Dominion is this decade’s Magic: The Gathering
I am not, admittedly, a huge board or card gamer. My collection consists of two different versions of Scrabble, a fifteen-year old Jenga set, and a Battle of the Sexes board game that was “left” at my house just before the owner moved to another state.
Back when I was in middle school, I, like most nerdy kids my age, played a collectible card game called Magic: The Gathering. The premise was that you were some kind of wizard that could draw power from lands to cast spells or summon creatures, with the sole goal of depleting your opponent of his life force.
Each player needed to have a deck of at least sixty cards to play, but beyond that rule you were free to create any kind of deck from any of the sets that were out – they all played together. It made for some amazing combinations and exciting one-on-one card duels. The possibilities were endless. But the game’s biggest draw – buying booster packs that had rare and uncommon cards – was the game’s biggest weakness, since the best cards were usually the rare ones. You needed either a lot of cash, or good tradable cards, which basically required lots of cash.
Flash-forward to today. Magic has fallen out of favor, even though I still have at least a thousand Magic cards sitting around that I believe are worth, in total, about 20 cents. But there are newer, better, smarter games now, and one of them is Dominion.
Dominion is technically a collectible card game, but not in the traditional sense. There are two complete sets, Dominion and Dominion Intrigue, and three expansion sets. The complete sets come ready to play, with twenty-five different cards and six resource/victory cards. The expansions come with new action cards but no resources.
During a standard game, you choose ten cards (either randomly or by using recommended choices) that are placed on the table.
To start, each player gets the same starting deck made up of seven copper cards (worth 1 treasure point each) and three estates (worth absolutely nothing until the end of the game). Player turns consist of drawing five cards, using any action cards, and buying new cards – whether they’re treasure, land, or action cards – for your deck. If you run out of cards, you simply shuffle up and redraw.
And here is where the brilliance of Dominion lies. Since everyone gets access to the same ten cards (and begins with the same starting hands) during the game, the playing field is as level as you can get. By buying cards on the table, you essentially create your deck, turn by turn. Whether you win or lose fully depends on what cards you buy, how well you manage your resources (through buying treasure cards or treasure generating cards) and how well you adapt to other players’ strategies. Amd each game is different: the strategy that might have worked for you this time around probably won’t be applicable next game.
Nearly every card in the basic Dominion set has its place somewhere. There are your standard assist cards, which allow you to draw extra cards. Then there are nastier ones like The Thief, which forces all other players to reveal the top two cards in their deck – if either of them is a treasure card, it’s yours (or sent to the Trash pile, your choice). Still others let you dig through your deck looking for treasure cards (The Adventurer) and protect yourself from player attacks (Moat). In completely random games, sometimes you’ll end up with lots of attack cards, forcing everyone to go on the offensive, and other times the game will be more mellow, with players spending their turns improving their economy.
A look at some of Dominion's cards.
The game ends when either of two conditions occur: three piles of supply cards are completely exhausted, or all provinces (the highest value victory card) are purchased. The winner, of course, is the player with the most victory points.
Dominion is not too far away from the likes of Starcraft, where resource management is absolutely crucial. Do you opt to buy more treasure cards, increasing your odds of drawing large amounts of treasure in one turn (allowing you to buy the bigger lands), do you invest in action cards that damage your opponents’ economies (the witch, for example, forces other players to draw a curse card, worth -1 victory points, while diluting their deck), or a mixture of both? It’s up to you.
To say that Dominion is an awesome game is, honestly, the understatement of the year. It is ridiculously engaging, and while games tend to be only about 30 minutes, after several games you’re left wondering where the time just went.
