Domain card game

I would have rather paid the price to have the base game and the expansion in one package instead of in two separate boxes.

Finally, there is one more gripe: E. These tech cards really give the game its greatest degree of variation. Sadly, I donated this game to my library and have regretted it! Or maybe it was a deck builder… with a twist? Other players with a copy of that card could choose to piggyback the Role on your turn if they wished by playing their own cards. Eminent Domain is by and large a Role Builder. Your deck consists of Roles and turn by turn you play these Roles and add more copies to your deck allowing you to play that Role more often in any given hand and boosting it.

Occasionally you can buy some rather expensive TECH that either stays on table to give you permanent boosts or cycles through the deck giving you the option for a special variable unique Action during the ACTION phase. You make and trade some resources for VPs.

And when the VP pool dies, he who has the most VP toys wins. As someone who sort of rolls her eyes at the Roles Mechanic Genre and finds it limiting, Eminent Domain made it accessible and more interesting. I played a round and then I knew what I was doing and what to do enough that I played a decent game for a first timer. Deck building games are not my thing. This one is not like that. The basic concept is to gain control of planets either by colonizing them or using war to conquer them and then using those planets to gain actions or produce resources to then trade those resources for pts.

I recommend you give this game a chance. In Eminent Domain, you get to explore worlds , represented as cards that you lay in front of you in your play area. To utilize the unique capabilities and resources of those worlds, you need to either Colonize the world, or Subjugate it through warfare. You gain victory points by controlling these worlds, trading resources, and researching technologies.

The actions you can take depend on the cards in your hand, however on your turn you also get to draw from the pool of role cards which is how you get more cards added to your deck. At the end of your turn you get to choose which cards if any you want to discard. So, if you want to save up the research cards to get a cool technology, you can do that. There are many different strategies that you can try — the variety is one of the great things about this game.

Your strategy often has to change based on what your opponent is doing and what worlds you end up surveying. Tasty Minstrel Games has taken their games to new heights with the space themed, Seth Jaffee designed board game Eminent Domain. While the title of the game may sound like the sort of legalese a cheap polyester attorney would feed you right before demolishing your house to make way for an interstellar bypass, in execution Eminent Domain forgoes any legal wrangling and instead tasks players with discovering and settling planets to score influence points.

Any sleazy space attorneys that may be part of these proceedings have, thankfully, been abstracted out of gameplay. In Eminent Domain , players attempt to score influence points by discovering planets, colonizing or attacking them, and researching technologies. Each planet gives different benefits to the player, allowing him to excel at certain actions or trade resources for points. Players take turns selecting a role card from the center of the table, and performing any instructions on the card before adding the card to their personal deck.

By using cards in their hand, and special features of planets on the table, players can enhance the effect of certain roles. Whoever can best manage their deck, and make the best role choices will ultimately gain the most influence, and win the game. Eminent Domain is reminiscent of several different modern games. Despite this obvious influence, Eminent Domain manages to take these two disparate ideas of role selection and deck building and merge them together into a unique mash-up that has a flavor and strategy that stands on its own.

Right out of the gate, the components in Eminent Domain scream high quality. The artwork is colorful and pleasing, and the components are rugged and well made. This is especially redeeming, as Tasty Minstrel Games suffered some production issues during their freshman attempt at publishing games a few years ago, when a large majority of the first print run of the game Homesteaders was shipped from the factory with critical manufacturing flaws.

Not willing to be knocked out so easily, Tasty Minstrel Games has shifted production of their games to a different, highly respected manufacturer, with absolutely stellar results. Board — Although Eminent Domain is more of a card game than a board game, it includes a glossy board to hold the various cards that players will collect through the game. This is not only nice because it helps organize the play space, but it is also functional in imparting rules information to the players when all of the cards of a certain type have been collected.

Cards — Gameplay in Eminent Domain centers on the manipulation of its various cards. These cards are printed on linen stock and display vivid, colorful artwork.

The cards are good quality, but they have black edges, and even after a single play the edges of my cards started to show some whitening. Because the cards will be constantly shuffled during play, Eminent Domain like most deck builders , is a candidate for card sleeves. Cardboard Bits — The few cardboard bits found in Eminent Domain are thick and sturdy.

The Influence Point tokens, starting planets, and player reference cards were a joy to punch from their cardboard sheet; some even fell out out on their own, impatient to play. When I first open up a brand new game and find that the cardboard pieces are difficult to punch, causing them to split or tear, it makes me anxious and affects my enjoyment of the game. Spaceships — When first opening Eminent Domain , one finds carefully packaged in a baggie, inside of a small box, a set of small, black, plastic spaceships.

The spaceships come in three different shapes, with each shape a differing size. It could be argued that wooden cubes or cardboard tokens would serve the purpose just as effectively as these little plastic fighters, but during play, little touches like this really help reinforce the theme. It is a bid odd though that the ships come in three sizes, because the size of the ship has no relevance in gameplay.

Seth Jaffee was kind enough to talk to me about these interesting components, and I came out of the exchange with much more information about the ship tokens came to be, and what the future holds for them — You will have to wait till the conclusion of this review for that juicy info though!

Rulebook — The rulebook is very colorful, and has large, detailed illustrations of the game components. There are three major classes of cards: Role cards, Planet cards, and Technology cards. Each type of role card has two distinct abilities printed on it; one for the Role phase, and one for the Action phase. Once sorted, the role cards are placed in piles indicated on the game board, and each player is dealt a hand of 10 predetermined Role cards that will make up his starting deck.

After the role cards are set up, the technology cards are separated by type and placed next to the board, as well as the planet cards which are shuffled together and placed face down in a pile.

The resource markers, spaceships, and influence tokens are then placed in piles near the play area. Each player starts the game with a random unexplored starting planet in his play area. These starting planets are easily differentiated from the other planets by the fact that they are printed on a thick cardboard tile.

Once the game has been set up, players shuffle their deck and then draw 5 cards to make up their starting hand. Play is ready to begin. Play in Eminent Domain is deceptively simple. Each gameplay turn is separated into 3 distinct phases: Action, Role Selection, and Cleanup. This action is restricted to the current player, and unlike the Role phase that will be described next, it is not performed by other players in the game.

The action phase is optional, and a player may find himself forgoing an Action phase and saving his cards to take better advantage of the Role phase. After a player has performed his action phase, the mandatory Role phase begins. This is where the deck building portion of Eminent Domain really becomes apparent. When you select a Role in the Role phase, the card you take makes its way into your discard pile, and eventually your deck.

This means the more you select a certain role, the more likely those Role cards will be in your hand, and the more cards you will have available to enhance the effect of a particular role. Survey — The Survey card allows the player to draw cards from the planet deck, and place it unexplored in his tableau.

Planets do not score points, or give effects to players until they have been explored, so this is just the first step in expanding an empire. Since planets have differing abilities, having a larger number to choose from allows the player to better select planets that align with his larger strategy.

Similar to the colonies in the colonization role, a player may use the warfare role to amass ships to conquer planets. Like the colonize action, only the current player can attack a planet, but all players may discard Warfare cards, and use planet abilities to gain more spaceships. If he produces, he may place a little wooden resource disk on a production planet; by boosting the role, he can produce on more than one planet.

If the player chooses the Trade role, then the opposite of Produce occurs, and the player may remove a resource from the planet, return it to the supply, and gain an influence point in return. By boosting the Trade role, the player can perform this action on more planets. The research role breaks this predictable cycle up a bit, and is really what adds character to the game.

The research role serves two purposes: The first is to allow the player to purchase technology cards with special actions that are much stronger than the base role cards; the second is to allow the player to tailor his deck by removing unwanted role cards from his hand.

The research role may be the most complicated to understand for new players, because it has an action that allows players to remove cards from the game entirely. Because of this ability, the research role actually becomes one of the most important roles in the game. The technology cards that can be purchased with the research role are also very important.

Most of the technology cards act like super-powered role cards, with expanded actions that are stronger than their simple role counterparts. In conjunction with the research ability to remove cards, players can trash the more basic role cards, and increase the likelihood that one of the powerful technology cards will be drawn.

The player may also choose to discard any number of cards from his hand, before drawing his hand back up to 5 cards. When the player runs out of cards in his deck, he shuffles his discard pile to create a new deck. While this is the basic flow of the game, there is a bit more depth when actually looking at the special powers of the planets and the different technology cards. Many technology and planet cards have icons on them that correspond to a particular role.

A card with one of these icons can be used just like a role card when boosting the matching role. Planets may also give other abilities, such as allowing a player an increased hand size. I wanted to wait until after I had described general gameplay before discussing this iconography, not because it is difficult to understand in fact, it is very simple , but because Eminent Domain shares a lot of mechanical similarity to another icon heavy game: Race for the Galaxy. Simply put, if there is an icon on a card in Eminent Domain it means one of two things: either it increases your hand size, or it can be used like a Role card when boosting a role effect.

I enjoyed playing Eminent Domain. Where some games may mire the various actions in complexity, the purpose of the various roles in Eminent Domain are clearly defined, making it easy to create and execute a strategy. The addition of Technology and Planet cards add spice to the game by introducing some rule changing properties and effects which keep Eminent Domain from growing stale, and keep players on their toes.

Deck building as a game mechanism has been polarizing gamers lately. With a large number of games trying to jump on the Dominion bandwagon, many people have become fatigued with the idea. But, those gamers who dislike deck building games may not want to discount Eminent Domain out of hand. While Eminent Domain does contain a deck building mechanism, it is not presented in the same manner as most deck builders. Players who own Race for the Galaxy may find Eminent Domain jockeying for the same spot on the game shelf.

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And if the seller doesn't deliver on their part of the deal, we refund you within 24 hours. The seller first delivers the domain to us, then we send you your tailored transfer instructions. Need help? You must race to get as much of the unclaimed land as possible, fending them off along the way.

To do this you will hire minions, construct buildings, spruce up your castle, and fill the coffers of your treasury. This is the second edition of Dominion. Six cards were replaced and one added compared to the first edition.

The base cards have art now, and the trash has a mat. The first edition of the game is no longer available. Games Deck Building Dominion Dominion. Expansions Related Games Errata. Coming Soon. Available Now. Out of Print.