Players: 2-4
Playing Time: 45-60 minutes
Summary of the Components
Eminent Domain comes with a large deck of cards, plus a variety of other components, including: cardboard starting cards; plastic spaceships; cardboard victory markers; and colored wooden resource markers.
Quality: The plastic and wooden bits are all of solid quality, while the cards are linen-textured and slightly glossy. The starting planets which are printed on sturdy bits of cardboard, are even above and beyond the rest of the game's good quality. 5 out of 5.
Beauty: The majority of the cards are fairly plain, mainly depicting a simple icon. However, the graphic design is nonetheless very good and the technology cards which have attractive full-card artwork make up some of the difference (though you'll see the plain cards a lot more than the tech cards). The plastic ships are also very pretty. 4 out of 5.
Usability: Good use has been made of icons to delineate the different sorts of roles in the game. Unfortunately, the actual powers of the cards are all listed in text, which results in them taking more time to puzzle out--especially for the technology cards.
Cards can be used in two different ways, as an "action" and as a "role", and those terms don't actually do a job of differentiating the sorts of activity. As a result, at least half of new players to the game stumble around with the two terms. However, this question of terminology is actually the game's only significant usability issue. 4 out of 5.
Theming: Though this is a game of SF conquest and colonization, it largely feels abstract, primarily due to the simplicity of the basic roles (survey, colonize, research, etc). Similarly the planets fall into a few abstract types (fertile, metallic, advanced). As with the question of beauty, the tech cards start to move the game toward more specific theming, but they're in the minority. 3 out of 5.
Overall, Eminent Domain is a well-produced if loosely themed game. I've given it a "4" out of "5" for Style.
Summary of the Gameplay
The object of Eminent Domain is to earn the most victory points through the take over of planets, the trading of goods, and the research of technologies.
Setup: Each player is given a deck of cards that includes all five card types (survey, warfare, colonize, produce or trade, and research). He'll then draw a hand of five of these ten cards. He'll also randomly select an initial planet for colonization or conquest.
A display of lots of cards of all five types is placed in the middle of the table, for later role selection.
Order of Play: On his turn, a player (optionally) takes an action, takes a role, and then adjusts his hand.
Taking An Action: At the start of his turn, a player may optionally place a card from his hand for its "action".
Each of the five basic cards has a special action assigned to it. The survey card lets you draw additional cards into your hand, while the research card lets you remove two cards in your hand from your deck (essentially, filtering your deck, as you can commonly do in deckbuilding games). The remaining three cards let you take a cut-down ("unboosted") version of the power that you get from the card's roles …
Taking a Role: Next a player must take a role, which he does by drawing a card from the center of the table and then placing it in his play area. This is the main way that you "build" your deck, as the card will go into your discard pile at the end of your turn.
Each of the roles does a different thing:
- Survey. Lets you look at 1 or more planet cards and take one.
- Warfare. Lets you take 1 or more fighters or else conquer a planet by spending sufficient fighters.
- Colonize. Lets you place 1 or more colonize cards under a planet or else settle it if you've already placed enough cards under the planet.
- Produce. Lets you place 1 or more goods on your planets.
- Trade. Lets you trade 1 or more goods on your planets for VPs.
- Research. Lets you take 1 tech card and place it in your discard.
Following a Role. When you take a role, all your opponents get the opportunity to do so too. They just have to play the appropriate role card (and boosters) from their hand. If they can't (or don't want to) they instead get to draw a new card into their hand.
Researching Techs. The research role bears a bit of additional explanation as it works slightly different from the others: instead of doing something more than once, you're trying to generate enough research to research certain technological tiers.
There are three sorts of tech, one per planet type (advanced, fertile, and metallic). Each sort of tech has three levels of technology. The simplest ones require you to play 3 research icons and have one planet of the appropriate type; the next require 5 research icons and two planets of the appropriate type; and the best require 7 research icons and three planets of the appropriate type. When you get tech, it usually comes as a card that you place into your discard pile.
One of the big advantages of the tech cards is that they each tend to have two icons on them, which means they can be used to boost two different sorts of roles. The TL "3" cards are all advanced forms of the basic roles, which allow for better actions. The TL "5" and "7" cards have better and more unique powers. Some of them are kept in play permanently instead of going into your deck.
Winning the Game: The game goes until one or more of the role decks are emptied of cards or until a set number of victory points are earned (mostly from the trading of goods). Then, the player with the most points wins.
Relationships to Other Games
Eminent Domain is a game that rather unique melds the deck building and role selection genres.
Like most deckbuilding games, you can add cards to your deck and filter them out through play. The fact that you must add a card to your deck to use a role adds a very interesting dimension to the deckbuilding, because you may want to take roles that push your deck too far in a certain direction and then will have to deal with the consequences.
Unlike most deckbuilding games, Eminent Domain has a pretty small palette of cards. I had some concerns about that at first, but after five plays, I'm very satisfied with the results. Eminent Domain stays interesting, it's just a different beast than the more variable deckbuilding games out there.
I've written fairly extensively on the deckbuilding subgenre. I invite you to look at my other articles, covering: Ascension (in comparison to Dominion), Nightfall (in comparison to Dominion), Quarriors (thoughts on a dice building game), Resident Evil (in comparison to Dominion), Tanto Cuore (in comparison to Dominion) and Thunderstone (in review, in comparison to Dominion). I've also written some additional analysis of Eminent Domain itself.
As a role selection game, Eminent Domain reminds me most of Glory to Rome. In both games, you take on roles while other players can follow you, and there's also the ability to boost the number of times you can take a role's action. However, Eminent Domain is much cleaner and simpler than the somewhat complex Glory design.
The Game Design
Eminent Domain does a great job of really marking out its own territory in the deckbuilding subgenre of games. However, it goes beyond that by featuring a lot of game systems that together make for a very appealing game.
First and foremost, the game plays quickly, in an hour or less. A lot of the newer deckbuilding games have gone long because they've added systems in their attempts to differentiate themselves from subgenre-leader, Dominion. Eminent Domain instead is lean and well developed. Beyond that, it feels fast. You're constantly decided whether to follow every other player in his role selection, so you're never more than a minute away from your next decision.
I already talked about some of the good design behind the deckbuilding itself. In short: you have enough room to notably modify your deck between role selection and the filtering allowed by the research card; you have particularly hard decisions thanks to the integration of role selection with deck growth; and you do still have some room for improved variability thanks to the technology cards. This all leads to a solid strategic core for the game.
Finally, the game has relatively strong player interactions--something which is missing from a lot of deckbuilding games. This is due primarily to the role selection. You have to think about who might benefit from your role selections and who you might benefit from. You also have to worry about butting heads with other players who might be going for the same limited technology items that you want.
My only complaint with the game is that the final development may have been a bit rushed. For example, there are "utopian" planets which aren't properly explained in the rules. However, this is a minor complaint about a game that's overall strong and well done. I've given it a full "5" out of "5" for Substance.
Conclusion
In Eminent Domain, Seth Jaffee and TMG have produced the most innovative deckbuilding game since Dominion itself. It's a game that merges together the best advantages of the deckbuilding and role-selection genres, resulting in quick-playing, interactive, and strategic fun .
