Play Testing Dominion
OK. I have a few minutes before bed. I should probably spend these minutes reading for some class. Instead, I am going to use them to discuss tonight, October 20th’s, board game review of Dominion.
For those of you who don’t know, I recently joined 2D6.org as a reviewer. The reasoning behind this was two-fold. First, I was hoping learn a bit more about game mechanics. I thought that by playing games I could do this. Secondly, I just like playing game with my friends.
So, anyway. I like dominion. After only a few games, I suck at it, but do I like it. One of the things I really like about the game is that there are a lot of different combination of cards that come into play right. This approach insures that you will get what seems like at least 10 games in before things start to feel too repetitive. The card mechanic also makes the game easily expandable. I have played a few other games that use the “Living Card Game” approach, in which booster packs are released monthly or bi-monthly as expansions. I don’t know if this is what the designers of Dominion have in mind, but it would certainly work.
As I said, I don’t really have a lot of time to write here, so I want to say one thing that I don’t like about the game, that I think my confederates at 2D6.org will agree upon. Dominion feels as though it doesn’t have enough player interaction. I thought about the lack of interaction a bit, but because I am running out of time, I will simply leave you with two questions. First, “Is Dominion a race to the end style of game? Or is it something else or some combination of different types?” Second, “Is there some sort of mechanic that could allow you more interaction? Maybe, for example, you could destroy another players progress in someway?”
-Travis Ross
Lucky for me I have another half of an office hour…
I will definitely second the “lack of player interaction” feeling. Perhaps part of this is that a portion of us are used to playing MMO’s, or at the very least, highly competitive and social games against each other, and this was sort of out of our normal genre of purchase. But some of it was evident in the time we spent simply confused about who’s turn it even was, because we weren’t paying enough attention to each other to know where we were in the game.
We definitely played in a “race to the end” style. While I’m not convinced that this is always the game play experience, it was the predominant feature of our play the other night.
For example, the first time we played, we played the “Big Money” variant. As advertised, we got a ton of cash quickly and soon started buying as many provinces as we could to ensure victory before the pile ran out (and the game automatically ended). In our second game, our own attempts to build a player versus player deck lead to (I think) our own demise in terms of interaction. Once everyone had a few Militia cards, the game became pretty much the same, except that most hands you had to play with 3 cards instead of 5.
None of the cards specifically allow you to interact. There could very easily be a set of cards introduced to make it more interesting though. Just off the top of my head, you could add a “Plague” card and a “Thieves Guild” card. Call them what you will, but playing Plague on an opponent could cause them to, say, draw 2, but miss a turn. Whereas the Thieves Guild might serve to allow you to trash that card in order to steal 1 card from a players hand, or 2 from their deck, at random, to put in your discard pile.
Interactive elements like this would add not only a little chance, but more strategy. Who do you steal from? Well, if you’re the player who played the Which, and everyone else has Curses in their hand, you might get a little bit of retribution should you steal the wrong card, etc.
In any case, I still think the core game was entertaining, but an expansion with a few of these cards could really expand the capabilities of the game in general.
-Matthew Falk
Obviously I meant “Witch” not “which”.
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