Bidmeadman's Besties: February

So many cards!

It's Dominion!

Getting a classic out of the way early in the year, Dominion (Rio Grande Games) is THE deck building game. I haven't met one person who's played this game and not loved it.

Put simply; it's a big box of cards. 500 to be precise. And that's just the base game, there are several expansions as well (but I'll just be sticking to the base game for this post).

It's an easy game to teach:
Everyone starts with the same ten cards - 7 Copper and 3 Estate. The Estate cards are worth victory points at the end of the game and are of no use to start with, but the Copper can be used to buy other cards. Each player shuffles their ten cards to make their own personal draw deck. A turn consists of drawing five cards from the draw deck, using those cards to purchase another card from the centre of the table, discarding the five cards along with the new card, and finally drawing five new cards. Once the draw deck is empty the player then shuffles the discard pile and that becomes the new draw deck, complete with any recently purchased cards. So each time you reshuffle your deck is getting bigger and bigger, filled with more varied and versatile cards.

The cards to purchase consist of Treasure, Victory and Action cards. Victory cards are what you need to win the game; Treasure cards allow you to buy cards during your 'buy' phase; Action cards are used during your 'action' phase and provide the core strategy to a game of Dominion.

There are 25 different decks of Action cards (each deck consists of the same card) and a game is played with a combination of 10 decks. This means there's a whole load of combinations to play with, and loads of variety. The abilities of Action cards allow you to do things like draw more, buy more, steal from other players, make other players discard etc.

It's such a straightforward, simple and pleasing mechanic - shuffle, draw, action, buy, discard, repeat - with plenty of room for strategy. It's really easy to get your head around, which means you can get straight in to buying action cards, playing around with what they do. There's a constant feeling of anticipation, waiting for purchased cards to turn up in your hand to use. There's strategy in trying to figure out the right number of a certain card to have in your deck so the right combination of cards will appear in your hand. Too few and the card won't appear enough; too many and it might clog your deck, stopping other cards from being drawn enough. It's a bit like building a deck for Magic: The Gathering or Pokemon TCG, only with Dominion building the deck is the game.

It's a quick, casual game, and a great gateway game. If you've got a group of gamers - or potential gamers - who just want to get stuck in and not spend loads of time learning rules (what's wrong with them!?) Dominion is perfect. I can teach this game in five minutes, mainly just by taking the first turn and talking through the few steps it entails. And people seem to love it! The folks I game with rarely buy their own copies of games I own, content with playing mine on the occasions that we meet up. But two more copies of Dominion now exist within my gaming circle.

There's no real theme to speak of. There's not a great deal of player interaction.

That's about all I can think to say against it. Even then, those two points don't really amount to much. A stronger theme wouldn't make Dominion more fun for me, it would just be a nice bonus. And although player interaction is minimal depending on the deck combination, it's the sort of game that allows room for interaction outside the game. Great if you want a casual game with room for chatting with drinks and snacks, but still want to plan and play out a strategy. It has a perfect blend of strategy and accessibility.

My wife and I tend to play a lot of games just the two of us, and in my experience I sometimes find games that are designed for 2-? players don't play as well with just two. Dominion is one of the few exceptions I have come across. It's meant for 2-4 players and I think it feels just as great with 2, 3, or 4 players.

So there's my view on Dominion, for what it's worth. I'm interested to know your thoughts and experiences with this game. Do you like it? What expansions have you tried? Is there anything about it you'd change? any favourite cards/strategies? Leave a comment or tweet me.