Dominion is a popular deck-building card game designed by Donald X. Vaccarino. The goal for each player is to have the highest number of Victory Points when the game ends. If you’re unfamiliar with the gameplay, you can read about it on the DominionStrategy Wiki.
Cards in the Dominion Base Game fall into two main categories; Basic Supply Cards (comprised of Treasure Cards, Victory Cards & Curse Cards) and Kingdom Cards. The list of cards is given below.
Basic Supply Cards:
Copper, Silver, Gold, Estate, Duchy, Province, Curse
Kingdom Cards:
Adventurer, Bureaucrat, Cellar, Chancellor, Chapel, Council Room, Feast, Festival, Gardens, Laboratory, Library, Market, Militia, Mine, Moat, Moneylender, Remodel, Smithy, Spy, Thief, Throne Room, Village, Witch, Woodcutter, Workshop
The Base Game’s 5 rulebook recommended Kingdom Card sets are:
- First Game:
Cellar, Market, Militia, Mine, Moat, Remodel, Smithy, Village, Woodcutter, Workshop - Big Money:
Adventurer, Bureaucrat, Chancellor, Chapel, Feast, Laboratory, Market, Mine, Moneylender, Throne Room - Interaction:
Bureaucrat, Chancellor, Council Room, Festival, Library, Militia, Moat, Spy, Thief, Village - Size Distortion:
Cellar, Chapel, Feast, Gardens, Laboratory, Thief, Village, Witch, Woodcutter, Workshop - Village Square:
Bureaucrat, Cellar, Festival, Library, Market, Remodel, Smithy, Throne Room, Village, Woodcutter
General tips and strategies for Dominion:
- Familiarize yourself with the effects of each card in the game. If you are new to the game, it is a good idea to take a few minutes out at the beginning of the game to read each of the Kingdom Cards and understand its effects. It helps to plan ahead so that you don’t waste resources on cards that strategically conflict each other.
- Once you decide upon your strategy for a game (Engines, Big Money, Rushes; don’t worry if these sound unfamiliar now), stick with it even if you feel you are falling behind. More often than not, you can lose a game just by being indecisive and switching from one strategy to another. Losses will only help you understand what you could have done better.
- The best way to get better at the game is to keep playing with different sets of Kingdom Cards. This will help you understand the interactions between various cards and which ones work well together. You can also try playing Dominion online. At the time of writing this post, the web client gives an error while loading, but the desktop client seems to work just fine.
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