Dominion Intrigue Review

Dominion Intrigue was the second boardgame I purchased for myself.  It and Carcassonne I purchased before a large blizzard in 2010.  We had a week with nothing else to do but get to know those two games.  We got good at them, then we got competitive, then things turned ugly.

But back to Dominion Intrigue.  It was designed by Donald X Vaccarino.  It was published in 2009 by Rio Grande Games and was the first expansion of many to Dominion.  It retailed for the same amount as the base game, and came with just as many cards.  If you were new to Dominion, it fully doubled the amount of Kingdom cards you had to work with.  Which was pretty incredible in an expansion.  But aside from variety, what else did it do to the game?

The Many Ways to Store Dominion

So storing all the expansions for Dominion became quite a problem.  At one point I'd managed to fit all the expansions up through Prosperity into the base box.  However every time I picked it up, I felt like the bottom was going to fall out of it.  Also in the meantime, I'd acquired Hinterlands, Dark Ages and Cornucopia.  So clearly it was time to upgrade.

What I found was this case from Hobby Lobby.  I then used some 3 inch wide balsa wood planks I found at a craft store for the dividers.  Some Elmer's wood glue later, and the planks were in.  I then used some packing tape at the edges to protect the cards a little bit more from the edges.  Call me paranoid.

I made this for about $30

Dominion Review

Dominion was released in 2008 by Rio Grande Games, and was designed by Donald X Vaccarino.  It proceeded to take the world by storm.  Dominion introduced board gamers to the concept of a deck building game.  Since then it's had 7 expansions, with a 8th on the way, and I, like many others, have purchased every single one.

Dominion was the 2nd board game I ever purchased.  Before a blizzard in 2010, I purchased Dominion: Intrigue.  I was hoping to explore it and other games I had just purchased, during a week being snowed in.  I remember reading the rules completely bewildered as to how you actually play this strange game.  At this point I had only played Carcassonne.

Finally I set it up, and a few turns into the game, the first time I shuffled my discards to form a new draw deck, I got it!  I honestly can't count how many times we played Dominion that week.  For the next year though, at least once a week I'd play Dominion during my lunch break.  Dominion got played regularly at night.  Every time people came over, they asked to play Dominion.

It's been years since Dominion came out.  A lot has been said about it, and many games have aped it.  But I'm going to take a look back at just the base game, without any expansions, and see how it holds up.