Where to Begin
Three doors into the kingdom. New to the game? Start on the left and work right.
How to Play
Setup, the three phases of a turn, card types, and the ABCs of a good first game. Everything you need to sit down and play tonight.
Card Sets
The base game and every expansion — what each one adds, its signature mechanics, and which to buy next after your first box.
Strategy
From "just buy money" to purring engines that draw your whole deck. Learn the ideas that separate winners from second place.
What Is Dominion?
Dominion is the game that launched an entire genre: the deck-builder. Designed by Donald X. Vaccarino and first published in 2008, it won the prestigious Spiel des Jahres (Game of the Year) in 2009 and has been growing ever since.
Every player starts with the same tiny 10-card deck: a handful of copper coins and a few small estates. There is no shared board to fight over and no dice. Instead, on your turn you play cards from your hand, use the coins and effects to buy new cards from a shared central market, and shuffle those purchases back into your own deck. Over the game your deck transforms from that weak starter into a personalized engine of your own design.
The goal is simple to state and endlessly deep to pursue: own the most Victory Points when the game ends. The catch is that Victory cards are dead weight while you play — so the real puzzle is deciding when to stop improving your deck and start hoarding points.
Why People Love It
Endless Variety
Each game uses just 10 of hundreds of possible Kingdom cards. The market is different every time, so the "solved" strategy never exists for long.
Fast Turns
Everyone builds their own deck, so there's little downtime. A full game runs about 30 minutes once you know the cards.
Easy In, Deep Down
The rules fit on a card. Mastery — reading the board, timing the pivot, building the perfect engine — takes years and stays fun.