February 5, 2009
Dominionating
So, it’s offical now: My friends love Dominion.
Dominion is a card game made my Rio Grande Games. I heard about it on the 120 minutes of Jick and Crew, as they were talking about a card game that was about building a deck, much like you build a deck in Magic the Gathering. Of course, the very mention of a card game was enough to inspire some interest in me. So much so that I ordered a copy on the spot, even though this was back right before Christmas and I had gotten a big bunch of board games we had yet to play.
It was totally worth it.
In this game, there are three types of cards. There are action cards, which let you do things, as well as just let you do more things in the turn, like draw more cards or have more money. There are treasure cards, which are money. Finally, there are victory point cards, that do nothing, but whoever has the most victory points wins. Players start with a deck of 7 Copper (worth one monies) and three victory point cards. Every turn, you can play an action, then buy a card, then you dump your hand and draw a new one. Each card you play goes into your discard pile, and each card you buy goes into your discard pile. When your deck is empty, you shuffle your discards to make your new deck. The game ends when three types of cards, or the “Province” victory card, are sold out.
It’s really a very simple game, but it’s shockingly strategic in its simplicity. You not only have to constantly adjust your deck-building based on what everyone else is buying, but you can do things like try to corner the market on a particularly useful card. You also have to balance making a more effective deck with actually buying victory points, as well as figuring out what to do with those victory points when they get into your hand, because they’re mostly dead weight.
On top of all this, you only use 10 different types of cards to buy in every game, and the game comes with 25 different types. So, by switching out what cards are available, you really switch up the strategy of the game. It’s really, really damn cool.
The best part, though, is that all my friends love it. So often I get a game like this that I can obsess over, especially due to the card element, and then my friends are very “eh” towards it and I never get to play. Not so with this. Even Buchhiet loves the crap out of it, and the individual games are not all-night affairs like Arkham Horror or whatnot. It’s so awesome to find a game that we can go to again and again.
Now, here’s to hoping that Rio Grande soon puts out an expansion pack of new card types to buy. Each card in the game seems stamped with an expansion symbol, so it seems like they are planning on it, but I haven’t heard any announcements. We’re all hoping, though.