Never On Sunday

We got a chance to play Dominion last weekend, and it was very good. It borrows the idea of building a deck from the collectible card games, but because everyone takes turns building from the same raw material, there’s no advantage to “Mr. Suitcase,” the guy who buys the most powerful and cost-effective cards.

Starting with a small seed deck of 7 gold and 3 otherwise useless cards worth 1 victory point (VP) each, you deal yourself a series of five-card hands, recycling cards as necessary. On your turn, you are entitled to one action card, if you hold any, and one purchase of a new card from the available pool, if you have enough gold to cover the cost. New cards go to your discard pile, and are rapidly shuffled back into your hand. You might elect to buy new action cards, which do whatever they do; 1-, 2-, and 3-point money cards to increase your chances of being able to afford what you want on later turns with only five cards in hand; and 1-, 3-, and 6-point VP cards. Your entire hand is discarded each turn, so there’s no holding onto a useful card you can’t play immediately. Use it or lose it! (Until a later turn, at least.) The game ends when the last 6-point VP card is taken, and scores totaled in each deck.

The tactical combinations are entertaining, and thick with traps for the unwary. For example, VP cards are the whole point of the game, but if you fill your deck with VPs, your hand will be likewise choked with them, seriously hampering your ability to collect more cards. A single 6-point card is much better than six 1-point cards because the single card won’t get in your way so often. Another example of a trap: I discovered early that a laboratory is a fine thing to have. Playing a laboratory allows you to draw two more cards and take another action—in essence, increasing your hand size by one, hopefully to allow you to draw some money and buy a better card at the end of the turn. Laboratories can be chained: play one, draw two cards, take another action which is spent playing another laboratory, etc. So I bought a lot. Before game’s end, however, I was drawing more cards than I could use every turn, and excess are discarded, so I had wasted my purchasing power on more laboratories than I had a use for.

Dominion has three shortcomings. First, there’s the price tag: $45 for a deck of cards is outrageous, and “expansion packs”—alternate decks, really—cost the same. Second, there is little interactivity, despite the inclusion of various monkey wrench cards that can interfere with opponents. Like Yahtzee or San Juan, you’re playing in parallel and comparing final scores rather than competing directly. Third, there’s a frustrating degree of luck to the game. All cards are good, but they only reach their full potential in combination with others, and you have no control over which combinations you’ll have in hand at any moment. Monkey wrench cards are worse, with effects ranging from devastating to nonexistent according to random draw.

Still, I see the reason for Dominion‘s popularity. It’s fast-paced and rich with decisions, all of which feel vital because opportunity costs are high. Every card is good, and every card can pay off big, if only you shuffle them in the right order. And when the shuffle breaks against you, it nevertheless somehow feels like poor planning rather than the luck of the draw.