History TabletopGame / Dominion

* {{Wicked Witch}}: Witch. It gives out curses, lowering your score and blocking your deck up.

The meat of the game, however, is in the cards available to you. Every game contains the basic treasure cards (1, 2, and 3 coins) and victory cards (1, 3, and 6 points), but the 10 purchasable cards (kingdom cards) can be chosen randomly or by player vote. They can range from giving extra buys or draws,

** There's also the blue deck- one copy of every card in the game, but with a different backing. Originally intended to mark when a pile runs out, they did this job very badly. But by shuffling them and drawing ten, it becomes an easy way to randomize which piles are used. They can also be used to form the deck for the promo card Black Market.

** Dark Ages has plenty of cards that focus on the trash in ways like taking from the trash, counting the trash, and effects that happen upon trashing. It also has Knights, which is a pile of 10 different cards, and Ruins, which are like curses, but they are actually actions, although extremely weak.

* {{Cult}}: Cultist, which gives out Ruins (see sequel escalation below) and allows you to [[CthulhuMythos "sacrifice" them]] for a draw bonus.

* {{Knight In Shining Armor}}: Knights. A pile of 10 unique cards. In addition to a different small benefit, they each can trash cards from other players decks.
* {{Knight, Knave and Squire}}: Knight, Rogue, and Squire from Dark Ages.
* {{Loveable Rouge}}: Noble Brigand; a Robin Hood-style card that only steals from you if you have silver or gold.

* Cult: Cultist, which gives out Ruins (see sequel escalation below) and allows you to [[CthulhuMythos "sacrifice" them]] for a draw bonus.

** Dark Ages has plenty of cards that focus on the trash in ways like taking from the trash, counting the trash, and effects that happen upon trashing.
It also has Knights, which is a pile of 10 different cards, each with one shared effect and one unique effect.

The meat of the game, however, is in the cards available to you. Every game contains the basic treasure cards (1, 2, and 3 coins) and victory cards (1, 3, and 6 points), but the 10 purchasable cards (kingdom cards) can be chosen randomly or by player vote. They can range from giving extra buys or draws, to attacking opponents, to manipulating your deck and more. The base game comes with 25 cards, and the game already has 6 expansions.

* {{RagtagBunchOfMisfits}}: The Band of Misfits card, which can act like certain cards in the game.

It also has Knights, which is a pile of 10 different cards, each with one shared effect and one unique effect.

Not to be confused with the VideoGame ''{{Dominions}}''.

* ArtEvolution: An odd example- as the game's expansions have gone on, the artists they've hired have gotten progressively better and more detailed. Comparing the art of Intrigue to Prosperity and Cornucopia is a large leap.

** Cards with a potion cost can fall into this. Every potion represents passing up, at the very least, a silver for a card that does get you treasure or VP.

** Two broad strategy categories are Efficiency (trashing your weak starting cards and keeping your deck as small as possible) and Action Chains (loading your deck with cool actions and playing as many of them a turn as you can).

** ''Cornucopia'' is making Variety a legitimate strategy- the more varied your deck is, the more its cards help you out. And some cards increase the number of unique cards available.

The game is entirely card-based. Compared often to a {{CCG}}, each player has a private deck of cards that represent their [[TitleDrop dominion]]- the resources, income, and employees that they have access to. Players expand this dominion by purchasing cards from stacks at the center of the table. But each of these cards is in limited supply, and players with more buying power will obviously get them first.

** Cornucupia, another half expansion, focuses on diversity, rewarding a player for having many different named cards in the deck, and features the [[TournamentArc Tournament]] below (which allows access to five unique cards, reinforcing the variety theme).

* ArtEvolution: An odd example- as the game's expansions have gone on, the artists they've hired have gotten progressively better and more detailed. Comparing the art of Intrigue to Prosperity and Cornucopia is a large leap (though YourMileageMayVary depending on your taste and the specific card in question).

When you can't draw any more cards, you shuffle your discard pile to make a new deck. When 3 of the stacks of cards run dry, the game ends, and players count up all the victory point cards they've bought.

* GenreLaunch: For what have become known as deckbuilding games, or [[SerialNumbersFiledOff less charitably]] as Dominion clones. Some of the more notable include Ascension, Thunderstone, Puzzle Strike, Arcana and Heroes of Graxia. There are licensed deckbuilding games based on BloodBowl, ResidentEvil, {{Gundam}} and PennyArcade.