Unlike AGRICOLA, which gamers at least saw and played before they decided that it was the Second Coming, sliced bread, and a return to form for George Lucas all rolled into one, DOMINION was hyped and counter-hyped before most people even in the hobby ever even knew it existed. Donald X. Vaccarino’s prototype card game design had been making the rounds at several exclusive, invite-only game conventions where it caught the attention of the right people who proceeded to market and promote the game online via “news” items such as previews and “developer’s diaries” which served to position the game as the equivalent of the second Second Coming, butter and jam to go on that bread, and a STAR WARS film that could topple EMPIRE as the series best.

The hype was embarrassing because it served to show how sheltered and isolated the board gaming hobby is from the rest of the journalistic- and creative- world. If a video game developer posted on public forums how great their game is and a site like GameShark ran “previews” written by people involved with the publication of the game, pretty much everyone would have cried foul in the name of journalistic integrity and full disclosure. But somehow, that was all cool with most board gamers and DOMINION became known as GAME X.

At least now those who have played GAME X can’t arrogantly parade around as if playing this game was somehow an exclusive thing. Rio Grande Games has finally, after something like a year and a half of obnoxious online “OMG!”, released the game and now those of us who aren’t with the “in” crowd of the board gaming community can experience it for ourselves and decide if it really is something special or if it’s just more repetitive mediocrity cobbled together to satisfy the fairly low standards of innovation and creativity that most board gamers- and Eurogamers in particular- seem to possess.

After witnessing countless Eurogames hyped up to be “the next big thing” and finding out that they’re practically redevelopments of existing mechanics, concepts, and entire games I was quite skeptical. I questioned, as I usually do, if a game designed within the hobby bubble- let alone developed by amateurs who were friends of the designer- could result in something unique and truly innovative. The big question for most folks though is if the game is worth buying or not- or if it’s a waste of time even playing at it all. Could DOMINION turn out to be the gaming equivalent of Geraldo Rivera opening Al Capone’s vaults?

You won’t find any dusty bottles or debris in the box but you will find 500 cards, depicting 25 different medieval castle buildings along with money and victory point cards. OK, so we’re already in pretty familiar, completely uninspired territory. How many times have I built a freaking castle in a Eurogame? Victory points? Not impressed so far. The boring, completely useless theme isn’t helped at all by the blandest, most ordinary medieval illustrations known to mankind and the turquoise and pink card backs will remind you more of an old Ocean Pacific shirt than anything to do with the middle ages. But really, that’s all very irrelevant because DOMINION is essentially an abstract game with a couple of pictures and card names covering up the sheer meaninglessness of it all.

So we’re pretty much in the Eurogame doom spiral at this point. We’re going to slide a little further down it as we read through the rules- this is very much an efficiency engine-style game where players attempt to acquire objects that enhance game processes and returns on investment to achieve greater profits. You’re trying to get the most VPs by the end of the game, which you earn by acquiring those VP cards. I’m reading through this all, realizing that it’s pretty much a multiplayer solitaire game. Here we go, another Eurogame with all the worst elements brought to bear in a game that will have the proponents of that style of game clucking their tongues in OMG online admiration. DOMINION is making me feel like I’m dying inside. Mother of Mercy, is this the end of Rico?

Hold on, let’s at least give it a chance, right? I mean, if this is the last game I’ll ever play let’s at least be fair to it.

You start out by picking ten of the 25 building card decks so that you’re always going to have an assortment of different buildings or you can pick pre-arranged sets from the rulebook, all of which have a different feel, different combinations, and different strategies. You start out with four Copper cards and three victory point cards (Estates). Shuffle those up and deal yourself five. With what you draw, you can buy a card from the display of face-up buildings decks. You can also recapitalize your money in a money card that has a higher value so that your purchasing power increases or you can lay down the cash for a victory point card- but it has no effect if you draw it during play so the more you invest in victory point cards, the greater you risk drawing them and reducing your spending power.

You take whatever card you bought, throw it in your discard pile, and then throw the remainder of your hand away. You draw five at the end of each turn, and throw everything away at the end of the next whether you did anything with them or not. When you get to the end of your deck, you shuffle it up- including everything you purchased—and redraw and maybe this time you’ll be able to use some of those cards you’ve bought.

The cards confer various benefits, of course. Some may give you a second purchase, some may give you another action, and still others may do crazy stuff like let you draw up to seven cards but throw away any action cards. And the card effects can be chained and combined to come up with extended series of events that can make you rich- or at least put a lot of cards in your hands. The idea is that you are trying to build an economic engine where you can buy the expensive three and six point victory cards so that at the end of the game (when a couple of decks run out of cards) your deck contains the most total points.