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Amazon.com Search | |  | Dominion Card Game by Rio Grande Games Ultimate Discs | Home » » Dominion | | | | | | | Description: | | 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 their selection of cards to buy, and how they play their hands as they draw them, the players construct their deck on the fly, striving for the most efficient path to the precious victory points by game end. You are a monarch, like your parents before you, a ruler of a small pleasant kingdom of rivers and evergreens. Unlike your parents, however, you have hopes and dreams! You want a bigger and more pleasant kingdom, with more rivers and a wider variety of trees. You want a Dominion! In all directions lie fiefs, freeholds, and feodums. All are small bits of land, controlled by petty lords and verging on anarchy. You will bring civilization to these people, uniting them under your banner. But wait! It must be something in the air; several other monarchs have had the exact same idea. You must race to get as much of the unclaimed land as possible, fending them off along the way. To do this you will hire minions, construct buildings, spruce up your castle, and fill the coffers of your treasury. Your parents wouldn | | | Features: | |
• 2-4 player game
• 30 minutes to play
• Tactical Card game
• Massive replay value
• Quick to learn, many ways to win
| | | Product Details: | | | Product Length:
| 11.75 inches | | Product Width:
| 2.88 inches | | Product Height:
| 11.75 inches | | Product Weight:
| 3.5 pounds | | Package Length:
| 11.7 inches | | Package Width:
| 11.7 inches | | Package Height:
| 2.9 inches | | Package Weight:
| 2.65 pounds | | Average Customer Rating:
|  based on 50 reviews |
| | Charis Games Review: Dominion Card Game by Rio Grande Games
Awards
- Mensa Select 2009
- Spiel des Jahres 2009
- Meeples Choice 2008
Dominion is an exciting, addicting, fast-action, deck-building game that plays well with two or three players. I predict that it will be one of our top selling designer card games in 2009. What makes Dominion such a great card game? For starters, Dominion is easy to learn. The rules are simple, the game can be explained in just a few minutes, and newcomers can be up and playing in less than 5 minutes. Dominion includes 500 cards, but you do not use all of them in the game. Each game uses 100 of 250 possible kingdom cards. Through this variety, Dominion allows each game to have a unique flavor and challenge. Dominion plays fast. Although Dominion has a solitaire-type feel to it, you are playing against opponents. After your first couple games, you will find yourself racing through your deck of cards, shuffling and reshuffling. This is not mandatory, it not a rule, you will simply be drawn into the game. Dominion will continue to grow. In fact, the first expansion set (Dominion: Intrigue) is already available.
So how do you play Dominion?
Dominion uses an A-B-C turn-based system. During a turn a player completes the following steps:
Action: At the beginning of the game the only cards you have in your hand are copper (worth 1 coin) and estate cards (worth one victory point). Very soon you will need to begin buying actions cards which will allow you to take various actions such as gaining additional cards or money, attack your opponents, and receive extra actions or bonuses. A clever player will learn to string a series of action cards together for maximum benefit.
Buy: During this phase, you will purchase new cards. At the beginning of the game, you can only make one purchase per turn. However, as you build your deck, you will be able to buy multiple cards per round. Sample cards that you can purchase include treasure cards (which give you money), victory cards (which give victory points), and kingdom cards (which provide all sorts of bonuses and actions).
Clean up: During this phase, you discard all of the cards from your hand and take five new cards. This is one of the best aspects of Dominion. You will start every round with a fresh set of cards.
The game ends when players deplete a stack of Province cards (the highest victory point cards), or deplete any 3 stacks of kingdom cards. At this point, all the players count their victory points. The player with the most victory points wins.
In a nutshell--Dominion is a deck-building game. You race to build the most efficient cash-building machine so that you can quickly purchase victory points before the game ends.
Click here to dowload the game rules for Dominion.
| | Customer Reviews: | |
Average Customer Review:
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 Dominion ReviewMar 11, 2010
This is a very enjoyable game. I bought it as a gift for my husband and he really enjoys playing it.
1 of 1 found the following review helpful:
Best game of the year, but gets old quicklyMar 04, 2010
This is an excellent math toy for kids. Having to add up all the actions, gold and draws can really help with developing a good strategic mind and addition skills will certainly be increased. Unfortunately, the game ends up getting formulaic and all of the games end up with a race for 4 or 5 of the cards out there as one strategy generally trumps all others when certain cards are present. I have only seen two or three games where 1st and 2nd tried a different approach to winning. After about a hundred plays, I can usually see the "right" cards after they are dealt out. I still play because I have yet to see the same combination of decks, so until I reach that point, this will get weekly play.
1 of 1 found the following review helpful:
Very Enjoyable Card GameFeb 24, 2010
This game features some very creative mechanics that make it a hit. There are other reviews out there on gameplay so I will just skip over that. The game is simply a bunch of cards and the object of the game is build up your "Dominion" (which is your deck of cards), there are number of victory point cards and those are the cards that are going to count at the end of the game. The thing that is interesting about this game is that while victory points are necessary to win the game, during the game they are absolutely useless because you cannot play them during the action phase and they cannot be used to purchase anything during the buy phase. This makes the game much more strategic in your planning on when to buy victory point cards, and what type to buy (They range in worth, 1 point, 3 points, and 6 points). So there is some balancing in making sure that you do not flood your deck to early with victory point cards. And there is another element in the fact that you get to build your own deck which is sweet. You spend the whole buying different cards that you hope will make some great combinations in order to buy the most expensive victory point cards. I really like this game because of the deck building mechanic. This game is also played pretty quickly, especially with people who know how to play. I also like the fact that there are so many different action cards and that makes for great re-playability. I recommend this game to everyone. I have showed this game to so many people, most of whom said that this game was way to "nerdy" for them to play, but once they played one game they really found themselves enjoying this game.
1 of 1 found the following review helpful:
A perfect balance of game elements for families (as well as gamers)Feb 14, 2010
Like others, I was skeptical of this game - and from the name and the general category, I thought it was an empire-building strategy game like Risk, Settlers of Cataan, etc., which are not to my taste.
But it's not. What it is, is a near-perfect combination of game-playing elements. It's got:
- Luck
- Strategy (what do I want to do long-term in this game?)
- Tactics (what do I want to do with this hand?)
- Re-playability (you can't always use the same strategy; each game's different)
- Accessible to kids (6- and 7-year-olds who can read and add to 10 pick it up in minutes)
- Challenging and engaging for adults (we've been playing daily for weeks and are still debating the finer points)
- A lot of "business" to do with the cards - constantly drawing new cards keeps hands and minds busy
- Good duration - 30-60 minutes per game, usually
- Enjoyable even if you lose
It's true that there's a lot of reshuffling, and that can be slow, mainly for kids - for adults, you're usually doing it while the other person is playing, so it's not a big deal.
And it's also true that it's "four-person solitaire" in a sense; but that's not how it feels while playing, because you're competing for the same resources. If anything, I find it preferable to games where there are possibilities of teaming up or psyching out your opponents - especially when the players' ages range widely.
The re-playability and wide age range makes this one of the only games I can think of that is truly "fun for the whole family," as the slogan goes, and not just for one session but over and over.
0 of 1 found the following review helpful:
Fun for 2-5Feb 10, 2010
I got this game after playing it a few times with some friends I was visiting. So I bought a copy to play back in my city with some local friends. When I invited my local friends to play, a few were interested, others not-so-much. But let me tell you, after even a few games, the not-so-much players were really enjoying themselves. I love that the strategy changes from game to game. I will definitely be picking up Intrigue (which is a stand-alone expansion) and probably Seaside (which needs money and victory cards) soon. Both of which add a lot more variety (and more players).
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