Dominion Review

If you haven’t heard of Dominion, then you’ve probably just accidentally stumbled onto this site while looking for Sasha Grey videos. Anyone who has even a passing interest in tabletop gaming will almost certainly have heard about this juggernaut, this behemoth, this Dominion.

I like this game. I hate that font.

Dominion is a card game. It comes in a big old box, a “standard” sized board game box. But all that you get inside is a big stack of cards. Most of the cards are multiple copies of the same card. Your first impression when opening the box is “Oh, is this it? Oh shit. Oh shit. Should have bought Dungeon Twister 2!”

It works like this – you start with a small deck of cards, and draw some into your hand. Then you can spend cards from your hand to buy new cards from those laid out on the table. Then you discard the cards you buy. Then you discard any cards from your hand you haven’t spent. And that’s the game.

That really IS the game. When you get through your discard pile, you shuffle the whole lot into a new deck, and draw another hand. Your deck grows throughout the game, as you buy cards. Essentially, the game is the deck-building aspect of CCGs distilled into a half hour of quick thinking and strategy.

You win the game by having the most victory point cards in your deck at the end of the game. There’s a land grab for these cards near the end of the game, because the cards are entirely useless in the early part of the deck building process. You can’t spend them to buy cards, so they just clog up your deck like hateful things. And yet you need them to win. And so it becomes a game of immaculate timing. A game of judging just when to start making a dash for the prize.

So what about these cards that start on the table? The ones that you can buy? Well, some of them are treasure cards, and it’s essential to cash in regularly. For example, you can spend a few of your small change treasure cards to buy one treasure card of a higher denomination, and that will, when you get those discards reshuffled, put some extra funds into your deck. You can spend three of these…

...to get one of these.

The key thing to remember is that everything that you spend and everything that you buy goes into your discard pile and WILL come back into your deck. So you’re not really burning six coins to buy three in the example above. You’re burning six to secure nine.

Then there are the Action cards. These can be played at the start of your turn, and do various rule-breaking things. They allow you to draw more cards, offer additional opportunities to buy, additional opportunities to play Action cards and additional opportunities to fuck your opponents over.

There’s a real sense of building a little engine, a little economy machine, and in each turn you find yourself analysing the best way to get maximum productivity from your deck, and the best way to react to whatever process your opponent has in motion.

It sounds dull. I know it does. I’m sitting here explaining it and I know it sounds dull. But it isn’t. It all moves at a fair clip – draw, play cards, discard, discard, shuffle, draw. There’s a real thrill in watching your deck grow bigger with every turn, and when you’ve made some good buying decisions and find that a draw turns out a perfect little hand that you had visualised a few turns earlier, it’s as satisfying as cleaving a skull in Warhammer Quest or shooting a Genestealer in Space Hulk.

Okay, maybe not THAT satisfying.

There are 25 different Action cards in the base game, and you only ever play with 10 types at any one time. That means there’s a huge amount of replayability. The mind (okay, my mind) frankly boggles at the possibilities. Then there are the two new titles that are already on the market. Dominion: Intrigue, and Dominion: Seaside. Both introducing new cards to the game, both firmly on my Want List. This is a game that looks like it could run and run, and looks like it certainly intends to.

I’ll say one thing, though. Dominion is a fun game, but it might not be for everybody. Despite its current reputation in gaming as the monster that has forced everything else off the table, I think that there might be people out there who find it all a little bit sedate. You’ll get out of Dominion what you put into it. You’ll definitely enjoy it more if you’re the type of person who will notice the elegance of its design. It’s a gamer’s game, I think. Yep. Yep. That’s what I mean.

“It’s a gamer’s game.”

Faidutti + Cards = EXCITE!

If Bruno Faidutti (of Citadels fame) decides he’s giving us a new card game, we better all sit up and pay attention.

Fantasy Flight have announced a game called Letter of Marque, which sees you playing the part of bold corsairs carrying valuable wares across the high seas. In card form.

It’s something else to get excited about in this amazing year for tabletop gaming. Read about it on the Fantasy Flight site and gaze at the delicious box art RIGHT HERE RIGHT NOW:

Citadels Review

Citadels. Ahhhh, Citadels.

It’s a card game. It’s a city-building game. It’s a role-playing game. No. It’s a role choosing game.

In Citadels, each player is dealt a hand of cards representing areas of a city. The player has to pay to build these areas. Once eight areas are built by any one player, the game ends. The first player out gets a point bonus and then the cities are scored. Some city areas are worth more points. Some combinations of areas give further point bonuses. The player with the most points wins.

It’s remarkably simple. But it’s not a game about what you do. It’s a game about who you are. In each game turn, every player chooses a role from a hand of cards.

A royal pain in the arse.

WHO WOULD YOU WANT TO BE?

The Assassin: He can choose to murder any other character. He announces who he wants to kill and BAM! the player who chose that unfortunate character misses his turn. He’s a stone-cold bastard. But the assassin could choose the wrong character. He doesn’t know who’s who when he chooses his victim. He might not choose the character who is being played by the game leader. He might choose a character who isn’t being played at all. It’s a risky life, the life of an assassin, but murder is fun. The Assassin’s favourite TV show is The Apprentice.

The Thief: The Thief chooses a victim, and then when that character is revealed, he steals all that character’s gold. The Thief is a hated man. The Assassin and The Thief are in the same Five-a-Side team. A proper couple of buggers.

The Magician: He’s off his nut. He can fling away cards and magically draw new ones. He can point his finger at another player and steal their entire hand of cards. An unpredictable force, like diarrhea.

The King: He gets to announce all the other players, calling out their names like he’s the boss of them all. He behaves like a diva, giving it “all eyes on me” and is a total pain in the arse. The Assassin loves killing him. He receives one gold for each Gold coloured city area he has. Crucially, he’s first to choose who he wants to be in the next turn. Everyone detests him.

The Bishop: He’s a defensive character, so hardly anyone ever wants to be him. He gets money from religious districts, highlighting the exploitative nature of organised religion and encouraging debate and soul-searching at the game table. His areas can’t be destroyed by The Warlord, because they’re protected by God or are made of chocolate and thus are too tasty to destroy or something. I don’t know.

The Merchant: He receives gold for each trade district he controls. He also gets ANOTHER gold every time he takes an action. He always has The Thief making kissy-kissy goo-goo eyes at him. His favourite TV show is Knots Landing.

The Architect: He draws lots of cards and can buid loads of stuff. He’s a smartypants. He can accelerate the game towards a finish if he isn’t kept in check and told to sit down and behave. He has a nice beard. By which I mean, a fake wife.

The Warlord: He’s a cool dude. He skateboards. He receives gold for each military district he controls. He can also send out his army to destroy other players districts. Except for districts controlled by The Bishop, who made his city out of chocolate, rendering it too tasty to destroy. Confirmed.

I have never met a living soul who doesn’t like Citadels. Bruno Faidutti’s design shines from first to last, in a beautifully paced, constantly exciting game. It’s a game with a lot of legs, too. There’s no real optimal strategy, because you need to keep reacting to the choices of the other players. If someone is hogging The King, kill him. If someone is building up lots of cash, steal it. If you’re the one making all the money, should you choose The Thief in order to protect yourself from attacks? Or would Assassin be a better choice, in order to off The Thief?

In our group, the roles take on a life of their own. The King is pompous and annoying. The Assassin is quiet, cool, evil. The Magician is a dirty psychopath.

It could have been a simple race game, with everyone paying to play cards and be first off the table. But the characters bring the cities to life. When you look down at the table and see the cities taking shape, and look across the table and see Kings and Merchants squabbling with each other, you know something special is happening.

And then there’s the look of the game. Let’s just be straight about one thing here –

Citadels is beautiful. Citadels is alive.

Here is the Manor. If you build this district, make sure to mind it. Mind your Manors. Jesus. Sorry.

The artwork is staggering. There is never a play that goes by without someone commenting on how beautiful a card is, and picking it up for a closer look. Anyone who argues that the art design of a game isn’t important needs to experience Citadels and see how beautiful artwork can elevate a wonderful game design into something magical.

The Harbor. Don't Harbor any grudges against the person who builds this. Get it? Jesus. Sorry.

Citadels is an essential game for any collection. It plays quickly, so can slot in before or after a longer game (I refuse to call Citadels a “filler game.” It’s too good for that.), and will quickly become one of the most requested games you have. Guaranteed.

More reasons to buy it? Sure.

It all fits in a small box that can be taken anywhere. It’s inexpensive (under 20 quid for the base game with the expansion included).

It’s a work of games design brilliance, no doubt. It’s also a work of art.

There’s literally no good reason not to buy it.