Episode: 3411
Title: HPR3411: Dominion card game
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr3411/hpr3411.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-24 22:53:21

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 34114 Mundi, the 30th of August 2021.
Tid's show is entitled, Dominion Card Game, and is part of the series' tabletop gaming
that is hosted by Clot 2, and is about 28 minutes long, and carries a clean flag.
The summary is Clot 2 Talks about the Dominion Card Game.
This episode of HPR is brought to you by archive.org.
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Hey everybody, this is Clot 2, Hacker Public Radio.
In this episode, I want to talk about Dominion. Dominion is a game that I first tried at a gaming
convention about three or four years ago, and hated it. Could not stand it, thought it was just
the dumbest game, because it never really felt like you were playing a game. I sat down and the
people who were going to sort of show the game off for me told me to pick some cards, and I
picked some cards, and then they told me to pick some more cards, and try to pick some more cards,
and some things happened, and then pick some more cards, and you were just like just
rebuilding your deck, and then when you're done, the game was over, and it just seemed really
weird. I thought, where's the game part of this game? Well, it turns out, now that I've revisited it
with a clearer understanding of how the game works, turns out that Dominion is a deck-building
game, in the truest sense, the game is building your deck. You are building a deck of cards from a
selection of different cards, and the goal is to end up with a deck of cards that has
more victory points in it than your opponents have in theirs. Victory points are earned by you
owning land, and the land can be of different kinds, allowing for different expansion sets,
and so on, or rather ignoring the different expansion sets, and so on. The land can be
something like an estate, a dutchie, or a province. Dutchie estate provinces is order of value,
I think. The dutchie is being worth one victory point, estates being worth three, and then provinces
being worth five. I might get some of those terminologies wrong, I can picture the card, but I
can't necessarily picture the word labeling what the card is, but it's one, three, and five, those
are the values, the victory point values of those lands. The way that you get those lands is that you
pay for them in Dominion money, so you have to collect, you have to get the first couple of things
that you need in your deck then, is money. You need money in your deck so that you can then
purchase lands to put into your deck. So you get something like seven coppers for free in your
initial deck. Seven coppers and three victory points. It's a pretty good deal, just for starting
the game. You get seven seven monies and three victories. Well, it turns out that that's not all that
great, but we'll get into that in a moment. So that means you have ten cards in your hand,
which you then shuffle, and you draw the top five cards off of that deck. So now you have a hand
of five cards. This is your starting hand, and with that starting hand, you can do two things,
that's the rules of the game. The base rules of Dominion are that you can take one action
and one buy, be you, why you can purchase and buy something. That's the base rules of the game.
So if nothing else happens in the game, it'll just be you and an opponent or a group of opponents
doing some action and doing and then doing a purchase. And the purchase you have money in your
hand with which you can purchase things. So if you drew a hand of five copper right off the top of
the deck, then you could spend five copper on more cards to put into your deck. Like I say,
the game here is building a deck. So throughout the game, your goal is always pretty much to get more
stuff in your deck. What you put in your deck is where the strategy happens, because of course,
you could just spend five copper on buying an estate. And you could do that several times
over the course of the game. And then you would end the game. You would have all the estates.
The game would eventually end, because there's no more estates to purchase or something like that.
Another problem with that strategy would be that you got lucky when you drew your first hand
of five cards. You got five copper. That's a good hand. That's a good starting hand. But what about
the next hand? Well, we already know what that's going to contain, because we know what the deck
consisted of. It had seven copper and three estates. No, three duchies, three victory points.
So that means your next hand, you discarded one, you discarded five coppers. Your next hand is
going to have two coppers in it. That's not enough to buy anything. So that's one turn that you've
now wasted, because you don't have enough money in your hand to really do anything.
Those victory points are useless during the game. So you can purchase another copper for free.
That copper is actually cost like zero, zero monies. You just get that for free. So you could use
your buy action to get another copper. And then you have three coppers. And maybe you could get
something for three coppers, but it's sort of diminishing returns. If you're just going to buy more
copper and more copper and more copper and victory points, you just start to clutter up your hand
with stuff that you just don't have a whole lot of useful cards. And even with like if you're
maximum hand size is five. And you can only have five coppers, you have coppers. So the maximum
money you're ever going to have in a hand is five coppers. Well, that'll never be enough
to purchase the really good things like a province, which I think is eight monies.
So that wouldn't, that's not going to go very far. So eventually you quickly you learn
that the strategy here is to maximize the value of each of your hands.
And so when you draw a hand of cards, you want to ensure that there's a high probability
that you're going to draw some high value money cards. So there's not just copper. There's also
silver and gold. Silvers are worth something like let's say four monies maybe? No, three monies.
Maybe four, three or four monies. And then gold is worth six monies. So that's where the really
good stuff comes from. But in order to get that gold, you have to purchase it. You have to pay
the minion money for it. So your strategy becomes to convert your copper by silver with your copper.
So the next hand that you purchase that you draw will maybe contain two coppers, but also a silver.
And well, that's practically six monies right there. It might be five. I forget how much
silver is or are worth for whatever reason. But you know, you're maximizing the value of your hand.
And then you can keep purchasing up. You can purchase gold. You can purchase more gold. And
then more gold. And the next thing you know, your hands, when you're drawing your hands,
you're getting two and three golds in your hand at a time, giving you nine, 12, 15 purchasing
points. That's a valuable hand. And you can get valuable stuff for that much, for that much
dominion money. So that's just kind of the purchasing aspect of it. There's another aspect
which is hacking the rules so that instead of only getting one action or one buy, you're getting
more than one action, more than one buy action. So the cards that you are using, the cards that
you have to choose from to build up your deck during the game are randomized. You don't have to
randomize them if you have a set of cards that you prefer to play with. But quite a lot of cards
come with the base set of dominion. And the idea is that you randomize the assortment that you're
going to use. So you have different piles of cards. And each turn, you have the option to
take to make a purchase. So sometimes you'll have two, some of those three, some of the four or
five monies. And you can purchase a card with that in game money. And sometimes those cards
grant you special abilities, or usually those cards grant you special abilities that aren't
written in the base rules. Remember the base rules is take one action, take one buy. That's it.
That's what you can do. So these cards that you can purchase within game money grant you special
abilities. For instance, the I think the the village card, village card grants you the ability.
I'm kind of making things. I mean, there's definitely a village card. I'm getting the
specific abilities of that card. But let's say that it's a village card. And let's say that it does
something like it gives you one more action. It allows you to draw one more card during your turn.
And it gives you two monies for that turn. So now you've purchased this card. And with it,
because of this card, you now can take an extra action during your turn. You can draw another card
as well. So that's nice. And you get two floating monies, not tied to a card at all,
that you can then add to your total purchase equity, I guess, or assets, whatever. So that's nice.
And then you can kind of imagine what would happen if you got two villages or two festivals,
whatever it is, two villages, let's say. Then you've got one action and one card in two monies.
So you can play that card. But now you've got another action from that card. So you can now play
another village and get another action, another card, and two more gold. So just from just from playing
these two cards, you've changed these two cards together. You've gotten four money for nothing.
For just just during a turn. And you get to add that four monies to whatever coins you
happened to draw in your hand for that turn. There are other cards that do other things like,
I think it's the market place maybe, allows you to take an extra action and an extra buy.
So now you can leverage that kind of card such that you're building up the money in your hand.
But instead of only being able to purchase one thing with that money, you can purchase two things
with that money. I mean, if you do accidentally a mass, 16 money for one turn and you're looking at
at the table and you're realizing, well, there's nothing here worth 16 money. I've got too much
money and not enough to spend on. Well, if you have a market card, you can play that. And that'll give
you or whatever it is. Let's say it's a market card. You can play that and it'll give you two
separate buy actions. So or buy by phases. And then you could split that 16 money into two eights
or into one five and one three or into two fives or whatever you see on the table
that is within 16 money, you can purchase two of those things.
And that comes in really handy sometimes. And imagine all the variations. There's cards that do
other things. There's a card that lets you discard the clutter from your hand
and then redraw to replace them. That's the seller card. I know that one. That's a useful card.
Because now you look at your hand. You've got two lousy copper and maybe you have three lousy copper
and then two victory points. That's not a good hand. That's not a fun hand. So discard those two
victory points and discard. Let's gamble a little bit and discard one of those coppers in hopes of
drawing something better. So now you've got two coppers. Well draw back up to five and let's say on
a good day. You draw two silver and a gold. Well now you've got three four five six seven eight
nine monies to spend on something. That'll get you a province. So that's five victory points
right there. Because the provinces are worth five or something like that. So in other words,
you can kind of split things off, double up, rearrange turns and purchases and maximize
what you're putting into your deck. The cost here or the drawback or the danger here
is that the more you put into your deck, the more random your deck becomes, or potentially you
could put a bunch of the same cards into your deck so that you essentially always know what you're
getting. But in practice, because there are certain things that that you might want to
to structure your deck around, like, okay, well, I need more actions so that I can maximize my floating
money. And if I get all that money, I'm going to need another buy action, another buy phase. So you
start, you do start to sort of build up your deck with, with different cards. And the more random
it becomes, and then the more money you earn, the less valuable, like the copper, the copper
bases are. Because now they're just lousy one, one money cards. And you're you're living in a
world of three money, two and three monies, or whatever it is. And so you start to do, you know,
the things start to lose their value in sort of the meat in the sense of immediacy. And even victory
points, well, from the start, their value less. I mean, they're very valuable once the end of the game
occurs. But during the game, they're they're just clutter. They're taking up space in your hand
that could be occupied by valuable money cards. And so that's the that's the strategy that you
have to sort of consider. You have to figure that out as you're building your deck. So the cool
thing about Dominion, I think, is that, well, I mean, it's a really, really fun game. First of all,
you can build, you can build several kinds of engines, as it were, within Dominion. You can
figure out what the correct combination of cards is, given the card selection on the table for
that game, which is different than the card selection in the game before. And it'll be different
from the one in the game, the next game that you play because it's, you randomize the card selection.
And so you figure out these, these engines. And sometimes you'll get the cards that you really
sort of are familiar with and like. And they have all the things that you want. They have all the
extra actions and all the draw new cards and all the buy extra buy phases. And other times you
won't get those, you'll get, you'll get a selection of cards that give you bunches of actions,
but only one buy phase. And so you have to kind of rework your maybe default strategy and think,
well, in this game, I never want to have more than exactly the amount of money that I have,
because I'll never be able to spend more than that, because I only have, I can only make one
purchase every turn. And then in other games, you'll be, you'll have an embarrassment of purchases.
You'll, you'll be able to make as many buy actions as you want. It won't matter to you,
but maybe you'll have something else that's missing. Who knows? So that's, um,
that's sort of the strategy. That's the, the variations that you're going to be dealing with in
Dominion. And it's a lot, a lot of fun. And I've seen people develop sort of engines that force
other players to draw, um, to draw cards. And so the idea there is that you're just going to keep,
you know, you're, you're forcing your, your other players to clutter up their hand with stuff that
they can't, they can't use. They know they can't use it. They don't want them, but you're forcing
them to draw more cards or engines that force people to discard cards. And then you're starving
them, right? So your, your, your opponents might have a great hand, but then you play this militia
card and forcing them to draw down, you know, to discard two cards. And suddenly they've got a much
less great hand and so on. So there are, there are lots of avenues to success. There are lots of
different ways to play the game. There are different ways to enjoy the game too. I mean,
everyone likes to win, but not everyone has the same win condition. So I mean, I've definitely
played games of Dominion where I don't, I'm not prioritizing the, the, the publicly recognized
definition of, of winning Dominion. Uh, and instead I'm curious as to whether I can successfully
build a strategy or an engine around this, you know, the, the, um, I forget the name, the, um,
artisan card. You can, can it be done? What happens if, if we do that or, or what happens if we
really, really maximize the use of, um, the century card? What, what, how does that affect the deck?
So there's a lot of just sort of, I guess, exploration of components in Dominion that, that makes it
enjoyable in a way that maybe doesn't, you, you might not expect it first.
The gameplay itself is really clever, I think, because it has, it has a bunch of constraints
on top of it that, that other games, um, have to handle in a different way. Dominion does it by
saying, well, you can all, you can only draw five cards at the beginning of your turn,
and that's all you get. You only get one purchase, um, action, you only get, or one purchase phase,
you only get one action, and then it lets you break all of those rules, but you, there's always a
cost to do that, and so on. So, um, you know, the way that, for instance, magic, the gathering,
limits your, your ability is during a turn is essentially through the mana mechanic,
and you only, you can only play one land per turn, and so you have to build up mana base
before you can start doing more powerful, the most powerful actions you've built into your deck,
and you also don't know when those things are going to happen, so the deck is kind of, the randomness
of your deck is a component that you have to account for, and sometimes you're going to draw
that nine mana creature that you, at the wrong time, you'll draw that really in the game,
and you'll never be able to play that, because by the time you get nine mana, that card's long gone.
Now, you might have built your deck with some recursion, and, and so on, but, but generally speaking,
you know, that, that can happen. Um, whereas in Dominion, it's a different mechanic, it's a different
sensibility, because you know in Dominion that your deck is just going to keep cycling around,
so you know that if you have that one card in your hand, that you really, really want to come up,
it'll come back up, you just keep cycling your deck, and so it will definitely appear again,
whether it will appear in conjunction with another card that you want to use it with,
well, you just have to buy more of those cards and try to increase the probability of you drawing
those cards together then. Does that, does that go well with your overall strategy? Maybe, maybe not.
So, there's, it's a really, really clever way of pacing in Dominion, that I really admire.
I think it's, um, it's quite cleverly done. It's, you know, it can be frustrating, it can be rewarding,
it can be all those different things, and Dominion is often cited as, um, sort of the,
the flat rate magic, the gathering game, which always used to confuse me, because I thought,
well, that's, it's nothing at all like magic, the gathering, except that it's a deck building game,
but now that I know how to play it, I understand a lot more of why people would say that it kind of,
I guess, scratches this, maybe not the same itch, but a similar itch as magic, the gathering,
because it does have that deck building. You know what's in your deck, you're designing your deck to
have synergy, and you're ideally leveraging the cards that you've put into your deck, um, you know,
to, to construct these little in-game engines that produce value for you, whether that value is
more turns, or more purchases, or more money, it just kind of depends on, on what you're, what you're
building. So Dominion, it is a really cool game, it comes as a base set for probably, I don't know,
let's say 50 US dollars, 80 New Zealand dollars, it's got a bunch of cards, it's got lots of
different kinds of actions, so there's, there's actions where you can look at cards in your deck,
and then replace them in any order, there's actions to draw new cards, there's actions to put a
negative one victory point into your opponent's deck, there's actions to force people to discard cards
and so on, so there's a lot of different sort of abilities, and, and so that, that gives you a lot
of variety to work with, and that's just the base set, there are lots and lots of, lots and lots of
expansions with different, yet different kinds of cards, so there are expansion sets with, you know,
with different themes, so intrigue, you might have, I don't know, let's say a, a thief mechanic,
where you, you get to, look at the top card of your, top couple of cards of your opponent's deck,
and if it's a, if it's money, you get to steal the money, or, or something like that, and actually,
I think that is a card, and I think it is in the base deck, but you get the idea, there's, there's
more cards, more abilities, more ways to break the rules, and lots and lots of different,
like probably 10 expansion decks, so, so if you get bored of your base deck, you can always
expand, and try new cards, and try new strategies. It's a great two-player game, it's a great
four-player game, that's, those are the two configurations that I've, that I've played the game
in, and I highly recommend it, it's a lot of fun. There's probably a whole other episode
talking about sort of the way that Dominion presents itself, I think that's an interesting,
an interesting study, maybe too critical for an episode, I'll, I'll have to think about how to
sort of, maybe talk about that in a constructive way, but yeah, Dominion, it's a lot of fun,
it's genuinely a lot of fun, I highly recommend it, if, if you've been, if you, if you are intrigued
by, by the idea of either deck building, or sort of using the components of a game,
to sort of build your own mini-games within the game, then I, I think Dominion could be
an interesting thing for you, so I do, I do recommend it, I think it's a lot of fun,
if you've never played it, and you just kind of want to try it, you can go to, I think,
Dominion.game, or Dominion.games, plural, I'll have to put that in the show notes either way,
there, but there's a free-to-play sort of base set online that you can play, you can play against,
real people, you can play against bots, it's a lot of fun, so, if you don't, if you don't have
the physical set yet, or you're not sure you want to invest in the physical set, you can try it
out online, but I do recommend, well, I recommend both, but I definitely, I've, I've got the physical set
now, and it is, I was borrowing a physical set from some friends, and, and just liked it so much
that I went out and purchased the, the physical set, because it's, it's well worth the investment,
a lot of fun. So, that's it, that's, that's Dominion, thanks for listening to this episode of
HackriPublic Radio, I'll talk to you next time.
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