Stats:
No. of players: 2-4
Amount of time to play: 30 minutes
Age requirements: 8+
Set-up time: 5-10 min

Description of Dominion Rules:

The game Dominion has been described as a collectible card game (CCG) in a box. In a CCG you buy random booster packs to build a deck. In Dominion you buy cards to create your deck as you play the game. You may buy more money, actions or victory points. Victory point cards don’t help you buy anything so you don’t want to buy too many too early. Finding a balance between buying money and actions and when to buy victory point cards will usually win you the game.

You set up the game by placing 10 types of Kingdom cards in the center of the table you add the treasure (money) cards and the victory point cards also. These are the cards you may buy on your turn and are called the supply. The action card piles consist of ten cards that are all the exact same. The treasure piles are copper, silver and gold and have a varying amount in each pile. Lastly there are three stacks that give you VPs Estates (1 VP), duchys (3 VPs) and provinces (6 VPs).

Each player’s deck begins the same with 7 copper (worth 1 treasure) and 3 estates. You shuffle your deck and draw the top 5 cards from your draw pile.

Playing the game is easy as A,B,C…that is there are three phases to your turn. A stands for Action, during this phase you may play one action card from your hand. B would be the buy phase and allows you to buy one card from the supply. C is for cookie…I mean Cleanup and during this phase you take what you bought and the rest of your hand and place them in your discard pile. After that you draw a new hand of 5 cards from your draw pile. If you run out of cards in your draw pile you reshuffle your discard pile and that becomes your draw pile again. In other words you will be using the cards you buy over and over again to buy more cards.

The game ends when either 3 piles in the supply are gone or when all the provinces have been bought. At that point you gather your entire deck, separate your victory point cards and count them up. The player with the most VPs wins the game.

Finally the great thing about this game is that is comes with 25 different Kingdom cards. So each game can be different as different combinations of Kingdom cards will grant different actions. The directions come with some preset combinations to try, but you can also just randomly determine the cards for the supply.

A Quick Review of Dominion:
I really like the game Dominion it is easy to learn and play and pretty quick once you get the hang of it. There are many strategies you can employ to win the game. There is a bit of trial and error with each different set of cards in the supply, but after one game with a combination you can choose a strategy that will work with the current configuration.

I may have to revisit this game review as I have only played it a couple dozen times and with only a few different card combinations. So far I like the gameplay and think it is a great game.

Score and synopsis: (Click here for an explanation of these review categories.)
Strategy 5 out of 6
Luck 3 out of 6
Player Interaction 3 out of 6
Replay Value 5 out of 6
Complexity 3 out of 6
Fun 5 out of 6
Overall 5 out of 6