Dominion: Tabletop Card Game

[Rummy]

Right, I know we had a boardgame thread a few months back, but I've got such a boner for this game I've been wanting to make its own thread and I've finally decided to do so.

 

Anybody else out there heard of it/played it/totally almost wanting to bang it if they could? I literally spent about 10 hours on saturday constantly playing this with my friends. It's generally for 2-4 players and the box says a game takes half an hour, though this isn't until you're all quite familiar/playing intensely. I find games last closer to average of an hour now, and me and Marcamillian have probably played in excess of 50, at least.

 

 

For those unfamiliar, I shall give you a quick explanation(though really the best way to understand the game is by playing). It's a deck building game, in which the aim is to get victory points. I'll yoink this from tinternets to help explain it;

 

 

Fairly standard setup. The two fanned deck at the bottom are the identical starting deck. The ten cards above are kingdom/action cards, the three gold looking cards are treasure cards(money/currency essentially) and the green cards are victory cards, worth the victory points they say. At the end of the game, only victory points count for anything.

 

Basically, you start with a deck of ten cards, and play in hands of five, completely from your own deck. You buy with the money/treasure you have in deck, and add bought cards to it. After a turn all cards from hand and bought are 'discarded' and new ones drawn. When your draw runs out, your discards are shuffled to make a new draw; each player has their own individual deck that they're building in the game. Each turn is structured into an Action Phase, then Buy Phase, then cleaning up(discarding everything, drawing five fresh) and by default you get to use ONE action and then ONE buy per turn. This means if you have more than one action card, you can only play one, and if you have lots of treasure, you can only buy ONE thing(not split it across lots). The game ends when any three piles are depleted, or all of those green 6's are(called Provinces). When the game ends, the ONLY thing that counts is victory points, which the green cards give.

 

 

 

 

So that's the basic idea of the game, but definitely not the case;

 

Action cards can do all sorts. Give more actions once played, give more buys, give extra treasure for that turn, give certain things if certain things are done etcetc.

 

 

What makes the game interesting however, is that a standard set comes with 25 cards, and to play a game you choose just 10 of these. For those mathy sorts, this means 25 choose 10 = 3 268 760 possible combinations of 10 cards. To make it even crazier, that's just one set. Expansions and other sets each add another 25 cards usually, drastically increasing the possibilities. Just one extra set jumps to 50 choose 10 = 10 272 278 170 possibilities. Infinite replayability!

 

It's a really addictive game, and quite easy to learn, and due to the different possibilities, very friendly to new people as it's difficult to be 'better' at it, because that would involve knowing all the different possibilities and varying interactions between cards. So far me and Marcamillian have gotten at least 10 people into the game, and they all love it. I actually struggle to believe how much they genuinely like it, and how much they're just being nice/going along with it.

 

Really I think the ultimate kick is having at least 2 games in a sitting. Due to the variety, it's really amazing to see how different two games of the same 'game' can be drastically different sometimes.

 

 

So yeah, basically, I just wanted to say; Dominion is awesome. I love it. Does anyone else? If you don't....then do.

[EEVILMURRAY]

I think they play it at the card/comic shop I play Pokémon at, it would surprise me if they didn't at least sell the stuff.

 

One thing I'm not cleared on, you start with a deck of ten, starting hand is five. After your turn all that shizzle is discarded, is the stuff you've bought etc. discarded and then shuffled into a new deck [iE the deck will number more than ten]?

[Rummy]

Yes! That is exactly it. Things only leave your deck when certain cards make it so, but what is bought/played goes into discard after a turn. So if on turn one, you buy one card, your discard is then 6 cards tall(hand of five+bought card). Then you draw the five left in the draw, buy another card, discard everything and now have a deck of twelve. Shuffle, rinse, repeat etcetc. Nothing is 'spent' as such, it all stays in deck.

[Iun]

...is this thread in English? Some of the words look like they may be English.

[Rummy]

Lol, well it does look complicated but it makes much more sense once you start playing it. I guess I just can't get my love for it over in a wall of text. There's a somewhat crude online version floating about that implements all the cards(well in excess of 100, there's quite a few expansion sets), and if people are interested they can try checking that out. It's more confusing than having the actual stuff in front of you though.

 

http://dominion.isotropic.org/

[Tales]

I bought this for my little brother for Christmas. Sadly my family dislikes anything that has more than two rules and they never wanted to play it while I was there.

[Iun]

. Sadly my family dislikes anything that has more than two rules and they never wanted to play it while I was there.

 

So they quite like Fight Club then?

[Dan_Dare]

I've found that trying to tell someone how a game works is doomed to failure - better by far to show them.

 

Dominion looks cool but I'm put off by the reportedly weak theme. I love boardgames though so I might take a look.

[Rummy]

Weak theme? How do you mean? It definitely doesn't work in explanation, it's just so much more intuitive when you're playing. There's some about its design though that makes you want to play it more, it's luck of the draw that you have some control over, and it's competitive without being too directly competitive(which for some is a downside).

[Dan_Dare]

I read an article saying that the theme of medieval empire building is totally abstract and kind of becomes meaningless in relation to how the game plays (as in, the theme could be about marshmellows and make no difference)

 

I know it's a small concern but I really like how my other games - Catan, Muchkin and Pandemic, all feel really well themed with their own 'fiction'.

[Yvonne]

Yeah the theme is irrelevant sort of apart from perhaps the goal which is to gain the most land as it were, to be a big ol lord. I spose it could be hungry hippos and get the most food...

[Rummy]

Ohh I see. Yeah, that's kinda accurate, it's fairly irrelevant. Having said that, I'm not sure how themed I'd call Catan in comparison? Though I haven't played too much of the expansions and the one time I did it was kinda cool, but it's more about the gameplay/trading than it is the theme, too, isn't it?

[Dan_Dare]

Catan is great. You have the board itself (and pieces) which give it a physical, theme, plus a great internal logic that says a town needs food, wool, timber and bricks to be built and then needs stone and more food to become a city. etc. Resources all make sense and are all used as you'd generally expect. I'd say the only exception is development cards.

[Marcamillian]

The medieval thing seems to be there to try and fit in with the middle ages/fantasy thing that seems to loom large over boardgames.

 

Abstact games can be cool though! No-one put Tetris down cause it didn't fit in with the Russian aesthetic.

[Rummy]

I guess I see where you're coming from with Catan, though it isn't something that I really think of(it does make sense when you think about it, though). Whilst the theme of Dominion is just there to fit, many of the cards do fit to it in most senses(Witches, Saboteurs, Barons and so forth).