Board Game Designers Forum

it is an interesting review, but i wouldn't put too much stock in it...

if you auto-pilot your build, and don't pay attention to what other people are doing, you're playing badly- for example, someone else grabs one or two 6 victory point cards, and is now depleting the thinner stacks with some double or triple buys.
your build isn't really supposed to be picking up VP's for another 5 turns or so- but you just "auto-pilot" your deck and let the other person end the game early, because you choose not to interact?

to answer your question though... not yet :)

I don't know if I would reuse the specific mechanic in the same way. I really know many people that do not find shuffling all that fun. Where I have no problems with shuffling, I don't know how much it will hurt the games overall success.

I do like the mechanic, I would just hope to be able to incorporate the build concept without the shuffling.

Sure, you should pay attention to what's going on, but the reviewer's examples and your example are both just about timing the end of the game. In general, if you look at your hand of five cards, you're not going to change how you play THOSE five cards based on what the person before you did or what you think the person after you will do; you're going to play those five cards in whatever way will best continue to execute your deck strategy.

I'm not saying that's a bad thing -- I'm still hooked on the game. I'm just wondering if it's possible to inject "meaningful" decisions into that "here are my 5 cards for the turn" part of the game, especially decisions that ARE influenced by what the other players just did or may be about to do (this turn - not just adapting to their general deck strategies), throughout the duration of the game.

Hm, put that way, am I saying Dominion is full of strategy but very limited tactics, largely confined to the endgame?

I don't know if there's a way around the shuffling. I mean, mechanically, some people have made tile/chip versions of Dominion, using an opaque bag to "shuffle" their deck and just draw from it. However you do it physically, though, the core mechanic is about building your stock of available actions and resources, from which you have access to a subset each turn.

I've only played the game once, but I was wondering how the game would change if you weren't required to discard your hand at the end of every turn? I think that would add another point of tension, being whether to play a certain card now or wait for a more opportune time. I might hold on to Remodeling if I know I'm likely to draw a Curse the next turn, for example.

One downside I can think of is that it could really hamper your deck throughput, but I still just see that as another factor in your decision-making.

It would probably slow the game down, too, and I really like the pace of it so far.

The in game deck building is a good mechanic and I don’t find the shuffling to be a major issue from playability standpoint. Most of the game you are shuffling very few cards so it’s quick and easy. Durability is an issue as the frequent shuffling will tend to wear the cards out much faster than in other games. Everyone I know that plays this has sleeved their cards.

There is meaningful decision making in that adding certain cards makes options potentially available. Like Poker you can know the odds and plan or react accordingly. The downside of this game for me is the low level of player interaction. If I had more ability to influence the game as a whole I might like it better.

I have played Dominion once and my opinion is pretty much the same as everyone else. The game is fun no doubt, but the player interaction is lacking. Certain cards in the deck can provide more interaction, but maybe what the game is actually missing is a feeling of scarcity. Because you can buy any action that you can afford and there are more than enough to go around (not a scarcity issue), there is no indirect interaction like in other games. Most games have an element of taking an action so that another player can't take it or has to modify his strategy. In Dominion, there is very little of this. This gives the game a feel that what you do does not really effect the other players. I keep thinking that part of the game at least should involve limiting decisions based on scarcity and not just cost.

Has anyone attempted to use less cards in each action deck (say 5 each) and having the game end when there were 6 piles depleted instead of 3? Also there could be some kind of graduated release of action card types. You could start the game with only five different actions to choose from and some event (the depletion of one deck?) would trigger the release of another action deck to choose from. This would add more randomness, but also add an element of surprise.

Became an issue in the last game I played. It was a 4-player game and I think that made a difference. Several Bureaucrat cards were bought early on so everyone started going for Moats, which were depleted about mid-game. After them the 3VP cards went next, because 3 of us had good combos for those. Once the 3VP cards were gone everyone started buying the Estates and the game ended with 3 empty piles. So yeah, I'd say scarcity played a role. I don't see that happening with fewer than 4 players, though.

Ditto. I only bought one game at BGGcon. Dominion was it.It was kicking around the back of my head, but I've been putting it off and working on other things. This is as good an excuse as any to write the ideas down:

1) Use chits instead of cards. Cheaper, more durable, easier to shuffle, takes less table spaces. Less space for rules, but labeled chit bins can deal with this, I think.

2) Game theme is PvP: Mad Monster Combat. I actually like the relative lack of interaction in Dominion, but so many people have asked for more interaction that I'm going full-bore PvP. Each monster (deck) has a number of life points. If your monster runs out of life points, the victorious monster eats you (the mad scientist) and are out of the game.

3) Every player starts with a basic monster and lab (10 chits, just like Dominion) and 10 life points. On your turn, you get one action and one Science! (buy) action. Your deck starts with seven one-point energy chits (coins) a one-point attack, a one-point defense, and one a one-point heal chit.

4) There are several common pools of chits available to all players. The common pools are 10 "customizing" chit pools, a one-point energy chit pool, a two-point energy chit pool, and a three-point energy chit pool. Purchase costs of chits are in units of energy. Customizing chit pools contain the following types of cards:
* Attacks: Play this as an action against a monster. That monster loses health, as indicated by the card.
* Defenses: Play this card when attacked to prevent damage up to the limit indicated on the card.
* Health-gainers: Play this as an action to gain health, as indicated on the card.
* Card transformers: Turn a card in hand into a different type of card.
* Extra Actions
* Extra Science! (actions)
... Heck. Listing all the card types is pointless. It's just a re-hash of Domionion anyway.

I think it'd be easy to make a game that's very similar to Dominion, but with the goal of knocking the life totals of your opponents down. It loses a bit of the nice symmetry of VP cards being worthless in play, but you gain the back-and forth that some players seem to be looking for. I have a few ideas for chits.
* Special attacks that damage all opponents simultaneously.
* Chits that are prerequisites for other chits; you can use them when you draw them or trade them in with an amount of energy to upgrade to the next level of power.
* Chits that directly attack an opponent's card library, removing one or more chits.
* Cards that remove a player's next Science! or action phase.
* Combo Attack/Defense chits and Counterattack chits.
* Fire or poison attacks that deal continuing damage.
* Defenses against specific damage types that don't get discarded after being used on that damage type.
* Regeneration: You don't discard it after using it, but can keep it in your hand. The disadvantage is that it functionally decreases your hand size.
* Invention chits that let you get access to chits that aren't in the game.

Where Dominion shifts from "make money" to "buy victory points" or "buy out the piles", Mad Monster Combat shifts from "build up my monster" to "launch attacks on other monsters". This can be triggered by a player building up big attacks, building up many actions coupled with chit-drawing and small attacks, or a player building up a massive life-gain engine. I don't see a need for a game-dictated endgame (when three pools run out of chits), although you could say that when three pools run out of chits, no more chits may be purchased.

Lots more ideas, but now it's time to go help Ian put stickers on discs for his self-published game, Taktika.

I have 2.5 directions to go so far, one of which is similar to your Mad Monster idea, which is players building a gladiator school. Most "action" cards would be people (gladiators, trainers, entertainers, doctors, etc.), but the "new" mechanic would be some sort of arena fight each round. This would slow the game down a bit, but could be a satisfying tradeoff. The point-five idea is just coming up with other themes in which you are recruiting personalities.

The other was retheming it to a setting very like Race for the Galaxy, but adding new wrinkle in the acquisition of planets and/or something like an abstracted tech/resource tree. Again, this would slow down the game compared to Dominion but may be worthwhile (in the way RftG is a beefier San Juan).

Interestingly, Truekid's review on BGG notes the similarity of Dom to St. Petersburg (which is ostensibly about recruiting personalities and buying buildings), and the superficial relationship to Race.