Board Game Review: Dominion

DKC and I had a chance to play one of the board games I got for my birthday a few weeks ago: Dominion. It’s not the easiest game for me to describe, actually. Check out the link for a fairly good overview. It’s card-based. You start each game with some combination of cards that let you do a specific type of ability. You use those cards to build a deck and use that deck to beat your opponent. DKC isn’t the world’s most adventurous board gamer (okay–technically this game doesn’t have a board, but hey–who’s counting?), and she was a bit leery of the sheer number of cards that greeted her once I had the game set up. However, I’m happy to report that the actual game is very straightforward and easy to play once you get over the initial learning curve hurdle. (And for those of you wondering, I lost. It was close, though–always a good sign in a game.) We really had a good time figuring out which cards were good for what, and how they could be used effectively to be able to pull off certain moves. All in all, I’d say it’s an excellent gateway game, especially for other card-based games. I see a lot of replayability in it, and it should appeal to those less-than-eager gamers out there. Better still, it plays great with 2 people, a fact that’s very important to me these days (or at least until I can get TRC old enough to start joining the ranks in these games–then we can graduate to 3 players. Excellent.) After my first run through, I’d give it 3.5 stars out of 4.