Dominion

Today's game review is of the 2008 release, Dominion.  For 2-4 players, it takes 30 minutes.

Overview
Dominion is a deck building game, where you start with a small deck of weak cards (your dominion), but add more powerful ones as the game progresses.  Some cards have abilities or resources that will help you on the way.  Ultimately, your deck will need the most victory points (provided by victory cards), but to obtain those, you'll need kingdom cards and treasure cards.  Some examples of kingdom cards are below.

image from here

Simplified Gameplay
Set up rows of cards as described in the rules (see example below).  These are supply piles, and the game ends when any 3 are empty (or the supply pile of province cards is empty).

image from here

Each player starts with 10 cards (7 coppers and 3 estates).  Shuffle them and draw 5 to form your opening hand.  On your turn, you do three things:
A) Action: play an action card (a kingdom card that says "action" at the bottom)
B) Buy: buy a card (gain one card from the supply by playing cards to pay its cost)
C) Clean-up: discard (your hand, played cards, and cards obtained this round), and draw 5 new cards.

Your discard pile will be shuffled to form a new draw pile, which will increase as the game progresses.  In this manner your deck grows, and you'll see these cards repeatedly.  So plan carefully!  Some cards (like victory cards) are needed by game's end but dead weight early on (they don't help you play an action card or buy a card), so timing is important.  Since you get a hand of only 5 cards each round, you hope for both action and treasure cards to help obtain more powerful cards to build your dominion efficiently and effectively.

Review
This is a good game, and one of the most popular (in terms of number of reviews) on board game geek; it's a staple right up there with Catan and Carcassonne.  It has a CCG-like flavor to it, as you can build a customizable deck, but unlike a CCG (where the deck is built beforehand, using cards you own), here you're building the deck as the game progresses from a common supply (and you can vary the cards in the common supply, furthering the variety).  I like that customization ability, and there are several winning strategies, which makes for a different experience each time.  I give it only one ding: it feels less interactive than I'd prefer.  Most of the game, you're focused on building your own deck, and the only time you 'clash' with others is when you're going for the same cards in the supply.  (There are cards that affect others, too, but not too many in the games I played.)  Overall, though, this is a winner.

Rating: A-