Dominion: A Review
The genre defining deck building game
Cards of Dominion
Published by: Rio Grande Games Created by: Donald X. Vaccarino
Dominion is awesome. Should you buy it? Yes. End of story.
Okay, well maybe there’s more to say, eh? Alright.
Why is Dominion so great? Why after so many years, since 2008, has Dominion carried on as one of the best deck building games out there to this day? Is it the carefree and whimsical description of the games’ theme in the manual? Is it the wide (and I mean wide) disparaging array of the art’s quality? Is it the 13 different expansions available for purchase, adding hundreds of cards to possibly play and change the dynamic of each game?
Is it because its just so good?
For those just starting out into the realm of board games, I’m sure you’ve come across Dominion countless times. In fact you might be reading this because you’ve heard of it countless more and wanted to search out opinions on it. After all, the name and the game can be intimidating, it looks rather dour, macabre infused even, with a heavy dose of Euro middle age theme poured on top. Surely, that imposing coat of paint would turn off the normies from approaching, right? RIGHT?!!
Yet, get past all that, and it’s great fun. If you play it, and learn to love it, and most of you will, all that fluff of cryptic edginess sort of fades away and you get to enjoy the rather easy nature and fluidity that Dominion is. If all of this does intrigue you, read on to see why it belongs in your library of games.
master of your domain
Dominion is a deck builder. The deck builder, in fact. Maybe not the best deck builder right now, but rather the one that defined the genre. At its core, Dominion is a simple enough game to understand. Three phases dictate the state of play: Action, Buy, Clean-up. A. B. C.. Remember those three letters and you know exactly what to do in your turn and in what order. See, simple.
The Kingdom Supply
The nature of a deck builder is to beef up your deck through subsequent acquisitions of new cards. Here, you’ll do so through purchases from the supply, an area that holds the Kingdom cards and the Base cards. Lets talk about the base cards; as the name suggest these are the most basic cards you can purchase, and with the least impact on the game. These Base cards are two categories in practice called the Treasure and Victory cards. Treasure cards are the economy that Dominion runs on, comprised of copper, silver and gold—each with its own monetary value (apparently obvious via their names). The Victory cards are cards that will win you the game outright, but they do nothing special at all within your deck. Their nature is to clog up and dilute your deck’s efficiency. A double-edged sword if I ever saw one. They come in three flavors: Estates, Duchies and Provinces worth 1,3, and 6 points respectively.
The real meat, however, comes in the form of Action cards found in the Kingdom. Dominion, by its nature, is extremely frugal with its opportunities to score big points or build chunks of your deck in one turn. You only get one action, and one buy per turn. Kingdom cards are thus incredibly useful in breaking the padlocks phases are placed in.
In the Kingdom there are ten different stacks of cards, with ten cards of the same Action card in each stack, with varying degree of monetary value due at purchase. These cards are diverse in their methods of breaking the rules, pushing your turns from the mundane to serviceable, to even fantastic on occasions. Some are workhorses, some are one-trick-ponies, some become dead weight after fulfilling their usefulness. In Dominion its up to you how the deck develops, and how you manage culling it if necessary. Thus managing the ever growing deck in front of you must be kept in mind whenever you insist on buying another Smithy or a rat bastard Swindler card.
But you know what? It's fun growing your deck and seeing it balloon into a monstrous house of cards holding endless possibilities. The appeal of Dominion isn’t just the race to the most Victory cards (exhilarating at the end stages of the game), but rather the method of how you do it. It's a classic instance of the journey being better than the destination.
Cellar
actions, not words
As stated above, Action cards are the real engine your turns will hinge on. Action cards have their own unique abilities. Some can add extra actions, some can give you an injection of cards into your hand, some will give you more buys per turn. Using your guile and a small helping of luck, your hand can produce a flurry of inventive ways to create runs of actions. Where once your deck had meager results, mid-way, when your engine is roaring, turns become excavators digging, pushing, moving mounds of cards, setting off reactions every which way, your brain bursts firing off synapses as you chain card after card, building an ever growing tech tree of actions and purchase opportunities, burning through half your deck!!!
And other times you draw four Estates and a copper. Fall flat on your face, please.
Oddly enough and just as anticlimactic as that might be, you roll with the punches and keep on truckin’ along because you know at any turn, your shuffled deck has the heavy matter to produce magic. Once you understand the cards well enough to know the function and proper placement within your deck your mind syncs with the cards in your hand. It’s as if you’ve learned a second language. With seasoned players, turns become so mechanical, they can see whatever five cards their decks spit out and know exactly what to do and how to maximize their turns. Thus games can last less than 30 minutes at times. Cards will be purchased so quickly at the apex of a game, the end game can appear in a rush, as players start to gobble up Province cards to grab those points.
Your Starting Hand
The game ends once two things happen; all Province cards are taken, or three piles of the Kingdom cards are exhausted. If you collect enough Victory cards among the Duchy and Estate plus the valuable Province cards, you win. It’s satisfying to see a hand that started off with three measly Estate cards worth a point each and seven copper cards end up as a stratospherically different deck by the end, accumulating three or four times more cards from where you started. Each deck is a unique experimental formula on deck building. It truly is a different beast each game if you mix up the cards in play constantly.
If you like variables and unique plays, why would you shy away from Dominion?
a kingdom worth building
Dominion is a game that will probably stay in the zeitgeist of the modern gaming community for a while. It’s a tentpole game whenever a new expansion is announced. It’s easy to learn and teach, but it adds complexity, meanness and difficulty on demand by adding or subtracting cards.
Why do I like it? Well, it’s just a different beast to tackle every time a new set of cards, some you’ve never seen, some that haven’t been combined together yet, come out onto the table. Your mind has to adapt fast, change pace, react to your opponent’s moves, and a stable of other things to balance at every game. It does this very quickly as well. Dominion doesn’t over stay its welcome. Games can last between 18-30 minutes with two players (my preference), slightly more with 3 and 4. In all it is a game you can customize, tailor made to your liking once you establish a repertoire with a set of Kingdom cards you enjoy playing with.
If you feel an inkling of interest from what you just have read, I implore you to check it out. Just be warned, this game can suck you in, and keep you chained to its quick, mindful, intense way of deck building. If you want to see where all of these deck builders inspiration came from, definitely get on this green patch of earth and get Dominion.
For your consideration:
+ Easy set up and ease of learning, good storage solution included in the box
+ Short play time and quick gameplay
+ Lots of variability with 25 Kingdom cards included
+ 13 expansion to change gameplay
~ Card stock is average and workman like
— Sleeving is recommended but with 200-300 cards per game it can be expensive
— Experienced players will always outpace beginners, thus can be one-sided early on
