Dominion is a card game where each player starts with the same basic Deck of 10 Cards -- 3 single Victory Point Cards (Estates), and 7 single Treasure Cards (Copper) and tries to end the game with the most Victory Point Cards in their Deck. Fairly simple and straightforward.
Before playing, you setup the stacks of Victory Point Cards and Treasure Cards. There are 3 types of Treasure Cards: Copper (worth 1 coin, cost 0 coin to purchase), Silver (worth 2 coin, cost 3 coin to purchase), and Gold (worth 3 coin, cost 6 coin to purchase) Cards, and there are enough of all that you rarely, if ever, run out of them (the exact number is likely set, but I hesitate to give it as it has a slight possibility of changing). There are also 3 types of Victory Point Cards: Estates (1 Victory Point, cost 2 coin to purchase), Duchies (3 Victory Points, cost 5 coin to purchase), and Provinces (6 Victory Points, cost 8 coin to purchase). The number of these used varies based on number of players, though the three stacks are always equal to one another.
I will explain how purchasing works a bit later...
Then players then select the Action Cards to be used in the game. There are several ways to do this outlined in the rules, everything from playing with a pre-set selection, to randomly picking the cards used. The game comes with a number of Action Cards (right now, that number is going to be around 24-25), and there are 10 copies of each Card. You select 10 to be in the game, and set aside the others for use in a later game. All of the Action cards in the base game cost from 2 to 6 coins to purchase.
Now you are ready to choose a start player and begin. Each player draws a hand of 5 Cards from his Deck of 10 Cards, and then on a player's turn they do the following things, in order:
1. Play an Action Card from your Hand into your Play Area and do what it says.
2. Purchase a Card (an Action Card, a Treasure Card, or a Victory Point Card) by playing Treasure Cards from your Hand into your Play Area.
3. Place any remaining Cards in your Hand and all Cards from your Play Area in your Discard Pile
4. Draw Cards from your Deck to fill your Hand to 5 Cards (shuffle your Discard Pile as needed, which will be a lot
)Each player takes their turn in order, and the game ends immediately when any 3 stacks are depleted, or when the stack of Province Victory Point Cards is depleted. Players then calculate their Victory Points by looking through their deck and adding up the Victory Point cards, most Victory Points wins. The game can take as little as 20 minutes or so with 4 experienced players, though the average is probably closer to 30 minutes, and the time is variable based not only on the players and strategies, but also on the particular Action Cards in use in a given game.
So what is all the fuss about?
Well, it can be hard to explain, and I really feel it takes a few plays to see the how great the game is. The tough part of the game is making it so that on every turn you have a high probability of doing something (ideally, more than 1 something) useful. You want to play an Action Card that helps you and/or hinders your opponents, and you want to buy a valuable Card that moves you closer to victory. Early on that will probably mean Treasure Cards and Action Cards, while later on you will shift your focus to Victory Points. See, you need to buy Victory Points so that you can actually win, but buying those tends to clog your Deck up and make it harder to have that high probability of doing useful stuff, so you tend to buy them later rather than sooner. But not always.

So, what it basically boils down to is a game with all those Holy Grail of Gaming characteristics that get thrown about whenever we end up talking about Eurogames: competing goals, lots of choices, not enough actions to do everything you want, fast-playing, low downtime, multiple paths to victory, subtle depth, easy to learn, tense decisions, high replayability. Yeah, it has all that. And a bag of chips, too.
I know there are a lot of details I am leaving out, especially about what the various Action Cards do, (EDIT: More on the Action Cards here)and well, that's just the way it has to be while the game is still in development and testing. I hope this answers a lot of lingering questions about gameplay, at the very least.
Last edited on 2008-06-25 22:48:55 CST (Total Number of Edits: 3)




















































