Dominion |
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Info |
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Type |
Base Game |
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Icon |
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Cards |
500 |
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252 (1st) / 262 (2nd) (25/26 sets) |
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208 |
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32 (1st) / 26 (2nd) |
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7 (1st) / 4 (2nd) |
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Other Card(s) |
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Additional Material(s) |
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1 Trash mat (2nd only) |
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Theme(s) |
Simplicity |
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Release |
October 2008 (1st) / Fall 2016 (2nd) |
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Official Rulebook |
PDF |
Dominion, sometimes called Base Dominion or Base Set, is the first Dominion game created by Donald X. Vaccarino. It was released in 2008 by publisher Rio Grande Games. The box contains 25 sets of Kingdom Cards and Basic Supply Cards to support up to 4 players. The base set was also included in the Special Edition and both the English and German Big Boxes. A second edition was released in Fall 2016, updating wording and formatting on cards, replacing the Trash card with a mat, and replacing 6 first edition cards with 7 new ones.
Contents
Basic Supply Cards
,
Kingdom Cards, second edition
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, , , , , , , ,
Removed first-edition Kingdom cards
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Flavor Text
You are a monarch, like your parents before you, a ruler of a small pleasant kingdom of rivers and evergreens. Unlike your parents, however, you have hopes and dreams! You want a bigger and more pleasant kingdom, with more rivers and a wider variety of trees. You want a Dominion! In all directions lie fiefs, freeholds, and feodums. All are small bits of land, controlled by petty lords and verging on anarchy. You will bring civilization to these people, uniting them under your banner.
But wait! It must be something in the air; several other monarchs have had the exact same idea. You must race to get as much of the unclaimed land as possible, fending them off along the way. To do this you will hire minions, construct buildings, spruce up your castle, and fill the coffers of your treasury. Your parents wouldn’t be proud, but your grandparents, on your mother's side, would be delighted.
Cards Gallery
Basic Cards
Kingdom Cards
Impact of the Base set
As the original game, this set contains the cards that serve as most players' introduction to Dominion. The cards are, for the most part, simple, yet compelling. Some of them, like , , , , , , and , are important cornerstones to strategies and strategic discussions, and serve as archetypes for card categories. As such, other cards of those categories have their costs dictated by these cards, as they tend to be these original cards with something "extra." The main strategies (engine, big money, slog, rush and combo) all have their roots in this set, in the most basic forms of each.
The Base set now is often considered simply a gateway to the more complex or "interesting" sets which introduce new mechanics and strategies, but it is the Base set which won the Spiel des Jahres, and it is the Base set which drew most players into the game of Dominion.
The Base set has a lower percentage of non-terminal Actions than most of the expansions. This gives it a reputation as favoring Big Money decks over engines (at least in comparison to the expansions).
Alternate versions
Polish version (second edition by Games Factory Publishing)
Trivia
In other languages
- Chinese: 皇舆争霸 (pron. huáng yú zhēngbà, lit. struggle for the emperor's throne)
- Czech: Dominion
- Dutch: Dominion: In naam van de koning (lit. in the name of the king)
- Finnish: Dominion: Valtakunta (lit. the kingdom)
- French: Dominion
- German: Dominion: Was für eine Welt! (lit. what a world!)
- Greek: Dominion: Ο κυρίαρχος (pron. o kyriarchos, lit. the dominant)
- Hungarian: Dominion
- Italian: Dominion: Nasce un Regno (lit. birth of a king)
- Japanese: ドミニオン (pron. dominion)
- Korean: 도미니언 (pron. dominieon)
- Norwegian: Dominion
- Polish: Dominion: Rozdarte Królestwo (lit. a kingdom torn apart) (first edition) / Dominion (second edition)
- Romanian: Dominion
- Russian: Доминион (pron. dominion)
- Spanish: Dominion
- Swedish: Dominion
Secret History
Donald X. Vaccarino gave an interview to BGN concerning the design of the base set: the Secret History of the Dominion Cards.
Retrospective
The big thing is to add more replayability. There are six vanilla cards and probably five would have been fine; the obvious one to replace is . Woodcutter is a fine card for the main set but the other vanilla cards are all better. That means all of the +buy cards would cost
but I can live with that. After that, adds very little. doesn't add much and would have been better in
Intrigue (where it came from); the fact that it's a puzzler is way better in an expansion than in the main set. And finally there's . Spy is slow to resolve, that's the big thing. Over the years I have learned that ideally Spy-type attacks don't have +1 action, or don't involve a decision, or both. is exactly what I want. Spy has +1 action and involves a decision, so you potentially make tons of decisions per turn. I like decisions but man Spy is not where to get them. It initially got to interact with two attacks that trashed cards from the top of your deck, and that's cool, but now it only interacts with (in the main set that is), and that combo just isn't worth the slot.
The way to think of these things is, imagine the replacement cards. Let's say I just take out Woodcutter and Feast and put in and . Those are not top-of-the-line adored-by-all go-in-every-deck cards. But they still give you more to do than Woodcutter and Feast do.
It would be nice if Thief were stronger, but it already scares new players, and once everyone was new. There are some wording tweaks; and should of course say "you may." I would try coloring the coins on the treasures. The Trash card should be a mat instead.
There are people who complain about various other cards, but I am happy with those, so there.
Recommended Sets of 10
Dominion Only