Glossary

Revision as of 02:19, 6 May 2021

This page contains a list of common terms and abbreviations used in discussion of the game Dominion.

Common terms and phrases

A

• Attack immunity: Cards that completely nullify almost all Attacks (e.g. Moat).
• Autopile: To empty a pile by playing cards from that pile, e.g. with Rats.

B

• Base: The original Dominion, with no expansions. For example, “In Base, Chapel is the best early-game trasher.”
• Big Money: see Money Strategies
• Board (or Kingdom, or set): The set of cards and landscapes that make up a particular game.
• Build: To improve the quality of one’s deck, usually by adding deck control or payload
• Bottomdeck: To appear, or to place a card, at or near the bottom of your shuffle, often so that you can’t draw it. Most commonly used to describe an undesirable case, e.g. "I hope I haven't bottomdecked my Sentry."

C

• Cantrip: Any card that gives +1 Card, +1 Action; it costs no net Action to play it and your hand size does not change. Can technically refer to villages, but in practice usually refers to cards like Merchant.
• Card-shaped thing: a card, Way, Event, Landmark, or Project.
• Centralizing (adj.): To be an important component of the most effective strategy in a given Kingdom. E.g., "Recruiter is often centralizing in Kingdoms in which it appears."
• Chain: To play a card while another card is resolving. Common examples include Throne Room chains in which successive Throne Rooms are played on each other, or Sauna/Avanto chains.
• Coffers: A token a player gets when cards say "+1 Coffers" (or, in early printings of Dominion: Guilds, "take a Coin token") and that they keep on their Coffers mat (or the Coffers side of their Coffers/Villagers mat), to save for later; a token can be removed from the mat in their Buy phase, before buying anything, for +.
• Collision: Refers to having two or more given cards together in the same hand.
• Colony game: Any game in which Colony and Platinum (from Prosperity) are available for purchase. The two always appear together.
• Combo: A strong interaction between cards that is a monolithic strategy.
• Counter: To neutralize or mitigate another effect (usually an Attack card or strong but fragile strategy, e.g. Counting House/Travelling Fair), whether directly (e.g. Moat) or indirectly (e.g. Library vs. Militia/Goons).
• Cycling: To move quickly through your deck, whether or not you draw or play the cards cycled through. Scavenger provides an extreme example of cycling, but Warehouse and Laboratory also cycle your deck effectively.

D

• Deck tracking: The ability of a player to know the contents and shuffle state of their and their opponent's decks at any given moment.
• Draw dead: To draw an Action card when you have no more Actions allowing you to play it.
• Draw to X (or DTX): A draw strategy centered around cards such as Library or Minion which draw cards until your hand reaches a certain size.
• Duchy Dancing: A situation in the endgame in which taking Provinces would risk opening up a win for one’s opponent and therefore both players buy Duchies.
• Dud: A turn which falls significantly below your expectations, usually one in which a poor starting hand means you fail to draw much or any of your deck, or you fail to hit a desired pricepoint.

E

• Early game: The first few turns (usually up to around turn 6) of the game. Includes the opening.
• Endgame (or late game): The last few turns of the game, when greening and pileouts become a concern.
• End on piles: Force the game to end by emptying three or more Supply piles (four or more with five or more players). Also known as a Three-pile ending or a pileout.
• Engine: A strategy in which you play multiple Action cards every turn, usually aiming to draw your full deck after thinning your starting cards, and to build to a point at which you can buy multiple Provinces per turn or score more   by other means; also such a deck itself. Compare with money strategies.
• Expansions: Releases of Dominion card sets, beyond the Base set.

G

• Gain-and-play: To gain a card and play it within the same turn.
• Goko: The second major online implementation of Dominion. Operated from 2013 to 2015.
• Golden sombrero: When both openers miss the first reshuffle.
• Greening: The stage of the game in which players acquire Victory cards.

I

• Isotropic (or Iso): http://dominion.isotropic.org — the first popular online implementation of Dominion, often linked to from the DominionStrategy forums. Operated from 2010 to 2013.

M

• Making Fun: The third major online implementation of Dominion. Operated from 2015 to 2016.
• Megaturn: A turn in which a player gains a large amount of  , usually while also ending the game. Example strategy that aims for a megaturn: Combo:_King's_Court_and_Bridge.
• Midgame: The stage of the game after the opening and before the endgame, in which players begin to have deck control and can build without much fear of the game ending immediately.
• Mill (verb): To lower the amount of cards left in a pile, usually by trashing a copy of that card and regaining that same card. Typically done on Provinces with a trash for benefit card.
• Mirror: When two or more players pursue identical or near-identical strategies.
• Multiplayer: Typically used to refer to games with 3 or more players.

N

• Non-terminal (or Non-terminal Action): Any Action card that gives at least one additional action (+1 Action), or otherwise allows playing additional actions (e.g. Throne Room or Patron).

O

• Opening: The first two turns and purchases made then. Usually classified as a / or / opening, although other openings are possible with cards from expansions.
• Overdraw: The ability to draw more cards than your deck contains.
• Overterminal: To have more terminal cards in deck than your terminal space can support.

P

• Piles: The stacks of cards from which players gain cards (or otherwise acquire them, e.g. by exchanging): for example “the Province pile has 3 remaining”.
• Pin: A very rare situation in which a player is unable to make any forward progress. Examples of cards that can lead to a pin include Bureaucrat and Donate.
• Pop: To activate a one-shot effect or card. Examples uses include: “I’ll pop my Sinister Plot next turn” and “They failed to pop their Magic Lamp”.

R

• Reshuffle: When a player turns over their discard pile and shuffles it to replace their empty deck.
• Rush: A strategy which attempts to end the game as quickly as possible, typically with a three-pile ending.

S

• Shuffle (noun): (See also: Reshuffle) The content and ordering of cards in a player's draw pile. Example uses: "I triggered a shuffle with mostly junk" and "I hope my Villages and Smithies collide this shuffle".
• Shuffle iT: The fourth (and current) major online implementation of Dominion. Operating from 2017 to present day. Can be found at: https://dominion.games/
• Sift: To filter through your cards and put the desired cards in your hand, usually through draw-and-discard (e.g. Warehouse) or deck inspection (e.g. Cartographer) methods.
• Slog: A strategy characterized by a long game in which a typical turn has weak buying and drawing power.
• Spike: Generate a specific amount of that is higher than your current deck would usually be likely or able to produce on a turn, e.g. by using a one-shot draw effect such as Expedition early in the game.
• Split: Typically, Coin values generated by a player’s first two hands (/ or /). Can also refer to how many copies of a key card were gained by a specific player, e.g. “I won the Highway split 9 to 1”.
• Stalemate: A (rare) game state in which neither player is incentivized to remove cards from the Supply and thereby advance towards the end of the game.
• Stop card: Any card that does not draw more cards
• Synergy: Describes any time two or more cards make effective use of each other's abilities, or cover for each other's disadvantages, but not in a powerful enough way to win a game with just those cards alone (as with a combo).

T

• Terminal (or Terminal Action): Any Action card that does not provide Actions or ways to play more Action cards (e.g. Throne Room is not a terminal).
• Terminal collision: A specific type of collision. Occurs when you draw two or more terminal Action cards into your hand without enough Actions to play them both.
• Terminal Silver: Any terminal Action that produces , e.g. Nomad Camp.
• Thinning: To remove cards from your deck via trashing, or otherwise prevent them from appearing in your hand/discard/draw pile (e.g. by Exiling)
• Topdeck: To place a card on top of your deck. Can override default destinations, such as gaining a card to your discard. Examples include Alchemist and Royal Seal).
• Trash: To trash is to remove a card from your deck, placing it in an area called the Trash or Trash pile.
• Trash for Benefit: Any card that gives a benefit at the cost of trashing a card. Typically scales with the of the trashed card. For example, Apprentice draws additional cards and Salvager produces .

V

• Village: the informal generic name for the family of cards which offer the ability to play more than one terminal Action in a turn—so called because many of them have "village" in their names. The simplest village card is Village itself. Typically, these cards offer +2 Actions, but there are some village cards which give this effect in other ways.
• Virtual coin or Virtual money: produced by Action cards (e.g. Festival), which can be spent during the Buy phase.

W

• Whiff: To miss on an intended goal, e.g. “I tried to spike an early Inheritance but whiffed”.

Common Abbreviations

• C, S, G, E, D, P: Sometimes used in game analyses for the basic Treasure cards and basic Victory cards in a Province game.
• Amb: Ambassador.
• BMU: A particular algorithm for Dominion simulators which plays a simple money strategy that buys no Kingdom cards.
• DTX: Draw to X
• FPA: First Player Advantage
• GM: Grand Market.
• Hag: Sea Hag or Swamp Hag.
• HoP: Horn of Plenty.
• HP: Hunting Party.
• IGG: Ill-Gotten Gains.
• JoAT: Jack of all Trades.
• KC: King's Court.
• Lab: Laboratory.
• Masq: Masquerade.
• Plat: Platinum.
• PPR: Penultimate Province Rule.
• Prov: Province
• TFB: Trash for benefit.
• TR: Throne Room.