{"id":234,"date":"2012-01-11T05:40:56","date_gmt":"2012-01-10T19:40:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/theboardgamers.org\/?p=234"},"modified":"2012-01-11T05:41:14","modified_gmt":"2012-01-10T19:41:14","slug":"bland-but-brilliant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theboardgamers.org\/?p=234","title":{"rendered":"Bland But Brilliant"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dominion<\/strong><\/p>\n

Bland But Brilliant<\/strong><\/p>\n

Review by Craig Hargraves<\/p>\n

Like Magic the Gathering, its inspirational forebear before it, Donald X. Vaccarino\u2019s Dominion has established and defined a brand new genre of game. In Dominion\u2019s case, it is the Deck Building Game and it has inspired a host of other games with its engaging formula. However unlike Magic, whose early competition tended to be fairly weak games in comparison, Dominion has seen competition in what is arguably a much stronger hobby games market than 20 years ago both from a game design and market size standpoint. Many of Dominion\u2019s successors are arguably tussling for the position of the Number 1 Deck Building Game. So how well does Dominion stand up to its fairly fierce competition?<\/p>\n

Dominion is as a game brilliant in both its conception and execution. It\u2019s a simple idea really. Everyone starts with the same basic deck and then proceeds to customize it into an efficient victory point reaping engine by buying new cards from a common pool and adding them to their deck. With the current game\u2019s pool being made up of only 10 different types out of a total range of 25 types in the initial Dominion set you\u2019re guaranteed of having a different experience every time you play.\u00a0 Unless of course you decide to replay that favourite set of cards. Dominion rewards players with the ability to look at a given set of cards and work out the best combinations and ratios to put into their deck. The way Mr. Vaccarino has taken the idea of Magic the Gathering\u2019s deck-building meta game and crafted it into a game in its own right is genius. It\u2019s one of those ideas that you later scratch your head and wonder why no one had thought of it sooner.<\/p>\n

On the whole, Rio Grande Games have done an excellent job of the production. Notably the insert, at least at the time, was a work of extremely considerate genius as it made sorting and accessing the various types of cards much easier and I won\u2019t hold the fact that it doesn\u2019t work quite as well when the cards have been sleeved against them. And while these days I would perhaps lean more towards the Thunderstone option of having a number of deep wells and card dividers for sorting the cards, the original design is still extremely functional.<\/p>\n

Sadly, the art on the cards does leave me a little cold. While each piece does match up with the title of the card reasonably well, the style overall does nothing for me. For the most part they\u2019re just a bit too blocky and simplistic (although some pieces do have a lot more detail). What I will commend Rio Grande Games on however is maintaining a fairly consistent style amongst the eight artists who have contributed art to this set of cards.<\/p>\n

Now, I\u2019m personally a very thematically oriented game player. I love seeing game mechanisms which make sense and are well integrated with the theme of the game. The more a game tends towards the abstract, the less likely it is that the game will work for me.\u00a0 And this is where Dominion should by all rights fall flat for me. I quite like the rather tongue in cheek humour used for the theme and I totally get the connections between the different titles of the cards and their respective mechanics. They make sense.\u00a0 I even like the odd bit of mechanical humour on cards like Feast. But when I\u2019m playing the game I really don\u2019t feel any of it. I don\u2019t feel like a monarch expanding my realm through the use of bureaucracy or woodcutters or whatever. I feel like I\u2019m trying to create a deck that can string together a bunch of different actions so I can get a fistful of money cards to buy me a Province and win the game. The gameplay just feels totally mechanical to me. I think that games like Thunderstone, Rune Age and others have done a better job of creating a game that conveys its theme while you play.<\/p>\n

But ironically, I still like Dominion more. A lot more.<\/p>\n

There is just something undeniably brilliant about Dominion\u2019s design. It just works perfectly. Even after you\u2019ve mixed lots of expansions in, the game still rarely misses a beat. This has a lot to do I suspect with the fact that Dominion as a complete product (the base game and almost all of its expansions) had been designed and play-tested before the first game ever went on sale. This is something that those who have followed haven\u2019t had the advantage of doing in their rush to market.<\/p>\n

And ultimately for me, Dominion plays fast. Experienced players will knock out a game easily in 20-30 minutes. Other games like Thunderstone and Rune Age take a lot longer. And there is just something really satisfying about being able to play through several quick and varied games of Dominion in the time that I would have spent playing one of those more thematic games.<\/p>\n

Dominion: Arguably Bland. Undeniably Brilliant.<\/p>\n