Frank McGirk
United States
Marquette
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Dominion, 1982 Milton Bradley Version.
Rules: I am going to gloss over the rules here, as the instruction booklet wisely uses plenty of pictures and repetition to get them across, and I'm not ready to provide the thousand words each pic provides.
In brief though, 2-4 players (we played with 3) set up the board in a manner prescribed by the booklet according to the number of players. The pieces are hollow domes that stack on one an other, and a player can move on their turn and single or stack topped with his color. The object is to control all the stacks by having your color on top of all stacks.
The different ways the stacks can interact is the joy, and, for the first game at least, jaw dropping wonder of the game. The game play is very simple, and we never questioned the rules, but the options afforded (and then limited by) the ability to split the stacks was, at least for our group, far from intuitive.
Besides just capping to the top, any pieces in a stack greater than 5 are removed from the game. If it was one of the person making the new stack's pieces, then he gets to hold it in reserve to play as a "capper"--putting on top of a stack--on any future turn (very powerful). If it was an opposing player's piece, it is removed from the game.
The size of the stack mandates the amount of movement it must go. To move a shorter distance, one must split the stack (perhaps leaving another person's previously "dominated" piece now in control of a stack.
Okay, I went into the rules more than I wanted to there, but hopefully, you get the idea that this is game that at first you feel is like checkers with some different twists, and then quickly come to realize that it is NOTHING like checkers.
Pieces: This is a well designed game. Pieces are boldly colored, and fit into eachother and the board very well. Movement was never a problem, nor was there any confusion about the colors.
Strategy: Yes, there has to be strategy here, I'm sure of it, but none of us really found it on our first play through. In fact, a large part of the fun of the game, was realizing the impact some simple little moves, like splitting a stack or capping an opponent with one of your reserve cappers had on the next players turn. Or how ineffectual, some strategies turn out to be towards the end goal of capping all stacks.
A very nice game that will hopefully get a bunch more plays.
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Are you sure it's "Dominion?" Mine's called "Domination." :)
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