This weekend, while hanging out with friends, I was introduced to a new (to me) card game: Dominion. I’ll be honest: I’m normally not one for card games. It seems like every male friend I’ve ever had has had a love affair with Magic: the Gathering, and while I do know how to play, it’s never really drawn me in… and perhaps that has kept me from giving games like this a chance.
However, I’m really glad I was surrounded by people who were into Dominion and thus didn’t give me a chance to turn up my nose. I had more fun playing this than any board game I’ve tried in the last few years.
Dominion is what is called a deck-building game. You start out with just a few cards in your “deck.” At the end of each hand, you discard all your remaining cards. When you’ve gone through all your cards, you shuffle your discard pile and start over. However, in the meantime you will have bought new cards, so each time you shuffle your deck will have become larger and larger.
The ultimate goal is to buy as many cards with “Victory Points” as you can – at the end of the game, all the points are added up to see who wins. But in the meantime you can use a few different strategies to gain the money you need to buy those cards.
My strategy? The one that seemed the most appealing and fun – I figured I probably wouldn’t win, but I would attempt to mess up everyone else’s attempts as much as possible. My favorite card (and I had many duplicates thereof) was one that required everyone to immediately discard one of their own cards. Since you only get four cards in a hand, this was a Big Deal, and I enjoyed the grumbling.
No, I didn’t ultimately win – but I had fun!
Oh, one cool bit that I forgot to mention: this game has a TON of cards, and you only use a small portion of them in any individual game – so each time you play you’ll get an all-new combination of cards, including some that you might not have seen before. I want to play it again just to see what I get next time.
Apparently Dominion, released in 2008, has already had quite a lot of popularity, and the inevitable expansion packs and spinoffs. My hosts this weekend owned the original, as well as Dominion: Intrigue, which can either be played alone or as an expansion. Apparently there are other expansions which can’t be played alone. Again, though, even the original has quite a bit of replay value.
If you’re looking for a new game to try for your next geek gathering, I highly recommend Dominion. Even this card-game-skeptic is an instant fan.
And you know what’s funny? I went back to the last time I reviewed a board game, almost exactly a year ago, and saw that someone recommended Dominion way back then. Now, granted, I’m not in a big group of people trying new games very often anymore, but still! Clearly you guys know what you’re talking about, and if you care to throw any more recommendations my way, I’ll do my best to stop being a hermit and try some out.
Well, at least now you know to listen to me, right?
Just gave a copy of this to my Dad for his birthday. Villages + Smithy + Cellar = Domination.
Erm, you should be playing with a hand of five cards, not four. The militia makes players discard 2 cards, down to three.
On top of Dominion and it’s expansions, there’s a similar game called thunderstone. It combines the deckbuilding of Dominion with a Dungeon-Crawl theme–each turn you decide whether to use the money in your hand to buy more cards, or to go to the dungeon and slay monsters (which are worth Victory Points)
I’ve played the core Dominion set several times, but try to avoid the expansions, as there tend to be a lot more “screw you” cards in the new sets.
Well, Alan, I don’t know what to tell you. Maybe we were playing with modified rules for some reason; maybe whoever was running the game just messed up. I don’t know if there’s alternate ways to play; otherwise, why would the militia card say “down to three” instead of just “discard two”? Since we were playing with four cards in a hand, we were obviously discarding one to get down to three. I doubt playing with four cards instead of five affected play drastically, since it was consistent.
I watched some folks playing Dominion at MisCon last month – I think I would have been able to follow it better if I hadn’t been sitting across the table from them and could have therefore read the cards.
They were having a great time!
Hi J,
Militia says to discard down to three because there are other cards (such as Council Room) that make players draw above 5 cards. So the Militia makes you discard until you have 3 cards only.
As for other games, Race for the Galaxy is a current favourite. It’s a bit daunting at first but once you get used to the icons the game is great fun, and as a sci fi fan I love teh feel and flavour. It has three expansions with extra optional rules, and many tongue in cheek references to popular media sci fi fandoms.
I wonder what games you do like already. What is it about a game that interests you personally or geek girls in general? There may be an article in that.
Mike
Sounds like fun. I’ll certainly give this one a try.
For board games, Good ol’ Talisman is still my favorite. The World of Warcraft board game is pretty excellent, but way too looooooong. I have yet to finish a game. Oh, just remembered Kings and Things. Bit of a hassle to set up, but it’s quite fun as well.