Board Game Review: Dominion – It’s Not a Board Game at All!

It’s really a card game that’s great for when you’re bored, right?  Regardless of the fact that it may smack of a CCG (Collectable Card Game), and that I have a cheesy sense of humor, I have to say it’s quite a fun and fast play.  And apparently others thought so too since it was the 2009 Golden Geek Board game of the year, and also received other numerous awards.  That has to count for something right?

Well, Dominion is a 2-4 player strategy card game made by the guys at Rio Grande containing 500 cards.  It plays supposedly around 30 minutes, however all my games have been with 3+ players and have gone longer.   The theme or fluff behind Dominion is that you are a ruler seeking to expand your kingdom faster than your opponents.  Now while this comes into play as to the name of the cards and the flavor of medieval environment, that’s where the theme ends.  The mechanics of the game are quick and smooth and could be used with any number of themes behind them, but the feudal story works well for this kind of game.

I can’t really call it a resource management game, because it’s not really, so I guess I’ll tell you what it is.  Dominion is a deck building game where you build your deck out of a pool of smaller decks that you buy individual cards from.  The “game board” consists of ten decks of ten “Kingdom” cards, these are all effect cards that allow you to do things from drawing extra cards, seeing your opponents hands, take extra actions or buys, exchange coins, and more.  The Kingdom Cards really dictate your strategy for the most part.  You then have three piles of coins – Copper, Silver, and Gold, all increasing in purchasing value respectively.  There’s a curse pile that contains cards that will reduce your opponents score, a trash pile, and the three most important piles on the board, the Victory cards.  The VC’s are – Estate, Duchy, and Province, all increasing in point value respectively.

Basic Box Contents

There are two victory conditions for Dominion, 1) the pile of Province cards is empty, or 2) three piles of Kingdom cards are empty.  Once either of those two conditions are met then the game immediately ends and players count up their victory points based on what kind and how many Victory Cards are in their decks.  Player with the most points wins.  Plain and simple.

One of the interesting elements to Dominion which is unlike any other card game I’ve played (short of Egyptian Monkey Slap) is that you start the game with only seven cards, only five of which you draw at the beginning of each turn.  The cards you purchase, or steal thanks to the Thief card, will build your deck.  So you have an interesting amount of control over your deck composition, but you build it on the fly.  This allows you to make strategic changes on the fly, like I had to, when I needed to protect my self from an opponent who started buying lots of Thief cards after they say my success with it.  The challenge here is to maintain an appropriate card type to deck size ratio.  If you get too many Kingdom Cards, you wont get coins frequently enough to buy Victory Cards, but if you have too many coins, you won’t get Kingdom Cards enough to ever slow down or expedite the game progress.  Likewise if you go the “little bit of everything” route then you may never see the cards or combos you need to execute your game plan due to having only a few of a bunch of different cards.

The strategy of the game changes, as does the replayability of the game increase, due to the large number of Kingdom Card decks that are included in the basic starter game box.  While I haven’t stopped to count, there must be around 25 or so in all.  With only a randomized group or ten on the board during any game, the options for a changing game play are much greater than in other games.  In addition to that there are multiple expansions already available for Dominion.  One of the really great things they did was make the first expansion, Dominion: Intrigue, also capable of being a stand alone starter box, so not only do you increase your player capacity from 4 to 8 but you also double the number of Kingdom Cards available to play from and they are completely interchangeable.  Nice!  In addition to Intrigue, Dominion fans can also expand their gaming flavor and options with Dominion: Seaside, Prosperity, and Alchemy.  The latter of which is a smaller expansion containing only 150 cards vs. the former that contain 300 cards each.

Super-Crazy-Live-Action-Game-Play....look at us go

A player turn has three phases: Action, Buy, Clean-up.  The Action Phase allows you to play any single Action card (most Kingdom Cards) from your hand.  Some Action Cards allow you to play additional actions; this allows you to stack card benefits together to chain effects.  The Buy Phase allows you to purchase a single card from the Kingdom, Victory, Curse, or Coins piles.  Some Action cards allow you to Buy more than one card and grant you additional coins for the Buy Phase.  The Clean-up Phase is simple.  Everything left unused in your hand, the cards you bought, and any you used, get shuffled back into the deck and you draw five new cards.  Play continues clockwise.

Basically once everyone is comfortable with the game play and rules, things start going pretty quick.  The first time we played by the fourth or fifth turn I couldn’t even get a tweet out in the time it took to come back to my turn with three people playing.  So it’s a pretty fast paced game.  Interestingly despite that, my wife isn’t a big fan.  She really enjoys the zombie game we’ve been playing Last Night on Earth.  Don’t worry there will be a review coming.  I’ve decided she likes miniatures and killing things…I’m lucky, I know.

So, all in all, I’ve really been enjoying the game and can’t wait till I can introduce some more of my friends that have been traveling to it.  I really think they’ll enjoy it.  I also really like that with only one expansion you can take the game size up to 8 people, and we always have lots of people around so most games need to be 6+ people for it to work for us.  So Dominion really fills a great, rules light, fast paced, high player number game slot that we really needed.

So the real question is, can a card game be a board game? What are your thoughts? If not why did it win a board game award? Hmmm…..the mysteries of life!