So I promised on the last Shadowrun Sundays to blog about RPG rules, but to tell you the truth I’m not feeling the mojo. Both the day job and the publisher job have been more than overwhelming and I’m completely unprepared. So I’m going to chat about the card game Dominion instead, because I can ramble about this one without working too hard at it.
I was introduced to Dominion over a year ago by a few members of my gaming group. It’s what gaming circles commonly refer to as a deck-building game. Unlike CCGs (collectable card games) like Magic, players do not go out buying base decks and expansion packs to find the perfect set of cards for their decks. One person buys the base box set or the base deck and everyone plays with that. There are expansion sets, but again, not everyone is spending their money on their own individual versions of this. BoardGameGeek.com has a lot of videos, reviews, and FAQs on Dominion that you may already know about. I haven’t gone through them all, but the ones I’ve seen are insufficient for brand new “never heard of it” kind of players. Which is why I’m writing this.
The basic premise of Dominion is to get the most Victory Points (cards represented by this shield emblem) by the end of the game. Every player starts of with 3 Victory Points (VP) in the form of Estate cards and 7 copper cards with which to buy more Victory cards, Action cards, or other Treasure cards (silver and gold). That’s 10 cards total, with only 5 of them in your hand (randomized by shuffle) to start with. So at most you have 5 copper with which to make a purchase. Additional cards cost anywhere from 2-6 copper (in the base set, though cards from other sets might cost as high as 7-11 copper).
FYI: There are also anti-Victory cards, like Curses, which subtract from your overall points at the end of the game. And the Dark Ages expansion can actually force you to trash your high-cost Victory cards.
But let’s start simple, with a snapshot from my Dominion Online account.
The available Victory cards (upper left) are the Estate (worth 1 VP and costing 2 copper to obtain), the Duchy (worth 3 VP and costing 5 copper), and the Province (worth 6 VP and costing 8 copper). The Treasure cards (upper right) are Copper (worth 1 & costing 0 coppers to obtain), Silver (worth 2 & costing 3 coppers to obtain), and Gold (worth 3 and costing 6 copper to obtain). So you spend money, get land, and once the Province deck is “sold out” or three stacks of the Kingdom cards are “sold out,” whichever comes first, the game ends and the winner has the most VP.
Sounds simple, right? Except you have to get money to get the higher costing cards and the most copper you can have in your hand (bottom middle) to start off with is 5, and the most copper you start off with is 7, one shy needed to buy a Province.
That’s when we get to the Kingdom cards (upper middle). These cards can give you additional cards, additional actions, additional buys (purchases), or additional money. Some of these cards give you all at the same time. The base set starts off with 25 different “decks” (stacks, really) that do various things. Each game only involves 10 of the available decks (or 11 if you’re using a card that curses other players, then you have to add the curse deck to the game). The idea is to add as many of these Kingdom cards to your own hand that allows you to continuously increase your money, cards in hand, available actions, and enough purchases that you can keep buying cards so long as you have the money for them. Since each player starts off with 1 action, 1 buy per hand, and 5 cards per turn, you might see how being able to draw more, act more, and buy more during your turn would be to your benefit. Especially if someone has hit you with a bad card like Militia, which forces you to discard down to 3 cards before your next turn begins.
Dominion can be fun if you play with the right people. I’m not a seriously competitive person with most games. I want to have fun more than I care about winning. That being said, I don’t want to lose every game either. So Dominion Online was a bit of a shock when I ran into a few uber-competitors who decided to use every nasty attack card in their deck to slam me down to the minimum number of cards and trash as much of my deck as possible. It’s why I tend to play the bots more often then not, because at least the bots are deliberately being mean even if they do win more often than I like. I’m also trying to get some friends online so we can have some private games and chat while we’re just having fun for fun’s sake.
Dominion Online has helped me hone my RL strategy. I finally won a few games last week when my gaming group played (and surprised myself when doing so). But I’m not found of DO’s help files. The interface is not terribly intuitive. It took me forever to find the help files and even then they only went over the game rules which I already knew from playing live. Nothing explains what the Coin Count points means, but I assume it has to do with the leaderboard rankings, and the VPs (of which I have zero) aren’t explained at all except that they give you discounts on buying the online expansions. When you choose to play bots, you aren’t allowed to use the decks you build (DO randomizes the base set), so you have to choose the Multiplayer option, make your game private, and then pick a bot to join your game so you can practice with the deck you built. You get more coin points playing other players than you do playing bots. But no where do I see the option for earning VPs for your account. Maybe it’s in the Adventure section, which I have yet to try.
DO was entertaining for maybe the first few weeks I was on it, but I’m kinda bored now. I don’t like that there’s no way to escape the gaming bullies (I ran into one a few weeks ago that kept following me from game to game so he could insult me over chat. He didn’t like that I abandoned a game I started because he wasn’t being nice to one of the other players) without losing ranking on the leaderboard or having it reflected against your total percentages. I was enjoying a few games against other people when they “abandoned” the game due to poor internet connections (or so the DO interface informed me). I play it now and again (against the bots) to continue checking out my strategies, but to be honest the bots keep kicking my butt. Except for serfbot who I almost always win against. But serfbot is designed to be beat. He’s the tutor.
So anyway, those are my random thoughts on Dominion and Dominion Online. FYI: I’m thinking of building an RPG from scratch for my blog, both as an example of what I’m talking about and potentially something to put before my gaming group. I may have more on that later, but I’m not sure yet. If you’re interested in seeing something like that, let me know.
