There are times I feel as though I may have been gaming under a rock.
I say that in part because the city has not had a game shop until recently.
And my game tastes have always been pretty targeted; abstract strategy games, mini gaming and role playing being my gaming areas of focus.
But recently my long-time gaming group has decided to meet an additional evening most weeks with that night dedicated to more traditional board games. No folks, that does not mean you would find me playing Monopoly some Wednesday eve. I would rather shovel a winter driveway with a teaspoon. It would after all be more fun than Monopoly.
We are however acquiring some new games, new at least to us, and getting them to the table.
One of those games has been Dominion. This game was released back in 2008 from designer Donald X. Vaccarino from Rio Grande Games.
How we have arrived in 2017 and I, and my group had not played this game before, leaves me shaking my head. It was a decade of lost opportunity to play a game which grabbed me from its first play.
Now, to be honest I had an inkling it was a great game based on just shy of 77,000 owners recorded on boardgamegeek.com where it is rated a 7.7/10.
Frankly the 7.7 shorts this game in my opinion. I would push it closer to an 8.5.
In Dominion, each player starts with an identical, very small deck of cards. In the center of the table is a selection of other cards the players can ‘buy’ as they can afford them through a game mechanic where many cards in your growing deck generate coins. Through their selection of cards to buy, and how they play their hands as they draw them, the players construct their deck as the game progresses, striving for the most efficient path to the precious victory points by game end.
The game comes with 500 cards. You select 10 of the 25 Kingdom card types to include in any given play—leading to immense variety. In our case we simply randomly determine the 10 cards sets to be used in a game, leaving players having to adapt strategies based on the cards available each game.
I have seen some reviews of Dominion where it was suggested there is a solitaire feel to the game, with each player building their deck individually. That is a fair assessment as few cards in this inaugural release of the game which allow player-to-player interaction.
But there are a raft load of expansions for Dominion adding hundreds of cards, and more interaction will be a result of a greater number of cards.
The core mechanic here is deck-building. It was not unique to Dominion when it was released in 2008, but this game clearly popularized the mechanic which has been utilized in a few dozen games since.
So Dominion is basically the father of a generation of deck-building and still stands among the extended family as a great game in its own right. A definite must-have game.
