Rio Grande Games Dominion Dark Ages

This is arguably the best deck-building game ever made so it's 100% worth trying, whether you like that style of game or have never tried one.A simple explanation:You start with a small hand of cards that, when played, allow you to "buy" other cards from the central market. These cards that you buy have special abilities, allowing you to play extra cards, take extra actions, buy more expensive cards, and sometimes affect the other player. As the turns go on, your hand of cards will get bigger and if you've bought well, you will draw cards that work together in combos, letting you buy several cards and take several actions in a single turn. Certain cards are worth points, and so when the stacks of market cards run out, you tally up your scores to see who wins.It's very easy to learn, the rule book is clear. Cards have colour art on them, all in keeping with the theme of being a fuedal lord, and are thematic in their uses such as a bandit card for taking money cards from your opponent, a scout card that lets you look ahead in the deck, a moat card that acts as a defence against opponents' attacks.Unfortunately the card size is unusual so standard sleeves won't work, and while the design of the box is amazing for storage (everything labelled and laid out) if you do sleeve them they won't fit in their assigned spaces anymore.

Dominion Seaside is everything an expansion should be. It builds on what was already a tight and easy to learn game format in a way that offers some new tactics and options without overwhelming you.The new mechanic in this set are duration cards, which stay in play and give you a bonus when you initially play the card and then give you an additional bonus on the subsequent turn. This allows you to plan your upcoming turns in a more constructive fashion than before, giving you extra cards or gold next turn or for example using a tactician to turn your appalling hand of estates, curses and duchys into a much more conducive hand next turn.This set is also pretty thematic, which is something that dominion seems to struggle with a bit. Cards which break away from this, in my opinion, are the treasure map, which will give you a huge pay off, so long as you can find the other half. The pirate ship is also great, allowing you to plunder your opponents, trashing their treasures or using the ship's ill gotten gains for your own purposes. Touches like this really help to make the game step away from the 'play cards to buy cards' paradigm that the base set seems stuck in.As for the components, the cards are of the same quality that you will be used to, good quality card which can stand up to quite a bit of punishment. However I would advise that you get some sleeves, especially due to all the shuffling that this game entails. There are also several mats included which are used with some of the cards and are very thick and don't bend easily. The artwork on them is nice too. The stand out pieces for me however are the coins and embargo tokens which come with the set. They look great and are incredibly high quality, they're made from metal which makes them basically indestructible (unless you are doing something extremely unusual whilst playing dominion).All in all a great expansion which I would highly recommend to anyone who likes the game. This is not a standalone expansion however, so either Dominion or Dominion Intrigue is required to actually play this. Thanks for reading and hope this helps. G

If you play boardgames then you need to play dominion. This is not your imperial assault or descent style of a game so do not expect complex moves that involve 20minutes of thinking and arguing. This is a better, well aged version of 7Wonders in my opinion.The Good:- Base pack brings enough content for a lot of games- Base pack brings a lot of variations to the way you can play with friends- Has a ton of expansions from which you can choose to expand your game- Is a classic deck building game- Is very fast and easy to setup- has amazing box that kinda preps everything for you- Very nice artwork- very nice explanationsThe BAD:- the base game will bring enough content for your group to play 30˜40 games without thinking that the game needs more but eventually you will need an expansion- when you start picking expansions for this game it is very hard to pick which one to get due to the big variety, mixed reviews, 0 order- the cards NEED sleeves because the paint gets rubbed off easily- The base setups are nice for people to learn the game but are not very good for drafting - you need expansions to draft working combos

Dominion was one of the first deck building games and remains one of the greatest, and there are a few reasons for this. Firstly, it is one of the purest deck builders around. Secondly, it has a ton of expansions and each one adds more variety. Thirdly, it is a game that is pretty easy to teach and is very family friendly.If you’re not familiar with deck building, it is simply where each player starts with the same cards and has the opportunity to buy new and different cards which will hopefully propel them towards the goal of the game, which in this case is getting victory points.As I said, the game is easy to teach, family friendly and sits about a light to mid weight game for me. It plays in about 30 - 45 mins and plays 2 - 4 players.I personally love this game and the wife loves it even more, we’ve played it with friends and family and it is still an interesting and enjoyable game even after all the plays that we have had. The only downsides I think are that set-up and take down of the game can be a little bit of a pain and that the theme of the game is pretty thin, other than this I think it is an excellent game and worthy of your consideration.Notable exspansionsDominion IntrigueSeasideProsperity