Dominion, Children's Card Game version.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Wed Aug 20, 2014 6:09 pm

So how is this bad boy? I would like to get into a good CCG (digital or offline) that won't fucking suck all of the money from my wallet. And the sets I see have a pretty reasonable pricing.

Laertes · Post by **Laertes** » Wed Aug 20, 2014 6:15 pm

I haven't played the children's game (indeed, I didn't know about it until just now) but Dominion is a fantastic game. I highly recommend it.

Josh_Kablack · Post by **Josh_Kablack** » Wed Aug 20, 2014 9:06 pm

Lago, what are you even talking about?

Dominion, the card game is a deckbuilder, where you buy cards to build your deck with in-game currency during the play of the game. Heck, it invented the deckbuilding genre of game. And that's the limit of nice things I have to say about it.

This thread at 3 hours old is like the top google hit for a "children's game" version of it, so I have to wonder if you're being cheeky with your use of the CCG acronym.

A "deckbuilder" is distinct from a CCG (collectible card game), TCG (trading card game) or LCG (living card game) in which you buy various decks and booster packs before game and assemble decks out of the cards in those packs before play. (see MtG, Spellfire

, Android, MLP CCG, etc.)

In theory, all you need for a deckbuilder is the base set and the inherent randomness of setup will give you a lot of replay ability. This is distinct from a CCG/TCG/LCG where you are committing to your own personal arms race against your friends to acquire enough of the key/powerful cards to build a truly competitive deck.

However Dominion is the primary violator of the idea that deckbuilders are complete and less expensive as it released two expansions a year for the first 5 years of its existence, thereby making it seem like the base set was incomplete (see also Donald X's comments about cards being moved from base set into expansions) and making nearly as pricey as MtG to stay up to date with cards. Other deckbuilders which followed this path of profitable shovelware to fleece completionists include Ascension and Thunderstone.

zeruslord · Post by **zeruslord** » Thu Aug 21, 2014 1:44 am

The original set of Dominion is all you really need to play - obviously there are other sets, but not having them is more like not having every Munchkin expansion pack than not having a full set of Netrunner cards. It is really good, but picking up everything ever released for it is pretty expensive at this point.

Pedantic · Post by **Pedantic** » Thu Aug 21, 2014 2:54 pm

Deckbuilding games can be pretty masturbatory, as each player is ofen building their own deck in isolation without much incentive to interact with the other players. That, and it's often pretty easy to isolate an ideal strategy in games like Dominion where you directly purchase you victory points.

I've had the most fun with deckbuilders playing Star Realms, which is fairly random, but not as ugly or as stupidly deterministic as Ascension.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Thu Aug 21, 2014 3:08 pm

@Josh: It's a bad joke. Ever since Yu-Gi-Oh! The Abridged Series started mocking the SERIOUS BUSINESS of the show's card game with the term 'Children's Card Game' I and a lot of other fans can't help but call any other kind of card game by that term. That Children's Card Game has the exact same acronym as Collectible Card Game is amusingly sophomoric, but probably a coincidence.

TheFlatline · Post by **TheFlatline** » Thu Aug 21, 2014 4:28 pm

I have a soft spot for Dominion in that it not only kicked off the deckbuilding genre but that it's the purest form of the genre. There's nothing else other than deckbuilding.

So that being said, yes, generally speaking Dominion is multiplayer solitaire. Think of it as a competitive puzzle. Everyone is trying to build the most efficient deck engine as fast as possible.

Once you get into it it plays blisteringly fast. I've played 4 player games where it was my turn again before I had finished reshuffling my deck for a draw.

Josh_Kablack · Post by **Josh_Kablack** » Thu Aug 21, 2014 6:21 pm

Pedantic wrote:Deckbuilding games can be pretty masturbatory, as each player is ofen building their own deck in isolation without much incentive to interact with the other players.

Which is another reason to hate on Dominion and the more direct clones out there.

More interactive deckbuilders include:

The above mentioned Star Realms: Having HP Authority count down instead of VP count up shouldn't be a big change - but having that information clear and public during the game means that it actually is huge and this game feels interactive. Other bonuses include lowest entry price of any deckbuilder, a really simple ruleset (no action economy, no separate buy phase, no non-monetary buying restrictions) and quicker setup/cleanup time than most deckbuilders. On the downside, pretty swingy in the way luck of the trade row compounds luck of the draw, especially as it doesn't have the soft-comeback mechanism of VP cards being deckbloat. Plus I'm a little miffed that the now out-of-beta digital version still has to actually follow the last 5% of the rules. (Ally Ability draws should be deferable, "may put the next ship you buy on top of decK" does not mean must put that ship on top of deck)

Arctic Scavengers: This is deckbuilder centered around resource allocation where you split the cards in your hand between 3 tasks each turn. Hunting is traditional deckbuilding and gets you food you can use to buy more tribe members. Digging lets you look at N cards from a face down stack and add the bests single card of those N to your deck. And Skirmishing is about who brings the most fight to gain the current contested resource card. This makes for a very heavy bluffing element, and bluffing is inherently interactive. On the downside, this takes Dominion's piss-poor hidden information rules and cranks them up to 11. If you use all the optional rules you are likely to have 5 different piles of face-down cards PER PLAYER on the table during a game.

Trains: Dominion plus a board with very soft area control scoring is still more interactive than Dominion, if only marginally so. On the downside, it is entirely too possible to perform very well in this game by totally ignoring the board.

Eminent Domain: Deckbuilding plus Role Selection following is likewise more interactive than pure deckbuilding. I have limited experience with this one, and not much desire to gain more experience, but it is more interactive than Tanto Cuore and the like.

And finally:
Dawkins Fucking Dammit Lago, have you missed me raving about Puzzle Strike previously!?! It's got my fucking name in the fucking rulebook and if you complain that deckbuilders are not interactive enough without having tried it I will reach through the internet and slap some sense into you! Seriously, it's got a weird theme and is probably more complex than it needs to be but it jolly well fixes the "multiplayer solitaire" complaint about deckbuilders with a unique and inherently interactive victory condition. It also adds asymmetric starting conditions with unique characters. Here are the official rules. And Here's online play where you can try the tutorial and a bit more for free. And heck, here's my Attempt to explain things in more detail. I won't try to explain or defend their pricing model for online play, but if you create an account over there (no cost, no spam), I will happily can kick some site gold your way if PMmed.

Dean · Post by **Dean** » Thu Aug 21, 2014 7:09 pm

Josh_Kablack wrote:Dawkins Fucking Dammit Lago, have you missed me raving about Puzzle Strike previously!?! It's got my fucking name in the fucking rulebook

Seriously? You helped design Puzzle Strike? That's game is seriously slick bro, I've been impressed by Puzzle Strike's design for a while, good show.

Josh_Kablack · Post by **Josh_Kablack** » Thu Aug 21, 2014 7:50 pm

Dean wrote:Seriously? You helped design Puzzle Strike? That's game is seriously slick bro, I've been impressed by Puzzle Strike's design for a while, good show.

What I have is a "playtest credit". That's only marginally "design work"

To be completely clear, what I did was a bunch of destructive competitive balance testing and feedback and yelling on the internet for the 3rd edition tweaks and Shadows expansion. I did not design any of the fundamental systems of the game, but did finalize some of the chips (Healing Touch gaining the draw on reaction was me) and provided a lot of evidence that things were broken. (BBB Upgrade gaining chips to hand, Color Panic with a reveal on a correct guess, One True Style with +draw) or needed other changes (My painfully long match against Thelo in a test tournament was the incentive for adding Panic Time rules). I also wrote about 30 pages worth of the 100 pages of material which made it into the Official Strategy guide for the game.