Domaine is a somewhat abstract strategy game of territorial conquest by Klaus Teuber, best known for his Settlers of Catan series.

Players: 2-4
Time: 60-90 minutes
Difficulty: 3 (of 10)

Domaine was previously published in a more complex form as Lowenherz (1997)--and in fact the previous version of the game continues to be published in the United States under that name by Rio Grande Games. Just to be confusing, the original edition of Lowenherz is no longer available in Germany and instead this new edition is published under that name in that country.

The Components

Domaine comes with:

• 4 board edge pieces and connectors
• 9 land tiles
• plastic playing pieces
  • 60 knights
  • 16 castles
  • 100 border markers
• 47 gold ducats
• 4 crest tokens
• 1 king token
• 60 action cards.
• 1 rulebook

When I was playing the game, it was totally invisible to me that all the components are entirely language independent (other than the rules and box, obviously). There's not a single word anywhere: on the board, cards, or elsewhere. Domaine is a great example of how to do this right. The language-independence doesn't obfuscate the game at all, as the tactic has in other games I've played (with one possible exception: one of the victory conditions related to money wasn't immediately obvious from its depiction on the board). If anything, I'd say the language independence makes the game easier to play because it ruthlessly forces the iconification of all the pieces to be extremely obvious.

Here's a bit more on all the pieces:

Board Edge Pieces, Connectors & Land Tiles: Domaine takes the same tactic that Teuber used in his classic Settlers: the board is dynamic. The four edge pieces are put down to create a frame, with connectors jigsawing them together so that they can’t come apart. Then, the 9 tiles are arranged within the frame.

Overall the entire design is quite clever. Unlike the original Settlers, the pieces don’t go all over because they’re held together. In addition the frame gives space for a scoring track and has locations to place the action card deck, used action cards, and action cards sold to the "Chancery". Finally, in one corner of the frame is a listing of all the victory point conditions, for easy scoring during the game.

The edge, tiles, and connectors are all printed on heavy cardboard. They're four-color with attractive artwork (especially the frame).The board edges actually depict ocean and mountains--forming natural boundaries for the kingdom depicted. Various locations within the kingdom (forests, villages, mines, and the royal city) are all clearly depicted, and it's also easy to see the edges of the sixteen distinct territories within each land tile.

Through rotation and shuffling of the land tiles you can get something like 10 billion different board setups. However, I do find it a pity that the land tiles weren't printed double-sided, doubling the number of land tiles available for placement, and adding infinitely more variety to the game.

Playing Pieces: The playing pieces in this game are all hard molded plastic. Each of four player colors (red, blue, orange, and white) gets 19 pieces: 15 knights and 4 castles. They're quite attractively molded, though the knights all have bright spots at front and back where they were broken off of their injection molding, which is a shame.

The border markers sit in between territories. They're black molded plastic. They stand out well on the board, though most people think they look more like tombstones than walls. (I agree.)

Cardboard Markers: There are a number of smaller cardboard markers. The ducats come in two denominations: 1s and 5s. They're the same size, but quite different colors, so easy to tell apart during play. The crest tokens and king tokens are all used on the scoring track: one crest for each player, and the king token to mark the goal (which varies by player number). These markers are all printed four-color on the same sturdy cardboard as the map, and are generally attractive.

Action Cards: The action cards are printed at the undersized card size common in German games. They're four-color on decent card stock. Each card displays: usage price; sale price; and card results. It's all done with nice icongraphy, with both color and icons clearly displaying what a card does. Players tend to pick up all the icongraphy very quickly, meaning it's well done.

Rulebook: The rulebook is a four-page full-color glossy sheet. It's clearly written and is full of pictorial examples; overall it's easy to follow. The rulebook also contains a pointer to Profeasy.com, a resource Klaus Teuber has been making available which supplies online tutorials for his games. The one for Domaine seems well done, though it loads a bit slowly, and you have to wait around every couple of clicks for the artwork to catch up with you.

Box & Tray: The tray contained with the box is well-crafted. It contains spaces for the cards and tiles, so that they won't go all over, as well as recesses for all the rest of the components. A few more tray divisions might have been nice to, for example, store the edge connectors and the victory point markers, but overall the tray works well.

Overall the components for Domaine are top-quality, even given the high price point, thus earning it a full "5" out of "5" for Style.

The Game Play

In Domaine your goal is to create domains about your castles with border markers, trying to enclose the most cities, forests, and mines as you do so.

Setup: The setup of Domaine begins with the setup of the gameboard. A frame is built, and then a special "royal city" land tile is placed right in the middle. The other 8 land tiles are then randomized and placed about the royal city, forming a 3x3 grid of tiles. Each tile in turn has 4x4 territories (squares) in it, thus creating an overall grid that's 12x12. Each tile contains: meadows (empty spaces), forests, villages, and mines. The center tile also contains the aforementioned royal city.

Each player then has to place his initial 4 castles and knights (3 each in a 4-player game). In turn each player will place one castle on a meadow and one knight in an adjacent meadow or forest, until all players have placed their 3 or 4 castles. (When placing castles after the first, each must be separated from other castles of the same color by at least 6 spaces.)

The best placement of castles (and the associated knights) is always a bit of a dilemma. On the one hand you want to place them near victory-point-bestowing cities and forests, as well as money-bestowing mines. On the other hand you want to place them near the edges of the boards, which form natural boundaries, or even near other players who might built your boundaries for you. Placement of knights is a little more straight forward, since you'll mainly be using their location to block other players' boundary markers, as noted below.

(There's a slightly different setup for 2-player games, where the players also jointly place 4 neutral castles, which are mainly intended to get in the way.)

In this setup phase the Action Cards are also shuffled as follows: the cards are separated into four decks ("A", "B", "C", and "D"), each shuffled individually, then stacked up in order. This four-deck structure allows for more expensive and powerful cards to appear as the game goes on. Each player is dealt three cards (which will all be "A"s). Each player also receives seven ducats, which they'll be using to pay the cost of playing cards.

Finally, the king marker is used to mark the victory point requirement for the game (30 for 4 players, 40 for 3 players, or 50 for 2 players). Then each player places his crest token at 0 to denote his starting victory conditions.

Order of Play: Each player takes their turn in order, and makes a couple of very simple choices. Here's the complete turn order:

1. Collect Income from Mines
2. Sell an Action Card; or Play an Action Card
3. Draw an Action Card from the Action deck; or the Chancery

Collect Income. Take one ducat for each separate type of mine you have. (There are four: gold, silver, copper, and diamond.)

Sell or Play an Action Card. In order to play an Action Card, the player must pay the cost of the card, which is typically 1-8 Ducats. The cost is depicted in red at the top left of each card. The 5 types of cards which may be played are all described below.

If you don't have enough ducats, you'll probably sell a card instead. You place it in the Chancery (on the board) and collect its sale price, which is noted in blue at the top right of each card.

Draw a Card. You can either draw a face-down card from the action card deck or draw a face-up card from the chancery ... except you can't draw a card you just sold.

Action Cards: The Action Cards contain five different types of actions. Some cards allow you to select between two actions, but most just have one. Many action cards let you take their specified action more than once (e.g., some cards let you place 1 border, some 2, and some 3). The careful selection and playing of these cards is clearly the core of the game.

The five types of action cards are:

Place Borders. Place 1, 2, or 3 borders on the board. Each goes on one edge of a territory, but can't be placed to separate adjacent figures of the same color, nor within extant domaines. Once an area containing only one castle is entirely bordered (probably including the edges of the board as borders) it forms a domaine. Victory points are immediately scored, and the mines within the domaine will produce on the next turn.

Place Knights. Place 1 of 2 knights of your color adjacent to either one of your knights or one of your castles, provided they aren't separated by a border marker. They may be placed on meadows or they may be placed on forests at a cost of +1 ducat.

Expand Your Domaine. May only be played on an extant domaine. Expand it by two territories (spaces), taking whatever borders are required for the expansion from the "bank". You can freely expand into space that hasn't been built into a domaine, but may only expand into another domaine if the knights in your domaine exceed the knights in the other domaine. Immediately after the expansion add or subtract victory points as required for each player.

Deserter. Remove a knight from an adjacent domaine and add a knight to your domaine.

Alliance. Create an alliance between two adjacent domaines (not players!). Neither domaine may expand into the other.

Winning the Game: Victory in Domaine is ultimately dependendent upon Victory Points which are constantly tracked during play. They're allocated as follows:

• Forest in Domaine: +1 VP
• Village in Domaine: +3 VP
• Royal City in Domaine: +5 VP
• Mine Monopoly (3 of the same type): +5 VP

The first player to make it to the end-game marker (30, 40, or 50 VP) instantly wins.

If no player has won by the time the Action Deck is expended, play continues--though the Chancery closes down--until all cards are played. At that point a bonus of +5 VP is given to the player with the most ducats and +3 VP to the player with the second most, and the VP leader is declared the victor.

Relationships to Other Games

The game that would become Domaine was originally released as Lowenherz in 1997. The earlier version of the game had increased player interactivity and strategy because it allowed players to bid upon the actions that they wanted to take, rather than having to depend upon the whims of card draws. However, the game was ultimately unsuitable for its original German audience, which tends to be a more casual board-gaming audience than the serious board gamers in the United States.

In 2003 Klaus Teuber revised the game to be quicker and more approachable. The new version has entirely replaced the old version in Europe. However, in the United States, because of the more serious gaming audience, both versions have remained available, with the new edition being printed as "Domaine". They each appeal to a specific audience.

Taking a step back, Domaine was originally conceived, in its most embryonic form, as part of the Settlers of Catan game. When the game was originally considered it had three parts: the exploration of island systems, the settlement of those lands, and the conflicts that inevitably broke out among the new residents. The Settlers of Catan eventually settled on the core settlement gameplay (though some exploration was introduced in The Seafarers of Catan and some warfare was introduced in The Cities & Knights of Catan). A new game, Entdecker, was created as an exploration game, and Lowenherz was created as a warfare game. Other than their common origin, the three games have no real connection.

The Game Design

Overall, Domaine is a very cognitive game that allows for enjoyable strategic play. Here's some of the things I liked about the design:

Game is Simple: The core idea of the game is very simple. You have just five different actions that you can take and they're all pretty obvious. Beyond that, strategic choices are always controlled by what domaine you're currently working on and what cards you have in hand, so the decision tree never gets too big.

Good Progressive Play: Actions within the game always seem important and like they're progressing toward a real goal. You aren't constantly backsliding through a set of victories and defeats, but rather making expansions & additions which clearly move you toward endgame.

Good Breadth of Strategic Opportunity: There are a number of different strategic opportunities that you have within Domaine. You can build walls to create brand-new domaines or expand into unowned land or expand into your neighboring domaines. Each one requires different actions and can result in different success. Multiple paths to victory is usually good for both competitive play and replayability.

Good Replayability: The decision to make the board random at start also greatly increases replayability, as different board configurations result in very different strategy. In addition, the number of players dramatically changes the gameplay--from very open two-player games to very crowded four-player games--and this also can increase replayability through variability.

Interesting Combat Abstraction: At heart Domaine is really a game about combat between various lords, but it abstracts that conflict in a fairly unique way. The whole idea of slow expansion of domaines through control of a plurality of knights is very different from the typical Risk- or even Diplomacy- style combat, and really makes the game stand out as unique.

Chancery Offers Some Control Over Randomness: As noted below, randomness can be an issue in the game. However, the Chancery offers the possibility of controlling this in a fairly clever way. If you can't draw the card you want, you might be able to select it from the Chancery. And, the need to make money through card sales might force other players to place good cards in the Chancery.

My issues with the game were less, because I frankly had a lot of fun:

Randomization Causes Some Dissonance: On the one hand the game is very cognitive and strategic, but on the other hand it can be controlled by the random draw of cards. I've seen some players feel uncomfortable with this differential. If you're a very serious gamer, you might not like this aspect of the game (in which case you should try the original Lowenherz instead). However if you're a slightly more casual gamer, who doesn't need to plan out his strategy turns in advance, you'll probably find the randomness quite fitting. I've also seen some players run into problems because they can't draw the cards they need from either the Chancery or the Action Card deck. Personally I think this should just point a player toward some of those other strategic paths noted above, but nonetheless I'll note it as a complaint from some players and thus a possible issue.

Mines Somewhat Disconnected: Because the mines are spread out all over the board, they feel somewhat disconnected from play. I've seen some players forget to take their earnings. I've personally expanded to take a mine that I didn't need because I had one of the same type elsewhere. This could be nicely overcome if there were cards (or cardboard markers) that marked mine control. Each player would have a visual reminder to take their income every turn and would also have a reminder of which mines they own and which they still need to get.

Overall, I think Domaine works quite well and I give it a "4" out of "5" for Substance. I think I'd have given it the full "5" points if it weren't in that in-between space twain randomness and cognition, or if it had more depth of gameplay complexity.

Conclusion

Domaine is an enjoyable abstract territory domination game. It's simple and quick to play, yet allows a wide level of strategy. It's also quite pretty & well designed. It's currently one of my favorite Teuber designs, and is recommended if the overall gameplay sounds like your type of game.