Dominion

Why it's in our library

We keep Dominion on our families-and-adults shelf for players who like to build a plan over a whole game.

How to play

The goal is to have the most victory points in your deck when the game ends.

Everyone begins with the same small deck: a few coin cards and a few low-value land cards. Shuffle it and draw a hand of five. The middle of the table holds piles of basic cards. These are coins in three values, land cards worth points, and curse cards that take points away. There are also ten piles of action cards chosen for that game.

On your turn, you may play one action card from your hand. An action might let you draw more cards, play extra actions, buy more than one card, or bring in more coins. Then add up the coins in your hand and buy one card you can afford. The new card goes into your discard pile. To finish, discard everything you played and everything still in your hand, and draw five new cards.

When your draw pile runs out, shuffle your discards to make a new one.

The game ends when the most valuable land pile is empty, or when any three piles in the middle are empty. Everyone counts the points in their whole deck, and the highest total wins. If scores are tied, the player who took fewer turns wins.

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