game is to collect Victory points, not build the biggest deck. Sometimes other players might forget that, and it can work to your advantage… 😉
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