Okay, so you’ve just walked into a shop, and wandered over to the board game section out of boredom, intrigue, or maybe followed a stray cat around the corner. Regardless, you’re here now and you’re looking at all of the games. It’s overwhelming. There are so many boxes, so many colors, so many games with vague medieval, fantasy, or sci-fi themes. You thought maybe you’d have a look at something here, after all, you liked playing board games when you were a kid. You used to have the best time with your family and friends, dominating the world in Risk or bankrupting people in Monopoly (even if each time someone had a temper-tantrum). This, however, with shelves chock full of games, may seem a bit out of your depth, so you start to leave. You pick up one last game as you start edging away, a comfortable, friendly looking box. There are so many different versions of this game, so there must be something to it. You’ve just picked up your first copy of Dominion, and this is where it all begins.

Dominion is a powerhouse of a card game for 2-4 players by American Donald X. Vaccarino. Following its release in 2008, Dominion went on to win many awards (included the coveted Spiel des Jahres) and inspired a slew of other games. Dominion did this so well in fact that it created an entire genre of board games previously unheard of, which now houses a huge number of games all following Dominion’s archetype: the deck-builder.

In Dominion you play a monarch seeking to expand his/her lands out as far as you can see; if you have the most land at the end of the game, you win!

Okay, now that you’ve heard that description, forget it. Everyone does. Dominion is not a game that has a strong focus on story or theme, and if you spend too long thinking about it, it’ll probably just leave a bad taste in your mouth—another modern board game with a vague medieval theme. Dominion really is a puzzle laid out in front of you that you’re trying to solve faster than your adversaries around the table.

You start with a set of ten low valued, usually undesired cards as your own personal deck. You shuffle these and draw five cards as your starting hand. On your turn you may use these cards to play one action and make one purchase from the supply piles of better cards. This purchased card moves to your discard pile, as do all cards you played and any unused cards in your hand at the end of your turn. You then draw a fresh five cards from your deck. As soon as you need to draw cards and your deck is empty, the discard pile is shuffled and becomes your deck.

Here’s where the first ah-ha moment happens for new Dominion players: now that you’ve shuffled your discard pile back into a deck, you’ll start drawing the cards that you bought on previous turns. All of a sudden the deck of cards you were seemingly arbitrarily handed out at the beginning of the game has become unique—a creation of your own making, bending to your own play style—and with enough vision and a modicum of luck, your deck might just lead you to victory.

“Ah, but Ian,” You ask, “You haven’t actually told us how you win yet.”

Yes, you’re right, dear reader, I haven’t yet told you how to win. So here it is.

Way off in the corner of the table, those green cards available to purchase with large numbers on them represent victory points. At the end of the game (when three piles you are buying from are emptied), the player with the most victory points in their deck wins the game. These are all the rules to Dominion. It’s simple! Except that it’s not.

You’ll recognize one stack of green cards, the Estates. They’re worth one victory point each, and you recognize them because you started the game with three of them in your deck. How nice! You begin the game with three points already, a good beginning to help you win. It’s not nice. It’s a devilishly smart design choice from the great Donald X. Vaccarino himself.

This is where the second ah-ha moment happens for new Dominion players: in the very first couple of rounds you’ll find Estates appearing in your hand, sitting there doing nothing, taking the spot in your hand that another card could have had, stopping you from having enough money for that expensive card you’ve been eyeing off in the middle of the table.  You realize that these cards—the only way to win the game—are awful, and they sit in your deck like sails on a race car, completely fighting the sleek aerodynamic engine you’ve been building. You’d do your absolute best to avoid them, except that you cannot win this race unless your race car has the most sails on it when it crosses the finish line. So you decide to do as many laps as possible with your race car, until the very last lap of the game when you pull over and your pit crew affixes as many sails to your race car as possible. Except that you don’t know how many laps there are going to be, and you pull over too early, driving a few extra laps as a giant sailed racing monster.

…I may have lost the thread a bit there.

This victory condition creates a negative feedback loop. If you start grabbing for points too early, you’ll slow yourself down and the other players will be able to grab more than you, but start too late and you’ll soon find that all the points are already gone. This creates a feeling of tension around the table as you constantly try to evaluate your opponents to see if you should be starting to make endgame moves before they can.

Most of what I’m saying here is not new. Dominion is eleven years old at this point, and anyone who has looked into modern board gaming will already be well familiar with Dominion and how it works. If this is you, you’ve probably already played a few other deck builders that followed in Dominion’s footsteps, and might like them even better. However, I still believe that Dominion holds itself as the best of the bunch, and for anyone new to gaming, Dominion is a fantastic way into the hobby.

In many of Dominion’s descendents, the cards that are available to add to your deck throughout the game are randomized, and once one is purchased, a new random card becomes available to buy. This mechanic adds another level of luck to the game, and feels like it takes away a lot of agency from the players. In contrast, the marketplace in Dominion is fixed, so all players have access to the same cards as they plan out their games. This is doubly important because deck-builders tend to be games about mitigating luck. Most of your actions are focused on getting better cards into your deck and removing worse cards altogether, in order to ensure you’re always drawing the best hand you can. When the marketplace is constantly shifting, some games can come down to just having the right card appear for purchase on your turn, rather than your own clever strategy.

Additionally, Dominion has more variety than most of the deck builders which have come after it. Many of these offspring come with a large deck of cards that are used throughout each game, whereas Dominion only uses 10 of the base game’s 26 card sets. This means that a minimum of 3 games have to be played before all of the cards are even used (let alone all of the combinations) making each game of Dominion different than the last. Once you’ve finally tired of the first 26 sets, you can pick up one of eleven expansions to double your variety, constantly refreshing the feel of the game and creating endless combinations to play with.

Finally, Dominion is a great introduction for beginners to the board game hobby, and even clever kids ages 11+ can enjoy it. It eases people into some of the more difficult decisions found in heavier games by having a simple ruleset and letting the complexity come out through card interaction. Each time I’ve played Dominion with a new set of players, they’ve left the game feeling intrigued and thrilled about how it unfolded, believing they could do better next time. They always come back for a second, fourth, and tenth round.

Dominion is a great game that revolutionized a section of the industry previously untapped. Even after 11 years, the game remains as one of the best deck builders in the industry. The only true drawback I find is that the theme is somewhat pasted on, and the game looks about as interesting as a slice of toast, however, the actual mechanics and gameplay quickly distract from these small flaws. So if you’re new to board games, Dominion is a fantastic place to begin, and if you just haven’t made your way to Dominion yet, 11 years is not too late.

If you enjoyed this review be sure to check out our other reviews (including Patchwork and Terraforming Mars so far). Also please comment below or leave a voicemail (815- 905-1414) with thoughts, especially if you end up trying Dominion after reading this!

If you plan on purchasing Dominion, you can do so by clicking the affiliate links below which also help support The Nerd Cantina

• Dominion: Second Edition
• Dominion: Intrigue Second Edition
• Dominion: Seaside
• Dominion: Prosperity
• Dominion: Dark Ages
• Dominion: Hinterlands