The game is incredibly simple to understand. Each player starts with an identical deck (three Estate cards, which are worth 1 Victory Point each, and seven Copper Treasure cards, each worth 1 gold of purchasing power). Players shuffle up those cards, and deal themselves a five-card hand. You’ll always begin your turn with a new five-card hand from your deck. If you ever run out of cards in your deck, you reshuffle your discard, and draw from that.

In front of all players are the 17 stacks of cards they will be buying from to make their own decks. The game play of Dominion is that you try to build a deck that ends up with the most Victory points in it by the end of the game. You have three phases to your turn:

1. Play an Action. Actions are only gained by purchasing Kingdom cards. If you have not purchased any Kingdom cards, you do nothing in this phase.

2. Buy one card. You can buy Kingdom cards (which give you Actions), Treasure cards (which give you more purchasing power), or Victory cards (which give you Victory Points). You also can buy Curse cards, but that’s just silly. If you have no Treasure cards in your hand or Treasure value through your Action phase earlier, you do nothing in this phase. Cards you purchase go immediately to your discard pile; you won’t get a chance to play them until you’ve gone through your deck and reshuffled.

3. Clean up your play area. Basically, put what’s left in your hand plus all cards you played this turn into your discard. Then draw five new cards for next turn’s hand. Important note for new players: you cannot keep any cards in your hand between turns. You always discard your hand and draw five new cards. No saving cards to build up a better hand for the next turn.

You could just purchase Victory cards and hope for a win that way. But here’s the thing: Victory cards, during play, are worthless. In fact, they’re worse than useless – they’re a dead card in your hand, a card that can’t even be used to buy anything or do anything, a card that could have been something playable. If your opening hand for the turn is three Victory cards and two Copper Treasures, the only thing you can do is buy one 2 cost card. If your opening hand is just five Victory cards, you can’t do anything on your turn. So if you spend your turns just buying Treasure and Victory cards, you’ll be buying only one card at a time, and getting stuck with whatever hands you manage to draw.

So the tension in Dominion is to build a deck full of enough Victory cards to win the game, but not so full that you’re drawing dead hands while your opponents are improving their decks. Kingdom cards (and their Actions) are where the game starts to get really interesting. If this was a CCG like Magic, the Treasure cards are your mana, the Kingdom cards are your sorceries, and the Victory cards are blank cards in your hand. Kingdom cards give you the ability to draw more cards, buy more cards, improve your card draw, degrade your opponents’ card draws, and other bits of deck manipulation.

The secret to winning Dominion, then, is by buying Kingdom cards to give you actions to manipulate your deck, to the point where you can start adding sufficient Victory cards to your deck so that you have a chance of winning without giving you blank hands. It’s a rather clever self-balancing mechanism. Nothing stops you from filling your hand full of cheap Victory cards, and Copper Treasures are always free to add to your deck. But hands full of just those are weak compared to the purchasing power of higher Treasures and powerful Kingdom actions. But building up a Kingdom engine without adding Victory cards to it means you’re spending all your hard-earned gold…on not winning.

The game ends at the end of any player’s turn when either three Kingdom mini-decks are depleted, or the Provinces Victory Point deck (the highest-scoring one) is depleted. Thus, each player has the option to try to extend the game or ending it by trying to buy down decks faster or slower…and your ability to read other player’s deck building skills is your only indication as to whether it’s a good idea to try to shorten or lengthen the game at this time. As soon as the game ends, you add up the points in your total deck, and highest point value wins.

Really, that’s it. That’s the entire game. You build a deck by playing it to improve the deck while other players are trying to do the same thing from a limited card pool. But to give you an idea of how the game could go, let’s go over the actual cards in the game.

TREASURE CARDS

These are how you buy things. You can only spend Treasure cards if they’re in your hand. While the Treasure Cards are limited in amount, there’s so many there’s usually no limit to the amount you can add to your deck, even in a four-player game.

Copper. Cost 0, Value 1. Silver. Cost 3, Value 2. Gold. Cost 6, Value 3.

VICTORY CARDS

These are how you win the game. There are only 12 Victory cards in each mini-deck (8 in 2-player games), plus every player begins with three Estates.

Estate. Cost 2, Value 1. Duchy. Cost 5, Value 3. Province. Cost 8, Value 6. Depleting the Province deck is one way to end the game.

KINGDOM CARDS

These are also called “Action Cards”. These are the meat of your deck. They give you access to Actions, which let you manipulate your deck so you can buy things more efficiently. Each Kingdom card is easily played; you start at the top and do everything in order. They might give you +Actions, in which case you get additional actions to do this turn. They might give you +Cards, in which case you immediately draw that many cards. They might give you +Buy, in which case you can buy more than one card this turn (you’ll have to split your gold pool for this, however). They might give you +Gold, to buy more things. There’s a few of them which are Attack cards (clearly marked as such); these give you the ability to muck around with other players’ decks. They might even Trash some cards; trashed cards are removed from the game permanently.

How many Kingdom cards you buy, and in what proportion to your Treasure and Victory and each other, is the heart of the game. Each Kingdom mini-deck is only 10 cards in size (except for Gardens, which is either 8 cards in a 2-player game or 12 cards in a larger game). Depleting any three Kingdom mini-decks is one way to end the game. Which ten Kingdom mini-decks you play each game of Dominion with is up to you and your fellow players.

Adventurer. Cost 6

Reveal cards from your deck until you have revealed two Treasure cards. Put the Treasures into your hand, and discard the rest.

Bureaucrat (Attack). Cost 4.

Put a Silver Treasure on top of your deck. All other players must show a Victory card in their hands and put that on top of their deck, or reveal their hands to prove they have no Victory cards.

Cellar. Cost 2.

+1 Action. Discard any number of cards; draw a card for every card you discarded.

Chancellor. Cost 3.

+2 Gold. You may immediately put your deck into your discard.

Chapel. Cost 2.

Trash up to four cards in your hand.

Council Room. Cost 5.

+4 Cards. +1 Buy. Your opponents must draw a card.

Feast. Cost 4.

Trash this card; purchase any card up to 5 gold cost.

Festival. Cost 5

+2 Actions. +1 Buy. +2 Gold.

Gardens (Victory). Cost 4.

At the end of the game Gardens is worth 1 Victory Point for every 10 full cards in your deck. Note: while Gardens is a Victory card, and not a Kingdom card, it is selected as a possible play deck from the 25 possible Kingdom decks at the beginning of the game.

Laboratory. Cost 5.

+2 Cards. +1 Action.

Library. Cost 5.

Draw up to a 7-card hand. You may discard any Action cards drawn in this manner (but this does not let you redraw back up to 7).

Market. Cost 5.

+1 Card. +1 Action. +1 Buy. +1 Gold.

Militia (Attack). Cost 4.

+2 Gold. All your opponents must discard down to a 3-card hand.

Mine. Cost 5.

Trash a Treasure card in your hand. Put a Treasure card costing up to +3 gold more into your hand.

Moat (Reaction). Cost 2.

+2 Cards. When any other player plays an Attack card, reveal the Moat in your hand. You are immune to that Attack.

Moneylender. Cost 4.

Trash a Copper Treasure in your hand for +3 Gold.

Remodel. Cost 4.

Trash any card in your hand to purchase any card worth up to +2 gold more.

Smithy. Cost 4.

+3 Cards.

Spy (Attack). Cost 4.

+1 Card. +1 Action. All players, starting with you, reveal the top card of their deck. You choose if they keep the card there or discard it.

Thief (Attack). Cost 4.

All other players reveal the top 2 cards of their decks. If any are Treasure cards, you must trash one of them. If you trash any Treasure cards in this way, you may take any of those cards so trashed into your own discard. Discard all the other revealed cards.

Throne Room. Cost 4.

Chose an Action card in your hand. Play it twice.

Village. Cost 3.

+1 Card. +2 Actions.

Witch (Attack). Cost 5.

+2 Cards. All other players put a Curse card (see below) into their discard.

Woodcutter. Cost 3.

+1 Buy. +2 Gold.

Workshop. Cost 3.

Purchase a card up to 4 gold cost.

CURSE

Curse cards are always in the game (really, they honestly are). You can buy them if you really want to. In general, nobody does, and they only enter your deck if the Witch is in play. There are a base 20 Curse cards in the game, +10 for every player above 2.

Curse. Cost 0. -1 Victory Point.

GAME PLAY AND OTHER NOTES

Once you figure out what is going on (which takes about sixty seconds), Dominion goes fast. With a few games under your belt, even four-player Dominion games go so fast that you’re probably still reshuffling your deck for your end-turn draw by the time action gets back around to you. When you consider the customization built into the 25 Kingdom decks, that’s a great feature, in that there’s so many ways to approach the game and thus so many games to play.

Here’s a few expected early questions and answers for ya:

Can you draw your whole deck into your hand? Yes, with the right set up, which obviously gives you great purchasing power.

Can you endlessly recycle your deck for degenerate combos? No. There’s thankfully a rule that prevents that. Cards you are playing this turn are “in play”, and thus not in your discard pile. So even if you combo off a bunch of Throne Rooms, Council Rooms, and Festivals, eventually you’ll end up with most of your deck in play, no cards in your deck to draw, and no cards in your discard to recycle over. Thus the best you can do is end up with all your Action cards in play and all your Treasures and Victory points in hand–which, admittedly, is pretty darn awesome, and as good as it gets in Dominion. So far, even in games where I do manage this feat, after the reshuffle and draw I never get another perfect hand like that again. Plus, if you do manage to do this all the time, the other players will realize that your deck is in prime shape, and will probably try to rush the end of the game by buying up all the cheap Kingdom cards.

So a Kingdom-fueled drawing machine is your secret to victory? Well, yes, but within reason. Even if you manage to buy a deck that lets you draw your entire deck every turn, that’s a meaningless feat if you don’t have gold in-hand or in-play to buy Victory points with. And Victory points, once again, clog your deck until the final points counting. Finding the right balancing point is the difficult part of Dominion. Let’s use a player in my play group as an example. This guy is utterly addicted to the Village card (see above). If the Village is in play, he will spend all his purchases getting as many as possible. He frequently ends up with 7 or more of the only 10 possible Village cards, which then let him cycle his deck…to end up with just 2 gold to buy things. Not a strong play. The Village is cheap and gives awesome +Action for its cost, but without bigger card draws (or at least Throne Rooms) in your deck, you’ll eventually hit a glut of Treasure or Victory cards and kill your engine.

Where’s the “hidden ramp-ups” in card cost? At what gold cost do most decks start stuttering? Good question! There’s a minor bump in purchasing power between 2 and 3 cost cards. But there’s a major one between 4 to 5, and then a very difficult leap between 7 and 8. The big turning point for most decks is going from having an effective 4-cost spending cap to a 5+ cap.

Are Curses really always in the game? By the rules, yes. Why you’d want to buy them in games without Witches is unknown to me; even if you’re going for a “purchase then trash” deck model, that works far better with another free purchase, the Copper Treasure, than the Curse.

Must you play Moats to protect you from Attacks? Not really. Depends. Answer unclear, ask again. Really, if you’re so scared of Attack cards (even the dreaded Witch) that you’re clogging your hand with Moats, you’re not pursuing your own victory conditions…which means you’re doing more damage to yourself than your opponent could hope to do. Of the Attack cards, none of them require the Moat to salvage your game play (although the Moat certainly helps). The Bureaucrat potentially costs you a card next turn, but your opponent will soon be swimming in Silver Treasures that are slowing his own deck down. The Militia is useless as an Attack in multiples (unlike the Bureaucrat), and becomes useless in late game with the card drawing available to all players (the Library laughs at Militias). The Spy is at best an annoyance, and is mainly played to smooth out the Spy’s own deck draws. The Thief can steal your money, true, but in the late game removing Coppers from your deck actually helps you. And even the Curse-spewing Witch has her foils. She actually makes Gardens and Remodeling stronger, and in any game with Witches and no Moats you are just as in danger of being swamped by Curses as anyone else. Plus, once all the Curses are gone, she’s now an overpriced +2 Cards with no additional Action nor Buy.

How much information is public in the game? During the game, players may only look at the top card of everyone’s discard pile, and their own hands. You may count cards left in purchase piles and in your own deck, but you may not count cards in your discard, and you may not look through your own discard (or anyone else’s, for that matter). This makes remembering what you bought and how many cards of each type you have in your deck a useful skill for more complicated deck-building. Cards “in play” during a turn are obviously public knowledge, as are Treasure cards being revealed from hand fur purchasing.

Can you come back from an early setback? By all appearances, yes. This is helped because once everyone has a few turns of purchases in their decks, it becomes very tough to track who has how many Victory points, and different strategies can handle different types of Victory purchases. You usually have a general idea of who is doing well and who is not (hint: someone who, every turn, draws half their deck and buys two expensive cards is doing quite well), but who the leader is is not always clear. Plus, cards purchased go to your discard, so it takes at least a full reshuffle of your deck before you start seeing the benefits or detriments of your most recent purchases. Deck building requires foresight and knowledge of how you want to build your deck to work.

FINAL ANALYSIS

Dominion is a fun, fast game of deck-building. Anyone who enjoys booster drafting Magic or other CCGs might get a kick out of Dominion; in fact, it might actually act as a “gateway game” for them to start playing in other parts of our hobby away from the hallowed halls of Wizards.

The ability to try to judge how well your deck is running versus everyone else’s, and knowing if you should try to buy more points, buy down a cheap deck to end the game, or buy more purchasing power is a subtle and interesting dynamic. Skill in deckbuilding is obviously highly rewarded, but with a new 5-card hand of randomly determined cards each turn, luck also plays a part.

The ability to try to end a game by deliberately buying down decks is also another powerful decision point in the game; players don’t end a Dominion game unless they want to. Knowing the best time to end the game (or when your opponents might try to do the same) is an important skill.

With 25 Kingdom mini-decks to choose the ten Kingdom deck slots from, there’s something like 3 million possible combinations in how you could play Dominion. Currently, my play group is having tons of fun just randomly shuffling up one card from each deck and then playing with the first ten drawn. You can also easily set up rules to “bid” on purchases for Kingdom mini-decks you want, let the loser pick the mini-decks, or whatever your play group desires. I could see house rules being easily drawn up in which you handicap yourself to pick the mini-decks you want, for instance.

While the game looks like “multi-player Solitaire” from the outside, it certainly doesn’t feel like it while playing it. Not only are the resources you want to put into your deck limited by other player’s purchase choices, you can affect other players’ decks with Attack cards.

The main problems with the game would be the subtle nature of the deck-building process and the general opacity of the game state at any moment, things that might annoy players who prefer a more open-information environment, such as in Agricola. Your new purchases must cycle through your discard before you ever use them, and even then they might come up in a useless hand combination that renders them useless that turn (many a time I’ve looked at my newly-purchased Throne Room sitting alone in a hand with Victory cards and a few paltry Copper). Thus, it can take a while to see the effect of your new purchases on your deck, and knowing when not to buy anything is as important as not buying the wrong thing. Also, who is currently winning is generally impossible to know except for your own ability to card count and watching how well everyone’s decks are flowing. Players who enjoy more immediate feedback as to where their status is in the game will probably become frustrated with Dominion.

The strengths of the game are an excellently clear set of rules and simple game play, allowing the card interactions to shine as the heart of the game mechanics, and the beautiful self-limiting victory mechanic of having the cards you need to win the game potentially costing you the game if you buy too many of them too early.

Overall, Dominion is a brilliant little bit of gaming that is near endlessly-replayable. Even if you find out it’s not your style, you can fit in 2-3 games per hour easily, allowing you to quickly figure out if figuring out the game is worth your while.

In consulting DriveThruRPG we've come up with a number of products which we think might be related, but some might be inaccurate because the name, Dominion, is so short. Nonetheless, take a look, as purchasing through the RPGnet Store helps to support RPGnet.