7 ms·

A review of Dominion, 4000 plays later (2012)

125 points by luu 6y ago

mikepurvis 6y ago
The enormous variety is absolutely a strength, but can also be a weakness. When my daughter was a baby, my partner and I used to play a lot of Dominion with another couple who had had a child around the same time— it worked well as a quick, easily-interruptible game that could mostly be played with one hand as needed. Initially it was the Intrigue base game (theme: cards with choices) and Prosperity (theme: treasures with side effects) and we played probably several hundred games. But later on as the other couple got more and more of the expansions, the game became less and less balanced— even with just Seaside and Hinterlands added to the game, it would have required significant study of all of the additional cards and their effects in order to have any hope of forming a coherent strategy on each game. And since that time several more expansions have come out [1]. Is this bad? No, not necessarily. Obviously if the various modules are stored separately in their individual boxes it's easy to just play with the cards that everyone at the table feels they have a reasonable comfort level with. But I think that feeling of being overwhelmed by the possibilities did ultimately lead us to playing other, more self-contained games like Agricola. [1]: http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Expansions http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Expansions
- dmix 6y ago
  > But later on as the other couple got more and more of the expansions, I had the same experience for a different game. This is an annoying dynamic of playing board games (I guess with any group you play with frequently). Damn those expansion couples! Trying to read up about strategy online to keep up just kills the fun. Although I'm no expert on board gaming so take my word with a grain of salt.
  - adrianN 6y ago
    For me, minmaxing takes the fun out of any game. I like plays best when everyone has played the game often enough to know the rules, but now often enough to really think through a strategy.
    - colmvp 6y ago
      For me, constantly losing or being close to last place takes the fun out of the game. I've played 7 Wonders for years, and recently played with friends. I kept losing despite thinking I had a grasp on the game. Recently I read an exhaustive advanced guide on BGG and from that point forward I've finished close to 1st/2nd with my friends.
      - slx26 6y ago
        Yeah, related to this, I wanted to comment on this paragraph on the article: > There should be no reason to ever study a game where a beginner stands a reasonable chance of winning. I want a game that rewards experience, that permits further study, that has meaning to its replayability. I agree with you and disagree with the article on this point. I think a truly good game must have an explicit, adjustable factor of randomness or odds so you can match different levels of players and play for fun. It's hard to balance, but that's the point of game design: rules simple enough to be accessible, but that at the same time can combine in infinite ways giving each game depth, and have the opportunity to match players of different levels without that being overwhelming.
        mattmaroon 6y ago
        The only game I have ever found that is both worthy of study and where a newbie could beat a master a reasonable percentage of the time is poker. The randomness makes poker nearly impossible to study though. You can only look back and determine if your decision was right if you had had complete information, but you didn’t and won’t in the future so that’s not as meaningful as it may be on other games.
    - lmm 6y ago
      I enjoy the process of figuring out the right strategy; one of the things Dominion does well is that it gives you that "figuring out the best strategy" experience every time, in a way, because each time you're seeing a different spread of cards and having to figure out what the winning strategy is. I'm not sure how you're defining "minmaxing"; for me playing to win is very much part of the fun, but a game goes stale once you've figured out the strategy to the point that you're just executing it every time you play.
  - jnwatson 6y ago
    Expansions are a problem with a lot of board games: More rules to remember, more parts to set up. There are several games I’m hesitant to pull out because the expansions increased the complexity too much to explain to a beginner.
    - watwut 6y ago
      Can't you play those without expansions?
      - jnwatson 6y ago
        Sure, but they get mixed altogether.
darkwizard42 6y ago
I LOVE this game but also think the steep learning curve for any new entrants into a group which is already familiar with the sets in question gives a big advantage to the veteran players. I also think with too many expansions mixed together you end up with some very interesting and sometimes very dull games (all +money, no +action or +card). The sets are very well-designed to play within themselves, but when mixed with others the results can be mixed. Last, too many mats and tokens to keep track of really detracts from fun with the game. All this being said I have 6 expansions I have picked up with my partner over Craigslist and FB Marketplace and will continue to hunt for more!
Nbox9 6y ago
I’ve played over 1000 games of 1v1 Dominion. I think the author is overstating the strategy space of the game. For example, a common strategy is to build an “engine” using +draw +action cards. There are _many_ possible engines to build, but that is more tactical. Edit: I just checked my online profile, and I’ve played over 6000 games.
- cfmcdonald 6y ago
  Generally in boardgaming "tactical" is used to refer to moment-to-moment/turn-to-turn decision making, reacting to the immediate situation. I don't see how that applies here, you can't decide on a draw/action strategy at the start of the game and then decide as you go which cards you're going to use for it. I guess you can, but it seems like a bad idea. To be successful you'd need to start by studying the card offer and seeing if draw/action strategy is possible and advisable. To do that you need to understand all the possible ways to build an engine(if any) from the available cards and how they might interact with other cards that are available. That seems like strategy to me.
mattmaroon 6y ago
I've played a lot more games than that and used to be one of the highest rated players on Isotropic and then on the current site. I don't know what this guy's talking about at some points. People were hammering duke/dutchies back in the isotropic game. I don't think anyone overlooked the kings court/goons/masquerade pin for one game, let alone thousands. It just doesn't come up much. He leaves out my biggest criticism, there is no form of errata/banning. When an overpowered card enters the fray, you just have to play it. Minion's on the board? Guess we're just fighting for 'em. Chapel should cost more than 2 no matter what Vaccarino says. Probably 5. Etc. Vaccarino is a great game designer but I think the playtesting could be better sometimes, and unlike CCGs with developed tournament systems there's no changing a card once it's out there ever.
- veilrap 6y ago
  I disagree about Chapel's cost. A 5 cost Chapel would lead to extraordinarily unbalanced games where a good starting hand basically sets you up to win. Having the cost be 2 means that everyone gets access to it in the first two hands with out there being much swingy-ness in terms of the initial shuffle. Maybe an argument could be made for 3 or 4 in the sense that everyone would still have access to it, but 5 just seems too high.
  - SilasX 6y ago
    >I disagree about Chapel's cost. A 5 cost Chapel would lead to extraordinarily unbalanced games where a good starting hand basically sets you up to win. It already has that. If you draw 2 coppers in your first hand (and thus five in the second or vice versa), you can start out with the awesome five-cost card and chapel.
    - kevinmchugh 6y ago
      For serious competitive play, all players should have the same opening split, or get to choose 5/2 or 4/3. Chapel games tend to make this weakness obvious
      - 6y ago
sweettea 6y ago
Theory is a legendary player, and his take on the game is truly excellent. I wish the simple, fast, text interface of the old isotropic implementation still existed though. I had a definite addiction to Dominion in college - three hours a day online for months - and the isotropic implementation shutting down was the thing that finally cured me. The depth, and the possibility of just ten minutes more for a wholly new kingdom, was so incredibly enjoyable, even if I never became an elite player...
- hobs 6y ago
  I remember setting up a reverse proxy so that the people in my call center (job at the time) could play each other on boring calls - as long as everyone was cool moves could take as long as you wanted. I was really sad to see the new interface that it was shut down for was some flash monstrosity that was pay per-expansion pack, definitely killed my interest in playing it online.
  - 333c 6y ago
    Just in case you're not aware, the online version that replaced Isotropic shut down a few years ago (2017, I think?) and has been replaced by a client that people seem to like (I certainly do), found at https://dominion.games https://dominion.games.
    - sweettea 6y ago
      Indeed, I was unaware. Thanks, I think, for the pointer!
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
pcmaffey 6y ago
I just played my first game of Dominion (2nd edition) with my wife last night. Really fun, except, coming from MtG, it became obvious to me to build an engine with +cards and +actions. My last 2 hands I cycled through my entire deck multiple times until I played basically every card. This seemed a bit tedious, overpowered, and easily achievable. Having only played 1 game though, I'm not sure: is this how almost all games are won?
- anthony_romeo 6y ago
  The strategy comes in the race to achieve points before the game ends. It turns out that buying lots of cards and building a massive engine on a whim may not be more efficient than just buying silvers/golds/provinces all the time. There are lots of subtleties in the timing of purchases, and determining ways to create a slightly more efficient machine than your opponent. IMO it's an terrific 1-on-1 game where meaningful strategic and tactical decisions are made, but I find the game a lot more "fun" with three or four players (five players takes way too long)
- rfurmani 6y ago
  Did you win when you did that? The strategy varies quite a lot between instances of the game, but often I find that those kinds of “engines” happen too late in the game to really be valuable, and by then someone might have bought gold and provinces.
  - hansvm 6y ago
    The typical length of a game varies with the number of players. It sounds like their first game was with 2 players and like you typically are in larger groups?
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - mattmaroon 6y ago
      I would definitely say that engines do better heads up in general than they do with more players.
WhompingWindows 6y ago
We've played a couple hundred games ourselves. Each player in our group has predictable styles -- one is the aggressor, one is the engine-economist, one is the creative, one is the flexible. I'm the card-chooser, we have around ~10 expansions in a box and I pick around 5 randomly, then I round out with fan picks or what we think it needs. The game truly is deep. There are so many cards, numerous mechanics, counting your own and your opponent's cards, timing your green-buying, balancing deck control vs. buying high-value cards, etc.
ocdtrekkie 6y ago
I feel a game between two Dominion aficionados is probably pretty fun, but as the person with a friend who's into Dominion, I hate the stupid game. Very simply: Nobody else around the table is going to know the game better than him, and hence, there really isn't much sport in bringing your Dominion box out and suggesting we play. This reviewer is perfectly proud of the fact that a newbie doesn't stand a chance against a veteran player. But that also makes it a terrible party game. There should always be benefits to experience and skill, but the near complete lack of randomness in Dominion, compared to something simpler like Ascension, makes it really unpleasant to play if there's a skill gap.
- phreack 6y ago
  I feel any party game that also intends to have mechanics prone to skill imbalances needs some built in, playtested method of handicapping. I don't mind playing (say) Super Smash with a total pro when we can easily agree that they have less lives than me, a newb, for example.
  - ocdtrekkie 6y ago
    Yeah, another commenter suggested a handicap too, but how I am supposed to figure out what handicap is "fair". If this was important to the game developers, it should be on them to determine it.
- colmvp 6y ago
  You could make a rule that the more experienced player has to start with a handicap. That's fairly standard in Chess when an experienced player wants to play against a much weaker opponent.
  - lmm 6y ago
    One of the reasons I prefer Tanto Cuore (which is more or less a Dominion clone) is that there are always attack options on the board. Usually when I introduce a new group to the game there'll come a point about 3/4 of the way through where they all notice that I'm ahead and spend a round or two all buying Bad Habit cards for me, and I nod to myself and say "yep, they've got it" and lose.
333c 6y ago
It was a little surprising to see this here after I just came from playing Dominion :) I think it articulates well a lot of what I like about the game. I'm not very good at the game, compared to other players out there, but I still think there's accessible strategy and variety. I'm curious what motivated posting this particular article now… And by the way, this should have a (2012) tag in the title @dang.
moron4hire 6y ago
I fucking hate the strategizing that goes on with board and card games. You can't just have a casual game. Someone in your group thinks themselves a "player" and has to ruin the day with minimaxing or whining when they're strategy didn't work against novices because novices are essentially random agents. You can't just play a game and have some fun in the moment. Everything has to be dissected. Every move you make has to be criticized. It's disgusting. I like games, but I almost never play them because I can't stand the fucking nerd culture around them. It's probably been the going with my wife to Mensa's Mindgames convention every year that has pushed me here. Too many people tie up their identity into being able to best everyone else 100% of the time. Frankly, being good at card games doesn't make you smart. Anyone could do a frequency analysis and figure out an optimal strategy. That's just being boring and an asshole. Honestly, my favorite games either have much more of a random element, or take a crowd judgement, rather than a Turing Machine-cum-card-deck. If I wanted to program, I'd write a program.
- jitl 6y ago
  This sounds more like a culture fit problem (Mensa seems ALL ABOUT being Smartest????) then a problem with board games at large. Perhaps try playing games while drinking/drugs; this adds the random variety and tends to filter out the hardcore minmaxers
Closi 6y ago
> More importantly, your opponents help dictate your tempo. The goal isn’t to score as many VPs as you can; it’s to have the most VPs by the end of the game. How your opponents play affects how the game ends, and which of the game-end conditions you should pursue. I’ve been curious about if this is actually a thing - it definitely happens in real life when playing, but why? Surely absent of interaction cards (which some games don’t have) there would be a strategy to optimise and reduce the number of turns to getting the required victory points regardless of how fast your opponent is going.
- 333c 6y ago
  The more victory cards ("green") you buy, generally the less effective your deck becomes (because most victory cards don't do anything other than count for points). This means that buying VPs makes it (generally) harder to buy more VPs. The smaller your deck, the more pronounced this effect. All of this taken together means that you end up having to target some point along the continuum between "get points quickly but fizzle out early" and "long slow burn to getting a lot of points." If you go for the "quick" strategy but the game doesn't end quickly, your opponent can take the extra time to pass you in VP, and vice versa if you choose the "slow" strategy but the game is short. And it's not just two options — like I said, there's a whole spectrum of choice.
  - Closi 6y ago
    Sorry if I wasn't being clear, what I meant was isn't there an optimum tempo between being 'too quick' and getting choked with VP cards and 'too slow' and not getting choked, regardless of what my opponent does (excluding the effect of interaction cards). Like - does what my opponent do significantly change my strategy? (other than balance your deck to respond to attacks). Surely the best tempo is still the best tempo.
    - lmm 6y ago
      The game length is significantly different depending on whether all players are following the same strategy (so buying the same cards) or not. So you have to adapt to that, and there are meta questions about that.
tener 6y ago
Deep down in the review sits what can be a deal breaker for some - including myself: > X-Factors > > I prefer to play this game online instead of in person. First, games are significantly faster (10 minutes instead of 30, plus no setup/teardown), but more importantly, it eliminates the need to constantly shuffle your cards. If you play this game in person, you have to deal with these annoying factors, which I admit may detract from the experience. Then again, this is a flaw common to most Eurogames, so take from that what you will. I play board games exclusively in physical form. The moment you are playing using computer, your competition suddenly grows enormously and some of your design choices become flawed (because e.g. keeping state is hard for people and trivial for computers). I don't believe board games can win that competition. The physical form has its unique appeal: tactile experience, being offline and distraction free, no stupid sign up requirements etc. Of course I realise there will be some that disagree with me, but that is fine!
molokovello 6y ago
This article is from 2012, so while it is still an interesting read and the base concepts of the game discussed remain there today, it is also pretty outdated nowadays. The game has evolved, with a lot of new expansions added (coming with new cards and new mechanics) and the communities knowledge about the game has grown. If you'd like to get to know the game from a more modern angle, I recommend checking out the dominion discord [0]. It's where a lot of the discussion happens nowadays. If you have any questions about the game, you can just ask in #dominion and there will usually be people willing to help. There are also dedicated strategy discussion channels (e.g. #kingdom-analysis), there's a bot through which you can access data about competitive play (with some really neat and detailed stat sheets about individual cards, made by a member of the community), and you can learn by watching high level players play and commentate on their games. [0]: https://discord.gg/qdFEjxkgQE https://discord.gg/qdFEjxkgQE
brainzap 6y ago
I only played a few dominion games but could already feel that the Witch card is strong because it forces players to adjust. I also think it has a slightly higher winrate.

125 points by luu 6y ago

The enormous variety is absolutely a strength, but can also be a weakness. When my daughter was a baby, my partner and I used to play a lot of Dominion with another couple who had had a child around the same time— it worked well as a quick, easily-interruptible game that could mostly be played with one hand as needed. Initially it was the Intrigue base game (theme: cards with choices) and Prosperity (theme: treasures with side effects) and we played probably several hundred games. But later on as the other couple got more and more of the expansions, the game became less and less balanced— even with just Seaside and Hinterlands added to the game, it would have required significant study of all of the additional cards and their effects in order to have any hope of forming a coherent strategy on each game. And since that time several more expansions have come out [1]. Is this bad? No, not necessarily. Obviously if the various modules are stored separately in their individual boxes it's easy to just play with the cards that everyone at the table feels they have a reasonable comfort level with. But I think that feeling of being overwhelmed by the possibilities did ultimately lead us to playing other, more self-contained games like Agricola. [1]: http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Expansions http://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Expansions

dmix 6y ago
> But later on as the other couple got more and more of the expansions, I had the same experience for a different game. This is an annoying dynamic of playing board games (I guess with any group you play with frequently). Damn those expansion couples! Trying to read up about strategy online to keep up just kills the fun. Although I'm no expert on board gaming so take my word with a grain of salt.
- adrianN 6y ago
  For me, minmaxing takes the fun out of any game. I like plays best when everyone has played the game often enough to know the rules, but now often enough to really think through a strategy.
  - colmvp 6y ago
    For me, constantly losing or being close to last place takes the fun out of the game. I've played 7 Wonders for years, and recently played with friends. I kept losing despite thinking I had a grasp on the game. Recently I read an exhaustive advanced guide on BGG and from that point forward I've finished close to 1st/2nd with my friends.
    - slx26 6y ago
      Yeah, related to this, I wanted to comment on this paragraph on the article: > There should be no reason to ever study a game where a beginner stands a reasonable chance of winning. I want a game that rewards experience, that permits further study, that has meaning to its replayability. I agree with you and disagree with the article on this point. I think a truly good game must have an explicit, adjustable factor of randomness or odds so you can match different levels of players and play for fun. It's hard to balance, but that's the point of game design: rules simple enough to be accessible, but that at the same time can combine in infinite ways giving each game depth, and have the opportunity to match players of different levels without that being overwhelming.
      - mattmaroon 6y ago
        The only game I have ever found that is both worthy of study and where a newbie could beat a master a reasonable percentage of the time is poker. The randomness makes poker nearly impossible to study though. You can only look back and determine if your decision was right if you had had complete information, but you didn’t and won’t in the future so that’s not as meaningful as it may be on other games.
  - lmm 6y ago
    I enjoy the process of figuring out the right strategy; one of the things Dominion does well is that it gives you that "figuring out the best strategy" experience every time, in a way, because each time you're seeing a different spread of cards and having to figure out what the winning strategy is. I'm not sure how you're defining "minmaxing"; for me playing to win is very much part of the fun, but a game goes stale once you've figured out the strategy to the point that you're just executing it every time you play.
- jnwatson 6y ago
  Expansions are a problem with a lot of board games: More rules to remember, more parts to set up. There are several games I’m hesitant to pull out because the expansions increased the complexity too much to explain to a beginner.
  - watwut 6y ago
    Can't you play those without expansions?
    - jnwatson 6y ago
      Sure, but they get mixed altogether.

darkwizard42 6y ago

I LOVE this game but also think the steep learning curve for any new entrants into a group which is already familiar with the sets in question gives a big advantage to the veteran players. I also think with too many expansions mixed together you end up with some very interesting and sometimes very dull games (all +money, no +action or +card). The sets are very well-designed to play within themselves, but when mixed with others the results can be mixed. Last, too many mats and tokens to keep track of really detracts from fun with the game. All this being said I have 6 expansions I have picked up with my partner over Craigslist and FB Marketplace and will continue to hunt for more!

Nbox9 6y ago

I’ve played over 1000 games of 1v1 Dominion. I think the author is overstating the strategy space of the game. For example, a common strategy is to build an “engine” using +draw +action cards. There are _many_ possible engines to build, but that is more tactical. Edit: I just checked my online profile, and I’ve played over 6000 games.

cfmcdonald 6y ago
Generally in boardgaming "tactical" is used to refer to moment-to-moment/turn-to-turn decision making, reacting to the immediate situation. I don't see how that applies here, you can't decide on a draw/action strategy at the start of the game and then decide as you go which cards you're going to use for it. I guess you can, but it seems like a bad idea. To be successful you'd need to start by studying the card offer and seeing if draw/action strategy is possible and advisable. To do that you need to understand all the possible ways to build an engine(if any) from the available cards and how they might interact with other cards that are available. That seems like strategy to me.

mattmaroon 6y ago

I've played a lot more games than that and used to be one of the highest rated players on Isotropic and then on the current site. I don't know what this guy's talking about at some points. People were hammering duke/dutchies back in the isotropic game. I don't think anyone overlooked the kings court/goons/masquerade pin for one game, let alone thousands. It just doesn't come up much. He leaves out my biggest criticism, there is no form of errata/banning. When an overpowered card enters the fray, you just have to play it. Minion's on the board? Guess we're just fighting for 'em. Chapel should cost more than 2 no matter what Vaccarino says. Probably 5. Etc. Vaccarino is a great game designer but I think the playtesting could be better sometimes, and unlike CCGs with developed tournament systems there's no changing a card once it's out there ever.

veilrap 6y ago
I disagree about Chapel's cost. A 5 cost Chapel would lead to extraordinarily unbalanced games where a good starting hand basically sets you up to win. Having the cost be 2 means that everyone gets access to it in the first two hands with out there being much swingy-ness in terms of the initial shuffle. Maybe an argument could be made for 3 or 4 in the sense that everyone would still have access to it, but 5 just seems too high.
- SilasX 6y ago
  >I disagree about Chapel's cost. A 5 cost Chapel would lead to extraordinarily unbalanced games where a good starting hand basically sets you up to win. It already has that. If you draw 2 coppers in your first hand (and thus five in the second or vice versa), you can start out with the awesome five-cost card and chapel.
  - kevinmchugh 6y ago
    For serious competitive play, all players should have the same opening split, or get to choose 5/2 or 4/3. Chapel games tend to make this weakness obvious
    - 6y ago

sweettea 6y ago

Theory is a legendary player, and his take on the game is truly excellent. I wish the simple, fast, text interface of the old isotropic implementation still existed though. I had a definite addiction to Dominion in college - three hours a day online for months - and the isotropic implementation shutting down was the thing that finally cured me. The depth, and the possibility of just ten minutes more for a wholly new kingdom, was so incredibly enjoyable, even if I never became an elite player...

hobs 6y ago
I remember setting up a reverse proxy so that the people in my call center (job at the time) could play each other on boring calls - as long as everyone was cool moves could take as long as you wanted. I was really sad to see the new interface that it was shut down for was some flash monstrosity that was pay per-expansion pack, definitely killed my interest in playing it online.
- 333c 6y ago
  Just in case you're not aware, the online version that replaced Isotropic shut down a few years ago (2017, I think?) and has been replaced by a client that people seem to like (I certainly do), found at https://dominion.games https://dominion.games.
  - sweettea 6y ago
    Indeed, I was unaware. Thanks, I think, for the pointer!

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

pcmaffey 6y ago

I just played my first game of Dominion (2nd edition) with my wife last night. Really fun, except, coming from MtG, it became obvious to me to build an engine with +cards and +actions. My last 2 hands I cycled through my entire deck multiple times until I played basically every card. This seemed a bit tedious, overpowered, and easily achievable. Having only played 1 game though, I'm not sure: is this how almost all games are won?

anthony_romeo 6y ago
The strategy comes in the race to achieve points before the game ends. It turns out that buying lots of cards and building a massive engine on a whim may not be more efficient than just buying silvers/golds/provinces all the time. There are lots of subtleties in the timing of purchases, and determining ways to create a slightly more efficient machine than your opponent. IMO it's an terrific 1-on-1 game where meaningful strategic and tactical decisions are made, but I find the game a lot more "fun" with three or four players (five players takes way too long)
rfurmani 6y ago
Did you win when you did that? The strategy varies quite a lot between instances of the game, but often I find that those kinds of “engines” happen too late in the game to really be valuable, and by then someone might have bought gold and provinces.
- hansvm 6y ago
  The typical length of a game varies with the number of players. It sounds like their first game was with 2 players and like you typically are in larger groups?
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - mattmaroon 6y ago
    I would definitely say that engines do better heads up in general than they do with more players.

WhompingWindows 6y ago

We've played a couple hundred games ourselves. Each player in our group has predictable styles -- one is the aggressor, one is the engine-economist, one is the creative, one is the flexible. I'm the card-chooser, we have around ~10 expansions in a box and I pick around 5 randomly, then I round out with fan picks or what we think it needs. The game truly is deep. There are so many cards, numerous mechanics, counting your own and your opponent's cards, timing your green-buying, balancing deck control vs. buying high-value cards, etc.

ocdtrekkie 6y ago

I feel a game between two Dominion aficionados is probably pretty fun, but as the person with a friend who's into Dominion, I hate the stupid game. Very simply: Nobody else around the table is going to know the game better than him, and hence, there really isn't much sport in bringing your Dominion box out and suggesting we play. This reviewer is perfectly proud of the fact that a newbie doesn't stand a chance against a veteran player. But that also makes it a terrible party game. There should always be benefits to experience and skill, but the near complete lack of randomness in Dominion, compared to something simpler like Ascension, makes it really unpleasant to play if there's a skill gap.

phreack 6y ago
I feel any party game that also intends to have mechanics prone to skill imbalances needs some built in, playtested method of handicapping. I don't mind playing (say) Super Smash with a total pro when we can easily agree that they have less lives than me, a newb, for example.
- ocdtrekkie 6y ago
  Yeah, another commenter suggested a handicap too, but how I am supposed to figure out what handicap is "fair". If this was important to the game developers, it should be on them to determine it.
colmvp 6y ago
You could make a rule that the more experienced player has to start with a handicap. That's fairly standard in Chess when an experienced player wants to play against a much weaker opponent.
- lmm 6y ago
  One of the reasons I prefer Tanto Cuore (which is more or less a Dominion clone) is that there are always attack options on the board. Usually when I introduce a new group to the game there'll come a point about 3/4 of the way through where they all notice that I'm ahead and spend a round or two all buying Bad Habit cards for me, and I nod to myself and say "yep, they've got it" and lose.

333c 6y ago

It was a little surprising to see this here after I just came from playing Dominion :) I think it articulates well a lot of what I like about the game. I'm not very good at the game, compared to other players out there, but I still think there's accessible strategy and variety. I'm curious what motivated posting this particular article now… And by the way, this should have a (2012) tag in the title @dang.

moron4hire 6y ago

I fucking hate the strategizing that goes on with board and card games. You can't just have a casual game. Someone in your group thinks themselves a "player" and has to ruin the day with minimaxing or whining when they're strategy didn't work against novices because novices are essentially random agents. You can't just play a game and have some fun in the moment. Everything has to be dissected. Every move you make has to be criticized. It's disgusting. I like games, but I almost never play them because I can't stand the fucking nerd culture around them. It's probably been the going with my wife to Mensa's Mindgames convention every year that has pushed me here. Too many people tie up their identity into being able to best everyone else 100% of the time. Frankly, being good at card games doesn't make you smart. Anyone could do a frequency analysis and figure out an optimal strategy. That's just being boring and an asshole. Honestly, my favorite games either have much more of a random element, or take a crowd judgement, rather than a Turing Machine-cum-card-deck. If I wanted to program, I'd write a program.

jitl 6y ago
This sounds more like a culture fit problem (Mensa seems ALL ABOUT being Smartest????) then a problem with board games at large. Perhaps try playing games while drinking/drugs; this adds the random variety and tends to filter out the hardcore minmaxers

Closi 6y ago

> More importantly, your opponents help dictate your tempo. The goal isn’t to score as many VPs as you can; it’s to have the most VPs by the end of the game. How your opponents play affects how the game ends, and which of the game-end conditions you should pursue. I’ve been curious about if this is actually a thing - it definitely happens in real life when playing, but why? Surely absent of interaction cards (which some games don’t have) there would be a strategy to optimise and reduce the number of turns to getting the required victory points regardless of how fast your opponent is going.

333c 6y ago
The more victory cards ("green") you buy, generally the less effective your deck becomes (because most victory cards don't do anything other than count for points). This means that buying VPs makes it (generally) harder to buy more VPs. The smaller your deck, the more pronounced this effect. All of this taken together means that you end up having to target some point along the continuum between "get points quickly but fizzle out early" and "long slow burn to getting a lot of points." If you go for the "quick" strategy but the game doesn't end quickly, your opponent can take the extra time to pass you in VP, and vice versa if you choose the "slow" strategy but the game is short. And it's not just two options — like I said, there's a whole spectrum of choice.
- Closi 6y ago
  Sorry if I wasn't being clear, what I meant was isn't there an optimum tempo between being 'too quick' and getting choked with VP cards and 'too slow' and not getting choked, regardless of what my opponent does (excluding the effect of interaction cards). Like - does what my opponent do significantly change my strategy? (other than balance your deck to respond to attacks). Surely the best tempo is still the best tempo.
  - lmm 6y ago
    The game length is significantly different depending on whether all players are following the same strategy (so buying the same cards) or not. So you have to adapt to that, and there are meta questions about that.

tener 6y ago

Deep down in the review sits what can be a deal breaker for some - including myself: > X-Factors > > I prefer to play this game online instead of in person. First, games are significantly faster (10 minutes instead of 30, plus no setup/teardown), but more importantly, it eliminates the need to constantly shuffle your cards. If you play this game in person, you have to deal with these annoying factors, which I admit may detract from the experience. Then again, this is a flaw common to most Eurogames, so take from that what you will. I play board games exclusively in physical form. The moment you are playing using computer, your competition suddenly grows enormously and some of your design choices become flawed (because e.g. keeping state is hard for people and trivial for computers). I don't believe board games can win that competition. The physical form has its unique appeal: tactile experience, being offline and distraction free, no stupid sign up requirements etc. Of course I realise there will be some that disagree with me, but that is fine!

molokovello 6y ago

This article is from 2012, so while it is still an interesting read and the base concepts of the game discussed remain there today, it is also pretty outdated nowadays. The game has evolved, with a lot of new expansions added (coming with new cards and new mechanics) and the communities knowledge about the game has grown. If you'd like to get to know the game from a more modern angle, I recommend checking out the dominion discord [0]. It's where a lot of the discussion happens nowadays. If you have any questions about the game, you can just ask in #dominion and there will usually be people willing to help. There are also dedicated strategy discussion channels (e.g. #kingdom-analysis), there's a bot through which you can access data about competitive play (with some really neat and detailed stat sheets about individual cards, made by a member of the community), and you can learn by watching high level players play and commentate on their games. [0]: https://discord.gg/qdFEjxkgQE https://discord.gg/qdFEjxkgQE

brainzap 6y ago

I only played a few dominion games but could already feel that the Witch card is strong because it forces players to adjust. I also think it has a slightly higher winrate.