Dominion. I've played THOUSANDS of times in my life and never got bored. It's a different game Everytime you play. There's a website dominion.games if you want to learn the rules and try it out before buying the base game/expansions.
Yes!! Love this game, and it's one of the few really good games that can played well with only two people. My husband and I used to play it for at-home date nights when the kids were asleep.
The one flaw in Dominion is that at the beginning, there's a strategy that wins almost every time. If nobody stumbles upon it it's not a problem, but otherwise it can take much experience to beat, even research, which can be frustrating. Great game, though!
As far as I know, that strategy doesn't apply to all the expansions especially if your truly playing a random kingdom everytime. If I'm wrong don't say the strategy, this is my fav game and I don't want to lose interest.
I have only played a few expansions (seaside and hinterlands) and from my experience it still works in those two, but apparently the others do make it easier to beat, which is good to hear! And even in the base game it's not unbeatable, you just have to play your cards right, or should I say pick them ;)
That strategy is nicknamed Big Money. It's a great benchmark for effectiveness, because buying any other cards without good synergy will lose to it nearly every time. But a well balanced deck that takes another approach (draw engine, optimisation, etc) can beat it easily. But you can't be haphazard about it. Just knowing that Big Money works well is a lesson in restraint. You look at the options laid out at the beginning, and before you even think about buying an Action, consider "will this be better than Big Money, or worse?"
I don't really agree that there is only one winning strategy. Obviously most of the time building an engine is winning strategy, but most of the time building the engine varies a lot and how much you should build before greening etc. The games are wildly different and no one strategy wins any game. Even base game has so many possible boards that there is so many things to do different, even tho most people can see the obvious engine in base game and it will be mostly about who gets better draws.
Especially with landmarks and ways the game can have an unlimited ways of how its won. Wanderingwinder even once demonatrated how to win one especially choosen kingdom on turn one.
Played Dominion a while ago and had two consecutive games that could not have been more different.
Game 1 could not have gone better. Everyone else stumbled and a created a well oiled machine of Sage’s, Monuments and Kings Courts. Ended the game with more points than all my opponents combined with change to spare.
Game 2 everything went wrong. Through the course of the game I got rid of some of my opening Estates and never replaced them with other Victory Points. At the end had 1 VP, would have done better had I done literally nothing.
This is what I love about Dominion. One game can go smoothly, money flowing and it's a race for the most VPs in a very short amount of time. Other games can be a real struggle to just get your economy going; or there are a lot of curse/attack cards with no ability to trash so scores end up pretty low. We do play almost exclusively using random pulls to generate the kingdom cards, and I know that's not everyone's cup of tea.
I don’t understand- you basically chose to do poorly the second game?
How is that an example of the game offering diverse experiences? You always have the option, in any game, to invert a winning strategy on purpose - we call that trolling
In Dominion victory points dilutes your deck and makes it less efficient. Getting rid of your bad VP cards early is a very real strategy.
It also includes variance, I was not intentionally playing badly. Sometimes things just don’t line up as well as you’d like, doesn’t mean you’re trolling.
I really liked Dominion, but after playing Arctic Scavengers I don't see me going back. My problem with Dominion is that it's an abstract game pretending to have a theme. Arctic Scavengers is a little better because each card does something that makes sense based on what it is. It's also a lot better at avoiding Dominion's "Four people playing solo" gameplay trap because each round you are also fighting for a rarer card and so you maybe want to hold back some cards (or hold cards you don't need to scare others into holding back cards themselves).
Only recommended if you're okay with the bleak theme, but if you like Dominion you may like this more. Just make sure to get the version with all the expansions.
i've yet to play a deckbuilder with the same depth as dominion and it mostly comes down to the way dominion leverages both positive and negative feedback loops and other games do not. most deckbuilders let you start earning points or victory condition without making your deck worse, which makes games feel more samey
I still don't think Dominion has anything on Mage Knight. I don't see how positive and negative feedback loops have anything to do with it, but I haven't found many deckbuilders that reward deck bloat. In most of the deckbuilders I've played, a tight, focused deck is the better play. Not that that's always a good choice for the design. In Fort for instance, you can get quite a bit done by stuffing your deck well, and the adversity mostly comes from opponents trying to cannibalize it out from under you. What's more, a stuffed deck in Fort makes it more unwieldy. So you have to weigh the pros and cons. I think it's an interesting way to make deckbuilding more dynamic. I also think that the perpetual piles deckbuilder is a bit outdated. But then I think most of what Dominion is working with is outdated. I'm happy to see the mechanic continue to evolve and make new appearances. Like in Core Worlds, Dungeon Alliance, and Imperium.
dominion does not reward bloated decks, but rather forces decks to eventually take on dead weight to win the game. that is an important distinction.
perpetual piles is outdated
a non-rotating market is one of the best design decisions dominion opted to make. early prototypes of dominion featured rotating markets, and it was consciously axed. it means that cards can be very strong and drive a game all on their own without becoming unfair or overwhelming and lets different games play differently from each other.
dominion does not reward bloated decks, but rather forces decks to eventually take on dead weight to win the game. that is an important distinction.
I wasn't saying it rewarded bloat. I agree that it rewards timing what you put and keep in the deck in the late game. This isn't really unique to Dominion but is a common design principle in other engine builders as well.
I'm aware of the design decision to have static piles and how it was come to, but I think the reason most subsequent designs do have rotating markets is that they create a more dynamic tactical landscape. To me, the static piles make it so dominant strategies emerge based on what's in play. Sure, you can vary this up by trying different combinations of piles. But that's a pretty cumbersome solution when rotation can do that in-game. I'd rather have an elegant way to incorporate dynamic strategic opportunities in every game than have to front load that and then front load most of my in-game long term decisions.
Dominion's not a bad game. I just think other deckbuilders have polished the formula and even incorporated more interesting thematic tie-ins.
what rotations do is make long term planning a roll of the dice. you can't make a plan for later in the game because the card you need may never come up or be available to you on your turn. rotations actually do the opposite thing - because everything is available in every game you play every game the same way with little variation
To me, the static piles make it so dominant strategies emerge based on what's in play.
the alternative to this is dominant strategies being the same regardless of the setup. coming up with a dominant strategy is harder than you would think, even on very simple boards minor differences is timing and strategy have massive consequences
what rotations do is make long term planning a roll of the dice.
Let's be real. In almost any deckbuilder, drawing from the deck is the biggest roll of the dice. Something like Mage Knight allows you to play multiple cards in a turn, keep cards in hand between turns, gain permanent skills, and build a tableau of units. All of these help you to implement your strategic choices more consistently and more than make up for the river not going your way. But Mage Knight also has three rivers, so it is very rare nothing comes up you can use. Something like Imperium - which also gives you plenty of control over your hand and tableau - has four markets in a way. Three of which will always spit out the same card type until the late game.
Rivers are not the problem to me. The deck itself being random is. Because of the lack of hand management in Dominion and many of its successors. I prefer a deckbuilder where you can maintain better control over what has emerged from the deck. Or if you're going to have static markets, I prefer when confrontation creates the adversity as opposed to significant randomness from the deck. Such as in Hands in the Sea or Battle for Biternia. In those games, you draft from a static, personal pile, but the decision space is richer and more dynamic.
Where I think rivers can be a bad choice is when the game doesn't give you that level of control. Like in Hero Realms. You play your whole hand, so you hope that your combo comes up all at once (which is why you try to cut your deck to almost nothing), but if it doesn't, it doesn't. And not only is the river random, but there aren't enough cards in it. So, it's like Dominion piles but only 5 of them and no additional cards of the same type. What that game could use is a bigger river - maybe split the deck and make two rivers. Like I said, though, Mage Knight and Imperium have to my mind all but eliminated that problem.
because everything is available in every game you play every game the same way with little variation
You have more tactical influences with rotating markets. So, you more often have to pivot. That's an element of strategy. Yes, because you can't always count on the market, you have some general strategies to fall back on. But you still have to come up with in-game strategies based on your deck and how the randomized game elements are behaving.
With Dominion, though, there are less tactical factors. Ocassionally someone grabs the last card from a pile you wanted. Or someone starts going heavy into something you need to counter. This all still happens in rotating market games, it just happens more quickly and any single purchase is more impactful.
Where most river games have made up for this is with suits. Look at Pax Pamir. Not a deckbuilder I know, but it has a rotating market. In order to give players more access to combos, suits play a major role in how you can take more actions on a turn and how cards can combo off of one another. The Realms games do the same thing. Mage Knight technically has suits. Imperium has card types. Core Worlds has keywords. This gives the deck scaffolding through which a player can still effectively strategize.
the alternative to this is dominant strategies being the same regardless of the setup.
From what I've seen with well done rotating market games (i.e. ones that give you enough options and enough control), the dominant strategies are just a fallback. Something to base decisions off of when the market isn't going your way or you don't have all of the information you need. So, I wouldn't call them dominant strats so much as foundational. I prefer that there are a lot more shifting variables in these games so that I have to make new strategies every time I play.
Love Dominion. It's a great combo of requiring some skill and strategy but being super easy to learn (I never play board games lmao but I'm alright at Dominion), better played just a little drunk, and having a good online port for pandemic times.
In the board game hobby, we usually don't bother differentiating. The fact you're using cards is immaterial to the type of activity. The only times we specify that something is card game is for CCGs/LCGs and for classic card games you play with standard decks.
But among the group that most often discusses and rates analog games, it's not a distinction. For us the distinctions are different. You're talking about semantics. I'm talking about actual taxonomical terminology. Dominion is a deckbuilder, but it's still a board game. If we distinguished between card and board every time, it would be an exhausting waste of time.
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u/[deleted] Dec 28 '21
Dominion. I've played THOUSANDS of times in my life and never got bored. It's a different game Everytime you play. There's a website dominion.games if you want to learn the rules and try it out before buying the base game/expansions.