Dominion – Review

Dominion was first published in 2008 and is designed by Donald X. Vaccarino. According to BoardGameGeek.com, this game has taken the boardgaming community by storm! To date, there are two other expansions in the Dominion series that add a lot of depth and complexity to the base game. (This review was originally posted on BoardGame-Reviews.com)

Dominion:

• Designed by: Donald X. Vaccarino
• Published by: Rio Grande Games
• Number of players: 2-4
• Playing time: 30 min
• Player ages: 8+

A Quick Overview

Each player takes on the role of a monarch of a small kingdom whose goal is to expand the size of their kingdom by acquiring the most duchies, estates and provinces in order to win.

Each turn is simple and quick and players make the best use of their deck of cards to build the most prestigious kingdom as quickly as possible.

Game Play

Dominion is a card game and the entire game consists of cards. In the base game, there are 25 different kingdom cards, of which 10 are chosen to be played with. Before the game begins, the land is populated with 10 different “kingdom” cards. Each of these cards has a cost and specific bonuses when played.

On a player’s turn, he makes use of his hand of cards to “build up” his deck into something that will generate enough coins (copper, silver and gold) to purchase estates, duchies and provinces which are the main generators of victory points (VPs).

Each player starts with the same hand of 10 cards. These ten cards are of:

• 3 Estates (1 VP each)
• 7 copper  (1 coin each)

The player then draws a hand of 5 cards (which may be modified by other players’ action cards) and then game play follows the A-B-C process listed in the rule book.

• “A” is for Action; a player can only perform one action using a card with an action property.
• “B” is for Buy; a player may only purchase one other card from the existing cards in play.
• “C” is for Clean up; a player then discards all cards, played or not, into a discard pile.

Observations

At first, when I played it, I wasn’t too enthralled by it. I thought it was an ok game. More of a “meh” game. Somehow, the ease of teaching this game and the play time of this game made it one of my favourites.

In fact, after playing it 15 times, I decided that I had to buy it!

Since being released in 2008, I played Dominion 70+ times; I haven’t bored of it yet! There is something about choosing 10 different decks from a set of 25 to play with each time!

And the more I play, the more interesting card combinations become.

What I also enjoy about this game is that it appeals very readily to younger players. The time to play a game is very short and it keeps fidgety kids from getting distracted too easily.

Rio Grande Games is the publisher of this great card game. It is a 30 minute game for 2-4 players and it retails for about $45 US.

Inside the box that is rather similar to Ticket to Ride’s, you will find a nice insert that has nice slots for holding all 500 cards in this game! That’s right! For $45 US you get yourself a nice box and 500 cards!

I don’t use the box for this game because I think it is unwieldy. Instead, I use 3×5″ plastic bags to hold each set of kingdom cards which I place into a smaller container for easier transport. This has the added bonus (for me) of being able to more easily choose a set of kingdom cards to play with.

Happy gaming.