In his first article for the site, Jaya Baldwin - new member of the Naylor Games team, makes a forceful case for both titles *** "Ladies and gentleman welcome to another exciting episode of Boardgamemania! In the blue corner we have long standing heavyweight champion Dominion! The game that started an entire genre and really packs the Donald X factor. Meanwhile iiiin the red corner, we have new kid on the block, featherweight Star Realms!" *** It's a classic scenario: two games with a certain amount of similarity are pitted against each other, argued over and taken apart in order to figure out which is 'better'. When those two games are trying to fill exactly the same niche, it's a...
This is the first post in an occasional series examining design choices that were critical factors in the overall success of a game’s design. In this entry, I go right in with one of the greats and look at Dominion’s powerful victory point (VP) card mechanic. In choosing Dominion, I have selected a stupid subject to kick this series off. Why Dominion is hard to write about but good to write about Being effusive about great games is relatively easy. There is usually much to love and much to comment on. But writing about parts of great games – trying to understand the particular elements that make them great – is really hard. By nature, a great game is usually...
Many years and quite a few designs ago, I made a mini-expansion for Dominion. It's been sat in a drawer ever since. So as an experiment in criticism and self-reflection – and with the benefit of hindsight – I've decided to dissect it. I want to see what I did well… and not so well, and what lessons I can learn from it about design. What's the point of looking back? As part of the research for a blogpost about Dominion's design, I went turfing through my old cards. Amongst them, I found a mini-expansion I designed called By Decree that I had mostly forgotten about. As I looked at it, I remembered that I'd actually put a lot of...
