Let’s Play Dominion
A deck building card game
In a previous article I wrote about how I used Python to set up a game of Dominion. The cards in Dominion interact with each other so it is difficult to discuss them as individual cards what is important is how they interact with each other. In this article I have created a sample game. We will go through the cards and show how they interact with each other. You will find all of the cards used for this game listed below each one with a link to a description of the card on the Dominion wiki site. Take a few minutes to familiarize yourself with them. Then we will take a look at how they work work together.
House rules: We may play with shelters or platinum and colonies without reference to the presence of Dark Ages or Prosperity.
Plan
play with Colonies and Platinum no Shelters.
To win a game of Dominion you have to be focused. There are many different options. You can’t do everything. You need to be selective and buy the right card at the right time. The following is a brief summary of the cards available for a particular game and how they work together.
Canal
You don’t want to buy canal if you intend to by buy chariot race. On the other hand if your opponent buys chariot race canal could help you get expensive cards into your hand it only counts when you play it so having it in your hand is not a problem.
Plan
There are two ways you could use plan. Put it on an expensive card that you intend to buy multiple copies of such as cultist. Or usually the better choice put it on a cheap spammable card (one that is not terminal).
In this kingdom plan and market square are a powerful combination.
Chariot race
If your intend to win the game with a three pile ending chariot race could be helpful but it is probably not enough on its own. You need cards that will help you maintain higher value cards than your opponent. If your opponent decided to try some sort of poor house strategy (not recommended) chariot race could be a good counter.
Harvest
Harvest would work well with a poor house strategy as it creates good indirect buying power however there are better alternative in this kingdom.
Remake
Remake is another card that partners well with poor house. It gets rid of coppers and turns them into poor houses. A big problem is that such a strategy requires a good source of multiple actions and the only source of multiple actions is the inn which is too expensive for this kingdom.
Patrol
There are no cursers in this kingdom. Patrol is not worth considering.
Pillage
Pillage is a powerful card. The attack can be devastating as it can discard the one card that you need to make the turn work and the spoils are a big infusion of money. However both the spoils and the card itself are a one shot deal. It is usually better to go for consistency rather than for a single big turn. A player might consider getting an early pillage to try to get a canal.
Poor house
Trashing regular money and relying on disappearing money to supplement the +4$ per turn can work in some kingdoms. This kingdom does have some cards that work well with poor house but it lacks an inexpensive source of extra actions to make it work as it should.
Duchess
In this kingdom it is not worth $2 and should probably be turned down if you do happen to buy a duchy. This is another card that could work well with poor house.
Inn
A vanilla village costs $3. Unless you are going to make very good use of the potential big turn that could result when you buy it it is not worth $5. You would need to time it carefully so that there were plenty of good actions in the discard pile when you bought it.
Market Square
In this kingdom plan and market square are a great combination get as many market squares as you can. They are not terminal. You will be able to trash cards with each purchase and create a lean and mean deck. You have chance of gaining gold. The cost will be $2.
Cultist
Cultist is a very powerful card, although ruins are not as bad as curses they are junk. Junkers are always worth buying and unlike most other junkers this one is not terminal. It can play other cultists. Buy as many as you can. This is a great pay load card. With market square and cultist you don’t need to buy anything else.
Summary
Dominion is a two player game and things can change depending upon what your opponent does. Here is what I would recommend.
Buy plan early put it on market square. The only other cards you should need are as many cultists as you can get and since this is likely to be a three pile ending (market square, cultist and ruins) you will need to buy some victory cards. Buy A duchy or two or maybe a province. The game is likely to end before anybody can buy colonies.
You will need to decide whether or not to buy gold. There may be sufficient from discarding market squares.
I would recommend putting plan on market square and leaving it there until the pile runs out then shifting it to cultist.
It might look attractive with a 3–4 opening to put plan on cultist then buy it for 4 next turn. This could work out well, if after your first shuffle you drew 4 or 5 coppers.
But if not it could really slow you down. Draw 3 estates and 2 coppers or your cultist and 2 estates and you would have a dead turn. Then you would have to spend another turn getting the plan back to where it should have been in the first place.
With 3–4 put the plan on market square and gain your market square and trash an estate.
do the same with 4–3.
I would even do it with 5–2. Get your engine running first you will be able to catch up real fast.
With a 2–5 opening. I would buy a cultist. It might be better to set up plan but without running a simulation I can’t be sure.
This kingdom is likely to produce a three pile ending .You will probably need to start greening early.
I hope this gives you some idea of how the game of Dominion is played. Every game is different. This article just gives you a taste of strategic considerations and ideas.
Jim McAulay🍁 says:
I always wanted to be a monk but I never got the chants.
