Flashback Friday - Dominion - Does anyone play this anymore? What deck builders are you playing?

This is the only deck builder that I play. Thunderstone was lame and the mechanism itself has been used as a component in other games, but for pure deckbuilding I usually just come back to the classic. I hear good things about Aeon's End but this just isn't a genre that compels me to fill more space on my shelf with it.

I like Dominion quite a bit, and I play it at least once every few months. Taught it to the wife not too long ago and she really dug it, so I don't anticipate replacing it.

For 2 player with a lot of confrontation, I like Puzzle Strike a lot too, it's the most worthy successor to Dominion, since it sticks so closely to the way the cards are acquired and the focus on building a deck that has an engine.

I've only played Dominion a couple of times and never played the expansions. I didn't think much of it. I do like the 2-player starter kit for Ascension as a nice "comfort food" game. But when I want deck-building, I get out Puzzle Strike.

Even though I haven’t played in a few years Dominion remains my number one of all time. I’ve kept up on the expansions and look forward to my next play. I’ve tried a few other pure deck builders and always ask myself “Why am I not playing Dominion instead?”

The mistake that the others make is not limiting your card play with +Action. While a kingdom without Villages can limit strategies, controlled card play makes the game more strategic as you need to consider your buys more and not just hope to always draw your best cards.

I've never played Dominion, but I've tried other deckbuilders, and it feels like a mechanic in search of a game. Then again, I played a lot of CCGs in the '90s, and deckbuilding was my least favorite part of CCGs. Oddly enough, I like deckbuilding in sports games. Slapshot was a deckbuilder that was at least 20 years ahead of its time. And I really liked Blood Bowl Team Manager. I think my issue is that most deckbuilders have weak theme attachment, but the idea of players on the injury list in a rough sport totally makes sense.

My wife and I have played Dominion face-to-face over a hundred times, typically with one of the two bases and one (and only one) expansion, of which we have them all. We have more Dominion than we need, but not as much as we want, as they say.

But then again deckbuilding is among our favorite mechanisms. We've played a fair bit of Thunderstone Advance and Quest over the years (and my wife is consistently better at it than me; at Dominion, we're roughly equal). We also play Trains sometimes and Legendary at times, and a few others I'm forgetting.

I've played games with deckbuilding as a good or OK component to a larger array of mechanisms, but Dominion is the ur-deckbuilder and retains a classic status with me similar to the similarly "pure" El Grande.

I love deck builders. Dominion is great, but the tweaks make it's step children so much better. Ascension is on every mobile device we own, but if I could only own one it'd probably be that cheap $15 copy of Star Realms and the expac.

I'm not a fan of Legendary (only played Marvel, is the Aliens game better?) - I dislike the competitive co-op and even though I'm a fan of the tableau, It just takes too long to build any sort of engine. Generally the game is almost over before you've assembled your pile of sort of synergistic hero powers.

It’s the most overused, badly copied mechanic of all time.

Dominion is a dry fucking death rattle of a game, but the mechanic is extraordinarily smart. Only a handful of games seem to be able to take it and make it really fun. Star Realms, in my humble opinion, is the one that took the mechanic and made it into an interesting game after Ascension, the true heir to Dominion, usurped it’s forefather as the pinnacle of achievement when it came to the mechanic.

And Star Realms is legitimately a knockoff of Ascension in every meaningful way except in how it creates easy to use combinations based on a color scheme.

Marvel Legendary did novel things with it and kind of turned the whole mechanic on its head, and I think it’s a really good way to implement the mechanic. I could never play it again and be fine, but I admire how they took the overused mechanic and made it into something really unique and interesting.

If I had to point out the one thing which came of Dominion that changed my view of how games could be made, it’s the next evolution of the mechanic, the dice-building game. Quarriors isn’t an objectively good game, but without it there would be no Destiny et al, and I anxiously await a dungeon crawl game whose “loot” comes in the form of dice to add to various pools for task accomplishment.

Instead of having a sword card that adds +1 to your die roll, you get a card which lets you reach into a bag and pull a red die which adds to your total dice. Get a toolkit card and you pull a yellow utility die which can be used for lock picking, trying to pass a “trap” test, etc.

This makes loot no determenistic. If you kill that Goblin, the loot card you pull tells you only that you got a sword, but it doesn’t tell you WHICH sword. Putting your hand in the bag is when you learn what it is as the dice are all different. This also cuts down on card bloat where you have to have 10 piles for varying types of loot.

That is the ultimate, logical conclusion for me.

I was wowed by the idea of deck-building, but never really excited by Dominion. It felt to me like I was just playing a mechanism, not actually doing anything. I gravitated towards Thunderstone as an alternative, which I really enjoyed, but which doesn't hit the table anymore. My copy is probably headed for the discard pile.

I've tried a number of deck builders, but a lot of them didn't stick. I really enjoyed Nightfall and still like it, but didn't keep it around. Star Realms I found boring and obvious. Ascension I've played the hell out of online, but I wouldn't buy a physical copy.

The ones I've really stuck with are:
Core Worlds - With the Galactic Orders expansion, it's pretty much everything I want from a thematic, narrative deckbuilder. Whenever I think I need to pull Thunderstone out again, I instead think I should pull out Core Worlds. (Plus I like SF more than fantasy.)

Valley of the Kings - I have the original one and I've played Afterlife and either is good. It does interesting things with the concept, plays quickly, and has some cool choices.

Zeppelin Attack! - Criminally overlooked, this one is an extremely good time. You're pulp-style factions piloting zeppelins and trying to blast the crap out of each other. It's a lot of fun and deserves more attention than it's gotten.

I love Dominion (and deckbuilders)! It was one of the first games that I played when entering the hobby and it blew my mind. One of the biggest hindrances to getting it played more often is other games, of course, but also its unwieldy storage. I do have everything in one box with dividers ( everything except Nocturne here ), but it's not easy to just grab and set up. It's too bad all of the digital implementations have been horrible.

I also love Ascension and Thunderstone. Those are my other most-played deckbuilders, though anything with that mechanic will instantly grab my attention. I do find Star Realms overrated and think Shards of Infinity does the PVP deckbuilding way better.

As for deckbuilders with a board, Trains is okay (though I got rid of my copy because I found the victory point cards divorced the board from the deck), Clank! is good, and Tyrants of the Underdark is great.

My wife and I still play Dominion and I will continue to pick up the expansions. I have been playing more Ascension and Star realms on my phone lately since my friends at work can kill a half dozen games in no time.

I would buy Ascension in physical form to play with my regular group, but don't see the point with the fine phone implementation.

I *love* deckbuilders, but I haven’t played Dominion since the first expansion.

For pure deckbuilders, Aeon’s End is the best. Love that one, despite it being a co-op, and the lack of shuffling is a godsend.

Other than that, I really like stuff that’s embraced a board element. Clank!, Tyrants is the Underdark, and Quest For El Dorado are all some of my favorite games at the moment.

Clank! is fun and has been very popular at the shop. I do still sell quite a bit of DC deckbuilder, Legendary, and a few Dominion expansions now and then.