What is Dominion?

[Nytmare]

That, potentially, being the case... what expansion would be the solution?

That's kinda tough. Probably any set except for Alchemy? Each of the expansions really has a core theme to it, so it would kinda depend on what style of game you liked to play.

From Ye Olde Wikipedia:


Intrigue - 500 Cards - Decisions among multiple possible effects; victory cards with an in-game effect. Includes 25 types of Kingdom cards.

Seaside - 300 Cards - Effects that persist to the player's next turn. Includes 26 types of Kingdom cards.

Alchemy - 150 Cards - Introduces the Potion Treasure, an alternate card cost; emphasizes the creation of decks with large numbers of Action cards. Includes 12 types of Kingdom cards.

Prosperity - 300 Cards - With a focus on wealth, it introduces high value treasure and victory cards as well as victory point tokens, and expensive cards. Includes 25 types of Kingdom cards.

Cornucopia - 150 Cards - Emphasizes variety in player decks; introduced a "Prize" stack, which are non-Supply cards that can be won by certain actions. Includes 13 types of Kingdom cards.

Hinterlands - 300 Cards - Cards that have an effect when purchased or otherwise gained. Includes 26 types of Kingdom cards.

Dark Ages - 500 Cards - Cards that do something when trashed, cards that care about the trash, cards that upgrade themselves, and ways to upgrade other cards. Includes 35 types of Kingdom cards.

 

[Wycen]

Quick question, then back to the thread at hand.

If you fans of the game could pick just one expansion to add to the core set, what would it be, and why?

For me it would be Seaside. I'll point out I haven't played all the expansions at this point. What are there 7 now?

Seaside has the cool orange card mechanic of keeping a card around for a second turn. Plus some other things not in the original game, like setting cards aside for later. It also has nice bits.

 

[VictorC]

snip

Thank you, very informative. Which one would you pick?

 

[VictorC]

For me it would be Seaside. I'll point out I haven't played all the expansions at this point. What are there 7 now?

Seaside has the cool orange card mechanic of keeping a card around for a second turn. Plus some other things not in the original game, like setting cards aside for later. It also has nice bits.

Interesting, I'll certainly look into it.

 

[Neonchameleon]

For me it would be Seaside. I'll point out I haven't played all the expansions at this point. What are there 7 now?

Seaside has the cool orange card mechanic of keeping a card around for a second turn. Plus some other things not in the original game, like setting cards aside for later. It also has nice bits.

I'd second Seaside. It's like a fuel injection which, for new players, is a very good thing. In base, Big Money is almost competative with really skilled play and will beat out beginners attempts to put an engine together (Big Money = Ignoring the action cards and just going for gold and provinces) and that's no fun. Seaside's action cards are just a touch stronger than the base set's, and more geared to engines. And to many people the fun part of Dominion is creating an engine that will play through half your deck, if not all of it in one turn.

For the other sets, Intrigue is vicious - but I might choose it as a base set over the actual basic set. Alchemy should probably be avoided - it's far the worst set produced. Prosperity is not for beginners - with ten point victory cards rather than six pointers, the games go on longer and the difference between the winner and the loser is much greater. It's a nice tweak once you know what you are doing - but not before. Cornucopia is its own strategy and again tweaks the game so a full court spread (or rather one of everything) is good. Nice but not where I'd start.

 

[Blackbrrd]

Dominion is the card game me and some friends played every tuesday for close to two years. It's darned good and everything but Alchemy is a good expansion to the game.

The way we usually play the game is by grabbing two sets, for instance the base game + seaside or intrigue + prosperity. We then draw 5 random cards from each set. Then we go around the table once if four players or twice if three players. We can either protect or thrash a card (which gets replaced with a random card from the same set). We played the game several hundred times, and we basically haven't played the same game twice with this way of setting up the game.

I think the "core" of the game can be found in: base game + intrigue + seaside + prosperity.

 

[Nytmare]

Thank you, very informative. Which one would you pick?

For me, it would probably be Dark Ages.

 

[Altamont Ravenard]

I would recommend Prosperity. It adds new treasure and victory cards.

You can also play for free with the basic set on goko.com (you have to register but it's free). It's very well designed and since they've worked out most of the bugs (the game launched in August of this year I think), it plays really smoothly.

You can play against the computer or against other real players. There is also an adventure mode that I haven't tried much, but basically you play against the computer in harder and harder games (the games get harder because the computer opponent starts with a better hand as the adventure progresses).

If you want to play with cards from the expansions, you have to buy them. For a total of ~23US$ I bought all the expansions that have been integrated into the game so far, which is to say all of them except Alchemy, Cornucopia and Hinterlands. Once you buy cards from an extension, if you start a game, the person you are playing with doesn't need to have bought the newer cards to play in your game.

My handle on goko is Altamont if you see me and have questions there.

AR

 

[Desdichado]

It's doesn't matter whether or not it's boring, it's the dominant base set strategy and it's why the game gets better when you start folding in expansions.

Indeed. We play with base + Intrigue + Prosperity. Some combinations of cards have weird effects, but by and large, I like having more variety and more diversity in terms of which set the cards come from. I'm thinking of picking up either Seaside or Hinterlands for Christmas and adding it to the mix. Any recommendations on which?

 

[Altamont Ravenard]

What I don't like about Seaside are the cards that also have an effect on your next turn. More often than not we forget to keep the card for the next turn, don't remember if the card was played this turn or the last turn, etc. Those cards are to me "hassle" cards, just like the card that makes you count your discard pile (for example).

AR