Dominion: A Review of an Absolute Classic! (My #5 Most-Played Game!)

[@Argh10]

This is the game I usually play with my familly and friends. I am glad having grown up with this masterpiece!

[@BoardGameDave]

Dominion is such a classic! I'm so happy it was a formative part of my gaming experience as well-and it continues to be a game I play often with all of the expansions and infinite replayability that entails! ☺️ (Do you have a favorite expansion?) Thank you for your comment!

[@randalladkins7452]

2:30 - I looked it up for pronounciation! That number is twenty-three quintillion, nine hundred six quadrillion, five hundred seventy trillion, eight hundred seventy-five billion, five hundred seventy-two million, two hundred thirty-six thousand combinations for the ten kingdom cards used across all current expansions!!

[@BoardGameDave]

Randall, you are my kind of guy! 😂 I’m so glad you appreciated that statistic! I was also starting to consider that with the Empires expansion you can add one or two each of the Landmarks and Events… and if you started incorporating those into each game I think you have truly a near-infinite number of possible combinations! 🤯

[@Dscam009]

Bro, you sold me. How have I never heard of this game?!

[@BoardGameDave]

You’ve never heard of Dominion?! That’s wild! It’s been around for 14 years and singlehandedly started the deckbuilding genre! Are you a fan of any deckbuilding games?

[@jacobwansleeben3364]

@@BoardGameDave So it even predates Magic The Gathering!? That surprises me. Edit: I just checked. Magic came first like I thought.

[@BoardGameDave]

@@jacobwansleeben3364 So the designer of Dominion was actually heavily influenced by Magic: The Gathering and wanted to incorporate the deck construction that happens before a game of MtG into the actual gameplay, which is the foundation of Dominion and subsequent deck building games!

[@jacobwansleeben3364]

@@BoardGameDave Oh I see, so a 'deck-building game' is a game where the deck building happened DURING the game, not BEFORE it.

[@BoardGameDave]

@@jacobwansleeben3364 I'll admit that I wouldn't have been able to give you a definition for "deck construction" before I looked up MtG on BoardGameGeek, but yes, a deck building game is when you build up your deck during the course of the game! 😊

[@josiaboy]

just picked this up sealed from goodwill for only $15 ive played one of the expansions with a friend before so i recognized the name! there was no way id be leaving that behind!

[@BoardGameDave]

Wow! $15 for Dominion is a great deal! That's awesome! 🤩 I'm excited for you to get it to the table!

[@sarahreed-eurogamergirl]

Dominion is one of our favorite games too! It's the game that really launched us into the deep end of the hobby about 10 years ago. It gave us the M:TG feel without the collectible cost of M:TG. And I was never that good at preconstructed deck-building. I enjoy the gameplay of building a deck as you go a lot more. My favorite expansions are Prosperity and Guilds, but I really enjoy Adventures too. Heck, I enjoy all of them except Alchemy, but most people don't like that one. We feel that there's lots of theme to Dominion, but a lot of people ignore it because they focus on the mechanics of the game. Have you seen our Dominion Theater on Rolling With Two? Will performs the flavor text of every expansion, which is hilarious. We still have a few more expansions to go. They post every Friday through July 22nd.

[@BoardGameDave]

Hey there, Sarah! Thank you for checking out the video! I never got into Magic: The Gathering and I never knew about how much that game influenced Vaccarino's creation of Dominion! That's cool that it was a gateway into "the deep end of the hobby" for both of us, though! I've played with all three of those expansions online but I'd like to try them all in person! (I might have played with Prosperity back in the day, actually!) And I agree about there being a decent amount of theme in Dominion, but it's very limited by the cut-and-dry mechanisms of the game! I have seen a few Dominion Theater videos; I thought they were really creative! It's also really ambitious to try to act out the theme for every expansion! Tell Will to keep it up! I'm looking forward to the new ones as they come out! 😊

[@sarahreed-eurogamergirl]

@@BoardGameDave oh, sorry, I didn't mean to imply the Dominion was inspired by MTG. As far as I know, it wasn't. It was that before I played Dominion, MTG was the only card game I could compare it to. And I liked Dominion a whole lot more due to the change in when and how you make your deck. Since we own all the expansions physically, we haven't gotten into playing it online. I want to, so we can play with online friends, but it's a bit much for us to pay for it all again. Yeah, the mechanisms obscure the theme, and most people skip reading the flavor text at the beginning of the rules, which is why we wanted to do Dominion Theater. Will had a blast doing them! Thanks for watching and I'll let Will know. :-D

[@DaleKeefer]

Prosperity was the best. One thing that did get a little stale for me with Dominion, despite all the variance from the kingdom cards, the game loop tends to repeat around the following, regardless which cards were present. have $8 ? province else have $6 ? gold else buy something else Prosperity extended that with platinum and... I forget the higher value province, such that you could press your luck by going for higher value $ and points, or stick with the classic gold > province route. It added the most variance to game loop and game length.

[@sarahreed-eurogamergirl]

@@DaleKeefer I get that. The game loop stays pretty much the same, especially if you have 8, then yeah, get a province. But I've played several games where 6 is spent to get something other than gold. Also, if you haven't played Nocturne yet, that adds a new phase, the night phase, and that's a lot of fun if you want to shake up the game.

[@BoardGameDave]

@@sarahreed-eurogamergirl Sorry, I didn't make that very clear: I found out recently while learning about the creation of Dominion that MTG was a huge part of that process! The designer wanted to take the fun parts of crafting your own optimized deck and make that itself into a card game... which was such a brilliant an innovative idea! I was watching more Board Game Theater yesterday! I feel like Vaccarino himself would like those videos; he always has some sort of humorous, thematic blurb in the rulebook for each expansion! 😁

[@BoardgamesforOne]

Great review man. I have played the app, but have yet to play the physical game.

[@BoardGameDave]

Thank you so much, Mike! Normally I would say that playing the physical game is far superior to a digital implementation but since it’s just cards, you’re probably not missing too much! 😅

[@BoardgamesforOne]

@@BoardGameDave the physical cards are still better. If I saw second hand I’d grab it

[@BoardGameDave]

@@BoardgamesforOne I agree; I think I'd always prefer physical gaming to digital... with the possible exception of some super light/short games! And I hope you find a copy! (There are some solo variants for Dominion you could try, too!)

[@BoardGameDave]

*ATTENTION: There is a brand new expansion for Dominion called Rising Sun that's set in feudal Japan!!* 🇯🇵 It's got brand new mechanisms like prophecies and shadow cards and I just reviewed it on the channel! Check it out here: kzbin.info/www/bejne/bKWVl4t5r7qJa68

[@nicholasbrouillette6997]

Great game, and definitely still worth checking out. My favorite deck builder is Shards of Infinity though

[@BoardGameDave]

It’s a classic for sure! I think it’s great that they’re continuously releasing expansions to keep it fresh! And I have to admit that I don’t know too much about Shards of Infinity! I’ll have to check out a review! 👾

[@nicholasbrouillette6997]

@@BoardGameDave it’s basically Star Realms but with some very cool additions

[@BoardGameDave]

@@nicholasbrouillette6997 I watched the Dice Tower review of it this morning and it does seem very similar to Star Realms! I really appreciate Star Realms for how portable and easy-to-teach it is! Plus there's multiple ways to play multiplayer and a solo mode all packed into that small Frontiers box! 🚀

[@blazealdrich37]

just bought the big box that includes Dominion with the Intrigue expansion

[@BoardGameDave]

That’s so awesome! Enjoy, man! Can’t wait to hear your thoughts! 👍🏼

[@blazealdrich37]

@@BoardGameDave played several games so far! I really enjoy it! No one game is the same

[@BoardGameDave]

@@blazealdrich37 For sure! And with all the expansions out there you could make (I think literally) trillions of combinations! 🤯

[@Lordofthering2102sj]

Amazing play, they really should re editing the others expansion

[@BoardGameDave]

Thank you for your comment, Alessandro! I’m not sure what you mean by “re editing the others expansion”? Maybe coming out with a second edition for some of the expansions?

[@Lordofthering2102sj]

@@BoardGameDave yes exactly !

[@BoardGameDave]

@@Lordofthering2102sj Ah, gotcha! I'm not familiar enough with the expansions to know how they'd need to be revised for a second edition, but I'll take your word for it! The people at Rio Grande are probably too busy planning out their next 5-10 expansions for Dominion! 🤣

[@zmollon]

Not as big a fan now that good deck builders with something else exist like dune imperium and clank legacy, but it deserves its place in the board game hall of fame

[@BoardGameDave]

Don’t forget Endless Winter as another deck building + other stuff! 🥶 I know what you mean, but there’s something nice (and nostalgic) for me about going back to this classic deck builder! (And the expansions don’t hurt!)

[@zmollon]

@@BoardGameDave my favourite expo I own is seaside. You?

[@BoardGameDave]

@@zmollon Easily Empires! 👑 I made a whole video about it!

[@DaleKeefer]

"Nobody likes Alchemy." LMAO!

[@BoardGameDave]

Haha, it's funny because it's true! 🤣 Stella's mostly a black cat so she likes the potions and golems and superstitious stuff! 🧙🏻‍♀️