Just this morning, the most prestigious boardgame award of the year was awarded to the card game Dominion. The award is the Spiel des Jahres (German for game of the year) and nominees are announced each May with the actual award presented every year at this time. In Germany, boardgames are a common gathering point for families and friends and games recognized with the Spiel des Jahres (SdJ for short) are known for their uniqueness, fun, and appropriateness for families to play together. Winning the award virtually guarantees huge sales in Germany for the base game and then future expansions are almost always added on to take advantage of the increased interest. This year’s winner, Dominion, is easily my favorite game of the past year and I’m glad to see it win the award. Congratulations to the designer, Donald X. Vaccarino and publisher, Rio Grand Games. Both are from the United States, so that bodes well for the domestic boardgame industry. Clearly the German judges like the game, but how does it play?

Dominion is a card game for two to four players. Each player starts with a small deck of cards and slowly adds to their cards over the course of the game to build up a large deck at the end. Cards come in three main types: action cards, treasure cards, and victory point cards. Players initially focus on action and treasure cards to make a more powerful deck of cards. At the end of the game, only victory point cards in your deck matter, so the game will transition into a mad dash to purchase as many victory point cards as possible. Start buying victory point cards too soon and your deck will clog up with the useless (during the game) cards, but wait too long and your opponents will be ahead of you in purchasing the best cards. The game ends when all the most expensive victory point cards are purchased, or when any three types of cards are completely sold out. Add up your points in your hand, discard pile, and draw pile to find the winner.

This idea of building a deck of cards as you play should appeal to many trading-card game fans, but since it is not a collectible game (every game contains the same base set) it is very accessible to boardgame players as well. A player’s turn proceeds through four basic steps, ABCD. A is for Action, a player takes an action card from their hand and plays it. This is the main “meat” of the game as action cards come with all sorts of abilities. Some let you draw more cards, some give you money to buy cards later, others let you buy a card outright, and others interfere with your opponents. There are even cards that let you play two more action cards, which can cause a chain reaction of drawing and playing action cards to make an impressive turn. B is for Buy, after playing an action card, players then get to buy one card using any treasure cards they have in their hand and any money they have gained through action cards. Of course, some action cards grant players the ability to buy more than one card per turn. Purchased cards go into your discard pile and will make your way into your hand later. C is for Cleanup, once cards are purchased for the turn, all cards involved are put in the discard pile. This includes action cards played on the table, treasure cards used for purchases, and even unused cards in your hand. D is for Draw, at the end of your turn, draw five new cards to form your hand for next time. Drawing at the end of your turn gives you time to think about what to play next time, and also gives your opponents a round to try to mess with your hand through attack action cards. If your draw pile runs empty (which happens often), reshuffle your discard pile and place it face-down to become a new deck of draw cards. That’s it.

What makes the game interesting are the many interactions among the action cards. There are 25 action cards in the basic game (a stand-alone expansion – Dominion: Intrigue is coming out this month) but only 10 are used in any one game. Taking 10 cards out of 25 possible in any game means no two games will be alike. Players can choose 10 random cards or play a game with one of the suggested sets of 10 in the rules. Everyone starts with seven copper cards (worth 1 coin for buying cards) and three estate cards (worth one victory point). Those estate cards are worth 1 point each at the end of the game, but throughout the game, they’ll just get in the way since they don’t contribute money or actions to your hand. Since the best victory point cards (Provinces, worth 6 points each) cost 8 coins and you only have a hand size of five cards, you can see you’ll never draw enough copper to be able to buy a province card. Players need to buy better treasures (silvers cost 3 coins but are worth 2 coins each time you draw them, while gold treasures cost 6 coins but grant 3 coins to spend every time you draw them) or action cards that give you more money.

What I like best about the game is the many, many solid strategies that are available to pursue. Should you try to slowly gain more expensive treasure cards while simultaneously removing from your deck your useless estate cards and less useful copper cards? Alternatively, you could focus in on a deck that uses multiple actions per turn to accumulate many, many cards and coins for big purchases of multiple victory cards per turn. Yet another strategy is to gather a few attack action cards in order to slow down and interfere with your opponents while you coast ahead for a win. Players can pursue whatever strategy they like best (as well as any cool combinations that are present in the specific 10-card mix.) The cards are aptly named, with some of my favorites including: Bureaucrat (which gives you a silver card, and makes all the other players put a useless victory point card from their hand back on top of their draw deck) and Witch (which gives a player two cards when played and makes all the other players gain a worse-than-useless Curse card that is worth a negative point.) There is also something fun about slowly building up a deck of cards along a theme and then see it working well at the end of the game to generate piles of coins to purchase the big victory point cards.

The game may seem complicated to describe, but the best way to teach it is to use the ABCD description and then just dive in. Gamers have reported playing the game successfully with kids too young to read, as much of the cards are language independent. Even a four player game is well under an hour to play, and by the middle of the game most players will have caught on to the various dynamics and be tooling along at a good pace. Experienced players can play a full game in as little as 20 minutes. It is a solid, fun game that is easily grasped by a wide range of players. Fans of boardgames will enjoy the many paths to victory. Fans of trading card games (even ex-fans, as this is NOT a collectible game) will enjoy exploring how different action cards interact. Gamers new to boardgaming will experience a game that is fun and far different than games typically found in your local mega-mart. Dominion is my favorite game in a year where I’ve come across several exceptional games. I can’t recommend it enough.

If I’ve convinced you to give it a try, you probably won’t find Dominion in your local large department store. Check out your local game specialty store (comic book stores often carry them as well) or one of the many online boardgame stores. The site, www.BoardgamePrices.com provides a comparison of many online retailers.

Tags: Misc