A Complete Strategy Guide to the Original Dominion Card Game: November 2013

Friday, November 22, 2013

Example Game

I decided to play a game of Dominion online¹ to show you my thought process when playing. If you learn by example, I recommend watching the video of me playing.

References

1 Goko Games. (2013, March). Dominion. Retrieved from http://play.goko.com/Dominion/gameClient.html

How to Count Cards in Dominion by Adib Khoury

This guest article was written by Adib Khoury. He's a board game collector and a senior game-design student at UT Dallas.

Basics
The basic point of this strategy is know how much buying strength you deck has. This is done by keeping track of three values. This technique will take some practice to master, but it is very rewarding if done correctly. (rmcantin)

Card counting helps you choose between action cards to play. It also helps you know when to start discarding copper coins and what cards are needed to balance out your deck.

Buying Power
To count your buying power, simply keep track of the total value of value of coins in your deck.

Do not count the coin value on action cards unless you are confident that they can be played. Action cards are not guaranteed to be played, especially if you draw more than one in a turn. (rmcantin)

Whenever you draw coins from the deck, subtract their value from the total buying power to know how much.

Your goal for the first part of the game is to have a buying power of 6 for each 5 cards in your deck.

Action Power
Action power keeps track of your action count in your deck. Every action counts as a -1. Action cards that give +1 actions count as 0. Action cards that give you +2 actions, like Village and Festival, count as +1 for determining the action power. (rmcantin)

The goal is to keep the number as close to positive as possible, otherwise you will not be able to play your action cards and they will start to slow down your deck.

If your Action power is positive, you should be able to safely include coins on action cards toward the buying power.

Deck Size
Keep track of your total deck size and your current deck size. By keeping track of these two values you can compare them your buying or action power to predict how much gold you will receive next turn.

You don’t have to count buying and action power at the same time. For new players, this could easily become overwhelming, so take it slow. Don’t worry about messing up, because that is part of the game.

References
rmcantin: http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/411962/advanced-techniques-card-counting

Friday, November 15, 2013

First Turn Cheat Sheet

I've analyzed all the action cards, but now it's time to see them all in one place. This table will give you a brief summary of the strength of each action card and which cards combine well with eachother. The table will help you to make a quick strategy, but keep in mind that Dominion strategy is a complex subject that can't be contained in one table. Use online research as a starting point, but focus on increasing your own experience and knowledge.

By the way, I call this table a "cheat" for a reason. Before printing this out and taking it to a game, ask your opponents if it's okay to use it.

Name	Terminal?^{1, 2}	My rating (1 to 5)	Combine with
Adventurer	Yes	3	Chapel, Moneylender
Bureaucrat	Yes	2	Gardens
Cellar	No	4	Laboratory
Chancellor	Yes	1	Remodel (to trash Chancellor)
Chapel	Yes	5	Anything but Gardens
Council Room	Yes	3	Militia, Bureaucrat
Feast	Yes	2	Workshop?
Festival	No	4	Library, Chapel
Gardens	N/A	5	Workshop³
Laboratory	No	4	Chapel, Cellar, Labs
Library	Yes	4	Festival, Chapel
Market	No	3	Chapel
Militia	Yes	5	Chapel, Council Room
Mine	Yes	3	Laboratory, Adventurer
Moat	Yes	3	Chapel
Moneylender	Yes	3	Adventurer
Remodel	Yes	4	Throne Room+Chapel³
Smithy	Yes	3	Chapel
Spy	No	2	Laboratory, Chapel
Thief	Yes	2	Chapel, Gardens
Throne Room	N/A	3	Chapel+Remodel³
Village	No	3	Terminals
Witch	Yes	5	Anything, esp. Chapel
Woodcutter	Yes	2	Gardens
Workshop	Yes	4	Gardens³

1 Dominion Game Manual. (2008). Dominion. Rio Grande Games, Rio Rancho, New Mexico.

2 Theory. (2013, Feb 9). Glossary. Retrieved from http://dominionstrategy.com/glossary/

3 Kirkwb. (2011, Oct 19). Beginners’ Guide: Dominion. Retrieved from http://www.gamehead.com/article/1271/dominion

Gardens Strategies (ft. Workshop)

Gardens deserves a post of its own because the strategies that focus on it use completely different tactics than what you would see in a game without Gardens. In this post, I'll also cover Workshop because of how it interacts with Gardens.

Gardens

A Gardens strategy focuses on getting lots of Gardens and lots of cards. To do this, you need a cheap source of +buy like Woodcutter, or a card like Thief that lets you gain more cards. Deck efficiency goes out the window -- buy Estates, buy Coppers, buy terminals, buy as many cards as you can!

You can end the game quickly by depleting three supply piles¹. You should aim to deplete the supply of Gardens, the supply of Estates, and the supply of a cheap action card that is useful to you in high numbers.

Workshop

In my experience, a well-played combination of Gardens and Workshops is unbeatable when you play with just the basic set. When you see Workshop and Gardens in the supply, immediately execute the following strategy...

Get two Workshops as quickly as possible² (if you can't afford a Workshop, buy an Estate that turn).
Gain/buy cards with the following priority: Gardens > Workshops > Estates² > Coppers².

The Workshops will almost double the rate that you get cards, increasing the value of Gardens. You will deplete the Gardens, Workshop, and Estate piles², and you or someone else who used this strategy will win.

Workshop has uses outside of Gardens strategies, of course. If you want a big deck, you can use a Workshop to get you several Silver cards over the course of the game. If you plan to use a lot of terminals, you can use Workshop to get some supportive Villages.

Workshop's main weakness is that it doesn't contribute to large buys like Provinces -- it just gives you something useful for later. To be fair, I've bought Provinces just with Silver I got from playing my Workshop every time I drew it.

References...

1 Dominion Game Manual (2008). Dominion. Rio Grande Games, Rio Rancho, New Mexico.

2 Kirkwb. (2011, Oct 19). Beginners’ Guide: Dominion. Retrieved from http://www.gamehead.com/article/1271/dominion

Friday, November 8, 2013

Village and Festival: "+2 actions"

Cards that give you +2 actions are known as villages¹, because the most basic card with +2 actions is the Village card. There are only two villages in the basic Dominion set, one of them being Village itself².

Villages give you a surplus of actions – they potentially allow you to play multiple terminals in one turn. There's usually no guarantee that you will draw a village with your terminals, so you should still exercise caution when buying multiple terminals. Make sure to read my post on terminal action cards so that you can appreciate the potential of getting lots of actions from villages.

Village

Village is nice if you need the extra actions. If you don't need the extra actions, a Silver would have been better, unless your deck is so efficient that an extra Silver would just slow you down.

Festival

Festival often competes with Market and Laboratory when you're deciding how to spend your five treasure, but there are situations where Festival really shines.

First of all, it's a village-type card that is quite good even if the extra actions go to waste. It's worth its weight in silver – as long as you have an action available to play Festival, it will give you the same amount of treasure as a Silver card. Add on “+1 buy” and you have no reason to take a Silver card over a Festival, unless you can't afford a Festival or you have a Silver-hungry Adventurer.

Festival is a great way to deal with Thief. Thief will take your Silvers, but not your Festivals.

I like to combine Festivals with a Library. Let's imagine an ideal situation: you draw four Festivals and one Library. After you play your Festivals, you're left with eight treasure, five buys, countless actions, and nothing in your hand but a Library card. You play the Library, and you draw cards until you have seven cards in your hand. Since your hand has nothing in it when you play Library, that's effectively +7 cards! You're likely to buy multiple Provinces in a single turn with such a lucky turn of events.

The above results are easier to achieve with Chapel, because Chapel allows you to eliminate cards that aren't Festivals, Golds, Libraries, and Provinces.

Usually, I build my deck to buy Provinces and maybe Duchies, but the most victory points I have ever earned in a game came from a deck that had absolutely no Provinces or Duchies at the end. Learn more in my next post, where I will talk about the Gardens card, and the strategies that involve it.

References...

1 Theory. (2013, Feb 9). Glossary. Retrieved from http://dominionstrategy.com/glossary/

2 Dominion Game Manual (2008). Dominion. Rio Grande Games, Rio Rancho, New Mexico.

Throne Room and Non-terminal action cards: “+1 action”

Non-terminal action cards don't deplete your actions¹, so it's usually safe to buy as many non-terminal action cards as you want. This can lead to scenarios where you play a chain of action cards to draw lots of cards and get lots of treasure.

Today, I'll cover the three non-attack action cards that have “+1 action” on them². I'll also include Throne Room, because Throne Room is non-terminal in its own way.

Cellar

This card is very strong if you can draw a lot of cards before using it. Even though Cellar's effectiveness relies on the other cards in your hand, I consider it a safe card to buy.

Laboratory

Even if Laboratory draws two useless victory cards, you can at least be glad that those cards won't hinder your next turn. Labs work very well if you get a lot of them, because you can chain them together. Labs allow you to cycle through your deck faster, as if your deck is smaller and more efficient than it actually is. This brings all the benefits and problems that small decks have -- you can review those in my deck-efficiency post.

Market

Market is very similar to Lab. When Market and Laboratory are both available, you should ask yourself...

Do I want more buys?
Will my deck have mostly good cards in it?

If you want more buys, choose Market over Laboratory until you no longer need more buys. If you think that your deck will suffer from a lot of bad cards such as Curses, avoid Laboratory unless you've figured out a way to execute a high-efficiency strategy. When in doubt, choose Laboratory over Market – in my experience, an extra card is usually better than an extra treasure.

Throne Room

Throne Room doesn't replenish your actions, but it allows you to play another action card twice, so it's only terminal if you use it on a terminal action card. Conversely, if you use Throne Room on a non-terminal card, you'll have a surplus of actions. Throne Room is completely useless if you don't draw an action card to use Throne Room on, so think carefully before buying it. Note that Throne Room doesn't work optimally if used on Militia, because Militia will never bring a player's hand below 3 cards², no matter how many times it's played in a turn.

Some cards give you not one, but two actions². I'll save those for my next post.

References...

1 Theory. (2013, Feb 9). Glossary. Retrieved from http://dominionstrategy.com/glossary/

2 Dominion Game Manual (2008). Dominion. Rio Grande Games, Rio Rancho, New Mexico.

Friday, November 1, 2013

Attack Cards

It's important to know which attacks are powerful and which ones rely on luck to be worthwhile. It's also important to prepare for your opponents' attacks.

Bureaucrat

How good is it?

The attack is only effective if the leading opponent happens to have a victory card in-hand when you play Bureaucrat. The silver you get is nice for a big deck.