Dominion - 7 September

A return to Dominion (last played by Rivals in July 2009!) for James, David, Stuart and Adrian.  It is a really clever and fun game; yes there is some luck, but there's lots of judgement too, and enough variety for two very different rounds - and it's no surprise that there are 3 or 4 expansion games available.

We first played the Starting set up to get into the rules again, and then the Size Distortion set up after Stu had to go.  The scores for the Starting set up: Adrian 45, David 33, James 21, Stuart 18.  And for Size Distortion: David 28, Adrian 19 and James 7.

A great 4 player game, worth getting out sooner than another 7 years...

Ticket to Ride Europe and Dominion, 29 July 2009

A foursome this week (James, Adrian, Orhan and David) for Adrian's post-natal return to gaming. First up was Orhan's Ticket to Ride Europe, a shorter and denser game than the US map but in many ways more involved and engaging. The addition was stations, allowing players to use others' routes (a sort of 'leapfrog rule'). James eschewed the completing routes strategy in favour of going for top scores on individual connections. The other three opted for the more standard approach, but with Orhan collecting a fistful of route cards even before he'd looked at his opening hand. In the end, James racked up an impressive 129 and then had the agony of watching the others cash in their routes. But to no avail: Adrian and Orhan just made it to 125 and David to 124. A good win for James.

Having finished TTRE early, we went for Dominion, taking about an hour to play the standard game. Orhan had to go a bit earlier than the others so we followed up with a three player 'Big Money' variant (which was over very quickly but which had a couple of bemusing inclusions in the Action Cards - why 'Chapel' for example?). In these games the previous chaining combos so beloved of David didn't quite work out for him and Adrian snatched both victories with a money-heavy approach (acquiring decks with more Gold and Silver cards than Action cards). The scores: Game 1 Adrian 33, James 28, Orhan 24, David 23; Game 2 Adrian 48, David 42, James 39.

Dominion - 20 May 2009

(James writes) I hadn't played this before and was really taken with the unique game mechanism. The two games we played felt quite different as we changed the stacks of cards, so I'm sure this has plenty of mileage. Very clever and fun.

Dominion, 7 January 2009

The first Wednesday game of the New Year was at David's - Dominion, a new purchase by Adrian.  This new 2-4 player Rio Grande game is currently ranking 6th on Boardgamegeek with an 8.18 score (see http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/36218) and we found that it had some real potential.

Each player starts off with an identical deck of 10 cards (a mixture of resources and victory points) and aims, through using resources to buy new 'Action' cards and through playing these Action cards to gain other advantages and hence get more cards, to end the game with the greatest number of victory points in their deck.  The game is thus a bit like building a deck for a collectable card game in real time.  Happily, Dominion is complete as to itself - coming with 500 cards and no need for expansions ever.

The beauty of the game lies in various design concepts (not all original but still clever).  Firstly, you have to build a balanced deck so that the number of Action cards, Resource cards and Victory point cards complement each other.  Too many Action cards and you don't have enough Resource cards to buy stuff; too many Victory points early on and you don't have enough Action or Resource cards to build your deck.  Secondly, each turn (which is quick so there's no sitting around) allows you to play from a hand of only 5 cards - so you have to optimise your dek such that the combination of 5 cards that you're likely to draw from your deck each turn gives you the best possibilities for further building.   Thirdly, there are 10 types of Action card available in each game - out of a total of 25 types.  These interact with each other to allow combos of actions (or 'chaining' as it came to be known) such that you can pursue separate strategies.  The suite of 10 Action card sets also makes each game very different...

So, after that long preamble...  For the first game we played with the recommended starting set of Action cards.  Immediately various strategies were followed - Kieron as chief belligerent who developed a deck with lots of Militia (which, when played, reduce all the others' hands to 3 cards for their turn, limiting their options); Adrian who went for the Smithy and Moat approach (Moat to defend against Kieron's Militias and both Smithy and Moat allow you to burn through lots of cards in the deck, allowing rapid re-use of Resources); David who developed card chaining very early with the Village, Market and Mine combo (burns through multiple Action cards, upgrades Resources); and Stu who seemed to have no real strategy - but who nevertheless won, so clearly his strategy was just too clever and inscrutable for the rest of us...  Game 1: Stu 30; Deej 21; Adrian 19; Kieron 15.  

For Game 2 we replaced the little-used Remodel card with the Thief - which allows the burglary of others' Resources.  This addition changed the complexion of the game utterly: no one wanted to build up large Resources in their decks for fear of them being nicked.  Instead we all played to get low numbers of Victory points much more quickly - and everyone had sussed chaining by then.  Result: much shorter game.  Kieron 12; Stu 10; Adrian 9; Deej 3.

For Game 3 we changed the complexion again, taking out the best chaining card (Village) and ditching the Thief and replacing them with Library and Moneylender.  This set made long chaining much harder which led to again slightly different strategies employed.  Result: Deej 23; Adrian 17; Kieron 17; Stu 16.

So, by the end of the evening we'd learned the rules, played 3 games and encountered (only) 13 of the 25 Action card sets.  The game doesn't have the Derrening potential of greats such as Ra and Princes of Florence, but by gum its clever, pacey, and has lots of replay potential.  It would also be a great travel game, just being cards.  So, all in all, another great Rivals evening and a great game for the cupboard.