This is Alpha, the first-born, when he was 2YO.
This is Beta, the second-born, when he was about 2YO.
This is Gamma, the third-born, when he was about 18MO.
The 5 Hows: Dominion
Oct
8
2015
This is the next installment in my series of The Five Hows
Dominion is an interesting card game my sister and brother-in-law taught us. It has a variety of money cards and victory-point cards and action cards. The learning curve is a little steep, and it took a couple of hands to catch on, so I thought it would be a good candidate for an explanation here.
1. How do I win the game?
You win by having the most points at the end of the game.
2. How do I get points?
You get points by buying the point cards with the money cards.
3. How do I get money cards?
You get money cards by buying them with money cards.
4. That doesn’t make sense. Won’t I end up with the same amount of money I started with if I use my money to buy money?
That’s not a How question.
4. Ok, how do I get more money if I have to spend my money to get money?
That’s better. And this is a key part of understanding the game. Whenever you play a card (either spending money or effecting an action), you don’t lose those cards. You discard them after use, but your discard pile gets shuffled and you keep those cards to play later (when your draw pile is depleted).
In other words, with each round your hand of cards grows. You play cards until your draw pile is gone, but then you shuffle your discard pile and it becomes your draw pile again. “Spending money” isn’t really the right term for the money cards, since the money stays with you. It doesn’t go to a bank or another player. But “spending money” or “buying money” is what everyone ends up saying since it’s close enough.
5. How does the game end?
There are piles of cards to be drawn from during the game. The game ends when a certain pile of victory points is gone (i.e. enough people bought them that there are no more left). Or when any two piles of action cards are gone. When that happens, each person counts the number of victory points in his hand and the highest number wins.
And that was The Five Hows for the game. It didn’t delve into the mechanics of playing, like how many cards you start with and when you shuffle and stuff like that, but that you can get from the game’s instructions. This was the big-picture view.
This game is fun, and it went pretty fast because we trusted each other. There’s a lot that can happen each turn, so if you don’t trust your opponent and try to verify that everything he’s doing is legal, it could take a while. So don’t play this game with cheaters.
For he had dominion over everything west of the River, from Tiphsah even to Gaza, over all the kings west of the River; and he had peace on all sides around about him.
1 Kings 4:24
