Dominion - First Play!

28th January 2023

Wogglecon continued with Dominion the deck building game. A game I've played a few times in the past but not since starting this blog.

Rule your kingdom in Dominion by recruiting bureaucrats, moneylenders and spies and others or creating festivals, gardens and more.

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What's in a game?

• Cards: Yep that's what's in this game, a whole lot of cards.
  Each card has its name at the top and cost in the bottom left corner. Many cards have an illustration in the top half with the bottom have given over to describing the card's action or benefit.
  Broadly speaking, they are divided into 2 types.
• Base cards: These are cards that are used in every game. Mostly they don't have a fancy picture like other cards and just clearly mark out what they do
  Treasure cards: A coin is depicted on these cards which form the game's currency. These come in a denomination of 1, 2 & 3 coins, they cost 0-6 coins to buy.
  

• Victory cards: These provide Victory Points (VPs) and come in denominations of 1, 3 & 6 VPs which are scored at the game end.
  Trash card: This is not a game card per se, but provides a spot to place cards that have been trashed, that is cards that have been removed from the game which is in contrast to discard which puts cards into a players discard pile.
  ​Curse cards: OK, strictly speaking these are used in every game but in reality, only certain cards require the use of curse cards (Curse cards cost players VPs when acquired.).

• Kingdom cards: These form the bulk of Dominion's gameplay and there over 20 different kingdom cards. They may represent people, places or even events. Generally, they are illustrated and come in several types.
  Action cards: The majority of kingdom cards are action cards, as the name suggests, these cards allow players to perform that card's action.
  Attack cards: Technically a subset of actions cards, attack cards allow players to target their opponents which may force them to pick up curse cards or discard cards from their hand etc.
  Reaction cards: Also a subset of action cards. Generally reaction cards have an action and also allows a player to defend against an attack.
  Victory cards: This type of card provides an additional way for players to earn VPs.
• Randomiser cards: These are not used during the game but may be used during setup, more on randomiser cards below.

Dominion uses standard quality cards which is exactly what you'd expect.

The different kingdom cards all feature illustrations in the top half. There's a nice variety of artwork here and the quality is good if a little unexciting. I mean... how thrilling can a cellar or moneylender be!
Joking aside though, the art is all-in-all pretty good.

Minimal iconography is used throughout Dominion. Most information is conveyed via text on cards so I can't imagine it being an obstacle.

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How's it play?
Setup

• Base cards:
  Treasure cards: Put out the treasure cards face-up in their 3 denominations.
  Victory cards: Next put out the victory card face-up in their separate decks, the number of cards in each deck will be determined by the player count.
  Trash card: Put the trash card into the central playing area.
• Kingdom cards: Each game of Dominion uses 10 sets of the kingdom cards.
  The rules provide a number of predetermined thematic sets of kingdom cards which can be used.
  Alternatively, the randomiser deck can be shuffled info a face-down deck and 10 cards drawn from it, these will be the 10 sets used in the game.
  Finally, players can collectively choose 10 sets to use if they wish.
  Generally 10 cards from each set are used, but the number of victory cards uses will depend on player count.
• Player cards: Each player takes 7 1 gold treasure cards and 3 1VP victory cards, shuffles them into a face down deck and draws 5 cards for their starting hand.
• First player: Determine a starting player.

On to play
Dominion uses a traditional turn order with the active player completing their turn before play moves on the player on their left.

A turn in Dominion is easy as A, B, C - quite literally too. The phases are Action, Buy and Clean up!

• Action: The player player may take 1 action, that is play an action card from their hand. Action cards have a wide variety of uses and can provide gold, more cards and so on to the active player, too many to be described here.
  It should be noted that even if the active player has 2 action cards in their hand, they still only get to perform 1 action unless the action card they play grants them 1 or more extra actions!
  Treasure cards do not count as an action so can be played as needed.
  Victory point cards cannot be played as they have no function other than to score VPs at the game end and clutter up a players hand during play.
• Buy: Once the active player has perform their action(s), they can buy 1 card from the central area using treasure cards or coins on action cards.
  Again, unless an action card that has been played grants the active player more 'buys', they can only buy 1 card.
  Any card bought, goes directly into the active player's discard pile.
• Clean up: Cards that have been played are not immediately put into the active player's discard pile instead they are considered still 'in play' even if they've been resolved until this phase occurs. 
  During this phase, the active player discards all cards played and also all cards still in hand which were not or could not be played. Then the active player draws a new hand of 5 cards.
  Next player: Play then progresses to the next player.

Additional rules: There are a couple of extra rules that need explanation.

• Reaction: Card with a 'Reaction' descriptor can be used during another player's turn. If an opponent plays an attack card, any player who has a reaction card in their hand may reveal it to counter the attack.
  Cards revealed this way are not discarded and are considered not to have been played.
• Reshuffle: If any time a player needs to draw cards but does not have enough or any cards in their deck to do so, then they draw whatever they can and shuffle their discard pile into a new draw deck and draw whatever cards they still need to draw.
  Remember, if the active player has to shuffle a new draw deck from their discard pile in the middle of their turn, any cards in play or in hand are considered still in play and not part of the discard pile.

Endgame
Play continues until one of the following 2 criteria are met.

When the pile of Province (6VP) victory cards has been emptied.
OR
Any 3 of the 10 stacks of cards in the central supply have been emptied.

In either case, when the turn of the player who triggered the endgame is over, the game immediately ends and goes to scoring.
Players then calculate their scores from all victory cards they have acquires.

Points are tallied, highest score wins.

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Overall
Dominion has been around for a few years and one I've played in the past but only finally have gotten to blogging about it.

It is the deck builder game, the one that started it all and to honest, it pretty much got everything right the first time.

The only quibble I could argue is that the rules regarding only 1 action and 1 buy per turn unless other cards increase them, forcing players to track their card plays throughout their turn are little fiddly but this is minor and doesn't effect the game's quality.

Otherwise Dominion provides players pretty much everything they could want from a deck builder. 
It provides players with the classic early/late game challenge of creating their engine in the early stage and then exploiting that engine to acquire VPs in the late stage.
Players will look to optimise their card actions, maximise the efficiency of their decks and find effective combos and exploits. This is especially true in Dominion since, victory cards actively hinder player and acquiring them too early can slow a player's deck down.
​Dominion provides a number of predetermined setups that can be used but also has provision for randomising setup, which can give player some unusual, interesting and challenging setups.
It's also worth adding that there's loads of expansions for Dominion which increase its replayability and longevity.

If you like deck builders and for some reason you've not played Dominion, then you should definitely play this. Dominion is one of the best examples of it's genre. In fact, unless you actively hate deck builders, then this is one to try regardless. It's a classic for a reason.