Andrew joined us again this evening, but Matt was regrettably absent (I was Coldplaying my face off – M). Due to his massive point lead, Matt could afford to skip a game night to go check out a concert.

Dan, having lost last week, elected to play a game from Andrew’s collection: Dominion.

If you know how to play Dominion, you are going to want to skip down to the session report. If not, I’ll do my best.

Here we go again; another game with strategy that is so deep, one could argue for hours over it’s intricacies. Dominion isn’t your typical boardgame though. Actually, there isn’t a board involved at all, just cards. 500 of them to be exact. What makes Dominion so different is its main focus: deck building.

To start, players are given 7 copper cards (+1 coin) and 3 estates (+1 victory point) which is considered the player’s deck. A stockpile of cards is arranged in stacks in front of the players which the players may ‘buy’ at various prices. There are 3 types of cards you can buy: treasures, victory cards, and kingdom cards. When you buy a card, it goes into your discard pile and will make it into your deck upon your next reshuffle. Treasures give you more buying power, victory cards give you points for the end of the game, and kingdom cards do a very wide variety of things.

The 10 kingdom card stacks in the stockpile are randomly assigned so that each game is different. This site will generate 10 random kingdom cards that will give you an idea what a playing field may look like. Each type kingdom card does something different. Much of these cards are action cards and alter the flow of play. For a few examples… The smithy allows the player to draw 3 new cards. A cellar allows the player to discard as many cards from your hand as you want, draw that many new cards, and then take another action. A market, one of the more prestigious cards, allows you to draw 1 card, allows you to take another action, gives you an extra buy for your buy phase, and gives you 1 extra coin to spend.

Each turn, a player gets one action and one buy. Gameplay occurs in this fashion… A player plays an action from his five card hand and then resolves what the action does. If the card he plays grants him another action, he may take another. If not, he is ready to buy one card with the coins in his hand. Certain action cards can grant you more coins, more chances to buy, and other similar abilities to affect the action and buying phase. Once a player’s turn is over, he discards the rest of his hand and draws 5 more cards from his deck, reshuffling the deck as needed.

So that’s the gist of it; you play actions and buy cards. Your deck will consist of treasure cards (coins), village cards (actions), and victory cards (victory points). The game ends when either all of the victory province cards (+6 victory points) are taken from the stockpile, or three of any other stockpile are exhausted. At that point, everyone counts up their victory points that they had bought for their deck; the person with the highest score wins.

Session Report: Dominion

Last game night, I think Andrew may have been hustling us. Tonight, he emerged from the night’s thick haze and sunk his teeth in. Rending flesh with teeth, he flung our mangled remains aside with little effort. Figuratively.

For the first game, Andrew was set on his tactics. He stocked up on lots of coins using his buys to purchase mostly treasures and only a few actions. Kevin’s idea was to boost his deck some, using markets while also heavily relying on treasures. I attempted to get cards that allowed me to cycle through my deck quickly; however, I feel I may have been a little late on this strategy because it didn’t perform that well. Dan had no main theme incorporated into his deck.

Andrew came in first by a great measure. Kevin came in second. I was a couple points behind Kevin, landing me in third, and Dan came in fourth.

The second game was very interesting. Each time you play the game, you randomly change out your stockpiles. One card caught my eye, the Witch. When you play the witch, everyone else gains a curse card (-1 victory point), and then I draw two cards. My deck was loaded with witches.

My deck was slow and sluggish. In order to use the witches, I was devoting my action to screwing the other players instead of helping myself. Often, I was spending coins in the same way. As fun as it was in the beginning of the game, I thought I was doomed.

Andrew had a defensive deck that also included a lot of cards that gave him extra actions. Kevin made use of the Bureaucrat card which slightly slowed down other players while awarding a silver treasure to himself. Kevin also focused heavily on cards that could remove the curses that I was awarding him. Dan often ended up with hands that contained too many actions or curse cards which left him with little to do.

In the end, the curses were effective. The game was slow, and people weren’t spending coins on victory points. The game ended when a few stockpiles ran out suddenly.

Andrew’s defensive deck came in first, ending up with 4 curse cards. Over the course of the game, Kevin acquired 7 curse cards but was able to ditch 3 of them. Kevin and I ended up tied for second. Dan only ended up with one point thanks to 6 curses.

Game three got a little crazy. Andrew, Kevin, and myself focused on the thief card which allowed us to steal money from each other. Each of us had plans for expanding our decks, but Kevin’s plan, which was also the simplest, seemed to perform the best. Dan, however, countered all of us with his defensive deck.

Dan came in first, Kevin came in second, and Andrew and I tied for third.

Overall score for the night
1st (250 points): Andrew
2nd (100 points): Kevin
3rd (50 points): Dan
4th (0 points): Hunter

Dominion was fun. It was paced well, decently interactive, and made you think. Kevin especially enjoyed it.

I do have one main issue with Dominion though; it involves a lot of card philosophy.

Your deck needs to flow. If you want to perform better, you are going to need to learn which strategies are effective and what card ratios you need to have to achieve them. You need to know how the cards interact in a fairly deep way.

As someone who is new to the game, it’s hard for me to look at a stockpile and come up with a quick deck design on the fly. Card knowledge plays a large role. Not only that, but you also have to know how to react to the other player’s strategies while not disrupting the main mechanics of your deck.

As an avid Magic the Gathering player who understands the importance of gearing your deck so that your cards work in synergy, I don’t always feel that I’m building my Dominion decks as best as they could be due to lack of card philosophy knowledge, and that hurts.

Edit 10/19/2009: Having played Dominion many more (expansions included) I can safely say that this game is awesome. The first play or two could possibly be a little rough, but it only gets better and better!