"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 fiefdoms. 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 would be delighted."
The game starts with choosing 10 Kingdom cards that create a pool of cards from which players can buy cards. Each player starts with 10 cards consisting of treasure cards and victory points. In each turn a player can by default take an action (play a card) and buy a card. Each player starts with 5 cards in his hand.
There are five different card types:
Treasure cards that generate coin
Action cards that have a certain effect (can give you additional gold, let you draw a card etc)
Victory Points cards that give you Victory Points
Curse cards that count as negative Victory Points
Reaction cards, that are used in response to an attack for example
As the time goes by each player builds a deck by buying new cards. When 3 stacks of cards are emptied or the Province stack (Victory Point card) is emptied the game ends and each player counts the number of Victory Points they have. As you can see this card game has usually two phases. In the first one players buy cards they want to create their decks and then in the second part they try to buy as much Victory Points cards as they can.
I personally like the game but from playing the first game I noticed that there can be a big difference between new and experienced players. I personally am good in this kind of games and it was very easy for me to figure the cards out and build a deck so I could be buying a lot and get through the most cards. More casual players can be overwhelmed by more serious players and might not enjoy the game as much. This probably means that the game is not that balanced as it should be. Anyway there are many expansions to the game so that adds a lot to the variety (which is great even with the base set).
The game itself is not too interactive. There are cards that work as an attack (do something bad to other players. Attacks can be negated by some cards but they don't need to be in the pool at all for example). In general each player comes up with a strategy for their deck and goes with it. At the end of the game you see whose strategy was the best. Of course the fact that players shuffle their decks each time they don't have cards to draw adds a certain random factor.
The game is easy to learn and you can set it up relatively easily (actually it takes more time to put everything in the box).
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