Dominion

I am running late with my writing tonight, though I haven't slept so its still Saturday no matter what the clock says. We had a few people over seeing as the vampire game didn't happen, and as the night started to wind down I was asked to teach a few of the guests a new game.

Dominion is a fast paced card game, flavoured around establishing a mighty medieval kingdom. The game comes in a box and is simply five hundred plus cards. It is the way those cards work together that builds an interesting and dynamic gaming experience.

The game has been compared to Magic and other trading card games, and there are elements shared with that gaming model. It is mainly a resource accumulating game. From the set of five hundred cards each player starts with a ten card deck, and spends a part of each turn adding more cards to that deck. Each player starts with seven treasure cards with which to purchase those additional cards. The other three cards are victory points. Each turn you have a hand of five cards of which some may be treasure, and you get one opportunity to purchase new cards.

Each game has a selection of ten cards from twenty five different action cards, plus six cards that increase your score and provide for more treasure. The ten actions in the game change how often you can buy cards, or increase your spending power, or swap cards. Each of the twenty five different action cards has its own effect on the game, there are ample permutations available and for the foreseeable future every game promises to be different.

Purchase by purchase you add cards to your own small deck, building a strategy and accumulating victory points. By the time you have a deck together enough to get to your treasure cards its time to buy more of the green victory cards. Then its a race until the game ends.

As each player buys up the cards laid out for the game some of the options dry out. If any three piles run out, or if the highest scoring victory card pile empties then the game ends. Whichever player has the most victory cards in their deck at this point wins the game.

In every instance where this game has been demonstrated I've seen it prove popular. Every house hold that has tried it has followed up with a speedy purchase of the game. So far I have seen it grow from one box a friend brought over to a game our local community has embraced five times over. We are never far from a box of Dominion. It fires our imagination and fulfils our gaming needs.

In short this is a good game and one we'll no doubt keep playing most of the way through 2009.
If I'm wrong you'll probably hear about it here.

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