Themed Dominion boards

[dr_whom]

midnight_sidhe and I played several games of Dominion this weekend using Kingdom cards chosen according to some theme. (Neither of us has Intrigue or any of the promotional cards, so those weren't included.) Some comments on the sets we played:

Dominion: Feminism

This is simply all the cards whose artwork features a woman as the central figure: Explorer, Fairgrounds, Farming Village, Forge, Fortune Teller, Peddler, Scrying Pool, Sea Hag, Witch, Young Witch (bane: Herbalist)

It turned out to be a really fun set to play with a lot of interesting interactions between cards: lots of curse distribution, but Fairgrounds, Farming Village, and Forge give you a way to deal with having all those curses; other attacks that can take over after the curses are handed out, but which can compensate for each other (a Scrying Pool is a good thing to have if you've been hit with Fortune Teller); Farming Village and Herbalist can help get you Peddlers; and there's the potential of getting Fairgrounds worth eight points with Potion and Colony available.

Dominion: Aesthetic Edition

We went through and picked out ten cards whose artwork we really liked: Caravan, Contraband, Gardens, Horn of Plenty, Lighthouse, Outpost, Throne Room, Watchtower, Wharf, Young Witch (bane: Hamlet)

Not a bad set. I got hit with a bunch of curses fairly on and decided to go for buying Gardens and using Hamlets for a lot of +buy, which isn't the direction I would have expected this game to go.

Dominion: Ungulates

All the cards with horses on them! And then, since there weren't ten cards with horses, we added the one card with camels and the one with a giraffe, a zebra, and something that looks like an okapi. Caravan, Hamlet, Horse Traders, Hunting Party, Market, Menagerie, Monument, Tournament, Trade Route, Village.

In keeping with the theme, the only prizes either of us gained from Tournament were Trusty Steed and Princess. I don't remember a lot of details about how this game worked out, but it was a pretty good set of cards.

Dominion: Artists

We chose cards whose art was by artists with interesting names, namely Maura Kalusky, Marcel-André Casasola Merkle, Raven Mimura, Tu Peishu, and Rom: Bishop, Caravan, Festival, Fortune Teller, Goons, Grand Market, Lighthouse, Navigator, Pearl Diver, University.

Navigator and Fortune Teller didn't really get used here, unsurprisingly. This game was pretty focused on University / Caravan / Festival / Goons and worked out pretty well.

Dominon: midnight_sidhe's Favorites

midnight_sidhe picked out ten of her favorite cards: Council Room, Explorer, Golem, Hoard, Hunting Party, Island, King's Court, Mine, Monument, Smugglers.

This game was a lot of fun, involving a lot of Golem finding a King's Court to get a triple Monument. Just King's Courting the Golem itself is a lot of fun also if you have enough action cards for it. For the second game, we replaced Smugglers and Hoard with Menagerie and Treasury, which worked just as well.

Dominion: dr_whom's Favorites

I picked ten cards that we hadn't used in the "midnight_sidhe's Favorites" games: Apprentice, Familiar, Fishing Village, Forge, Hamlet, Laboratory, Peddler, Scrying Pool, Tactician, Wharf.

This setup was okay if not terrifically interesting. It did allow me to set up a double-Tactician cycle using Fishing Village and Peddlers for money.

Dominion: Hats

Ten cards depicting people wearing hats! Ambassador, Bureaucrat, Chancellor, Explorer, Fortune Teller, Jester, Mountebank, Possession, Thief, Woodcutter.

This set didn't make a very good game—too many not-very-useful cards. We were both afraid to buy Ambassador because of the distant possibility of being the victim of the dreaded Possessed Ambassador, but neither of us ever used Possession either. We sort of bumbled around with Bureaucrats for a while, and got Mountebanked a lot.

Dominion: KJXQZ

Ten cards which contain one of the letters KJXQZ in their names: Bank, Bazaar, Expand, Explorer, Grand Market, Jester, King's Court, Quarry, Worker's Village, Workshop.

(There were too many cards with K for us to use all of them; we broke the tie by using those containing both K and B, V, or G... except not Mountebank.) This was a hilarious game. Quarry -> Grand Market! King's Court used on Jesters! Repeatedly! Wheee!

Dominion: Money Money Money

Eight Kingdom Treasure cards and two actions to support them: Bank, Contraband, Hoard, Horn of Plenty, Loan, Mine, Mint, Philosopher's Stone, Royal Seal, Venture.

This was actually a suggestion I'd read about at dominionstrategy.com or somewhere and it was great fun. Having Contraband as the only source of +buy, and ridiculous amounts of cash per turn, is pretty humorous. Having almost all the cards be treasure makes you think about the game in a different way as well. Nobody used Royal Seal, so for the second game we replaced it with Quarry (help you get those Mints and Mines a little sooner!) and that made it even better. We'd like to try it with Harem and see if that shakes the game up a bit as well—and just in general, play this concept again!

Dominion: Too Much Exposition

Cards with a lot of text on them: Farming Village, Native Village, Pirate Ship, Possession, Scrying Pool, Thief, Tournament, Trade Route, Treasure Map, Young Witch (bane: Watchtower).

A very rough game. midnight_sidhe opened up a big lead by building up extremely mighty Pirate Ships and using them to buy Provinces, and so I figured the only way to catch up would be to buy a few Possessions and use them as often as possible. So I did that, and I eventually caught up, but it took a while and was pretty unpleasant for both of us.