The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

There hasn’t been a game I’ve bought that’s been more of a hit than Dominion. And why shouldn’t it be a hit. The game has a completely genius design based around building your deck while you play, and is incredibly easy to pick up while being strategically interesting and fun all around. It really is a winner.

So, of course, when I heard about Dominion: Intrigue, the stand-alone expansion for Dominion which can be played alone, or mixed with the cards from the original set? Man, I was right there. Pre-ordering it was basically the reason I ordered the Big Box of Board Games.

It didn’t disappoint.

Even though Dominion: Intrigue is Stand-Alone, I really don’t think it works very well as an introduction to the game. There are no simple cards, because the simple cards are all in the normal Dominion. However, that doesn’t mean this isn’t a good expansion and game. Far from it. I think it’s completely worth the title of Dominion’s first expansion.

Options Options Options seem to be the name of the game with the cards in Intrigue. So many of them, like Ironworks, Steward, and Pawn, present a choice of many smaller effects instead of one big effect, like most of the cards in the base set. This allows them to fill the roles of some of the more necessary cards from the base set, while still playing fairly differently. Pawn, for example, is just a really great card all around, letting you choose 2 different options from the list of +1 card, +1 buy, +1 action, and +1 gold. The correct choice is not obvious as many times as it is clear, and I think that’s really great.
There are also a lot of twists on other cards. Wishing Well was quickly my favorite card from the new set. This card basically works like Village, but has a luck/guessing aspect to it, in that if you can correctly guess the top card of your deck, you get to draw an additional card. That kind of guessing is just fun. Shanty Town also fills that Village role, but with an interesting twist: You always get +2 actions, but you only get +2 cards if your hand doesn’t have any actions in it besides the Shanty Town you just played. Trying to set up chains with that card is additionally fun.
There are also some really painful new attack cards that run the game out incredibly quickly. Saboteur is just completely and utterly mean. It makes opposing players flip cards off the top of their deck and trash them, adding in a lower-costed card. This is devastating if someone flips over a Province or something. (This happened to Spaeth. Totally dicked over!) The Swindler card also has opponents flipping over the top card of their deck and trashing it, but instead, the player who played Swindler has to replace the card with one of the same value. Lots of dicking potential here, but at least your Provinces are safe, being the only card worth 8. Still, that kind of constant trashing makes the game end much, much faster!
The real power cards, though, are the hybrid Victory point cards. These cards have an additional affect, as well as being worth points. For example, there is absolutely no reason why everyone won’t buy out the Great Hall deck if it’s in the game immediately. It is just so good. Harem is also extremely powerful, and I found myself picking that over a similarly-priced Gold every single time. At first, these cards seemed TOO powerful, but the more I think about it, the more okay these sorts of cards are. The game is designed so you just don’t play with card types you don’t like, and since buying them out ends the game quicker, putting a single card out there that’s higher valued than other options makes the game end significantly faster, affecting gameplay and potentially making the powerful nature of these dual-natured cards less impactful.

Still, though, if you like Dominion, buying this expansion is a no-brainer. Mixing these new decks in with the old will provide tons more entertainment, not to mention that if you mix them, there are now rules to play with 6 players, which is always welcome. I mostly just worry about Dominion: Seaside, the non-stand alone expansion coming out later this year. Is the well deep enough to support another 26 Kingdom decks? We’ll see. I’ll certainly be there day 1.