Dominations: Game Overview
- Hi, I'm Be Boe, and today I'm gonna give you a quick game overview of Dominations from Holy Grail Games. Dominations is a domino civilization building game for two to four players. The objective of the game is to be the player at the end of three ages with the most points.
During each of the three ages, players will play out five dominoes each. They'll collect knowledge from placement of them, and then figure out how to best invest that knowledge back into their civilization. Players will score points through building cities, adding cards to their mastery tree, improving those masteries, completing nodes in their mastery tree, influencing leaders, and building monuments.
To set up the game, each player is given a campfire, which serves as the start of their mastery tree. They're also given seven domino tiles which will allow them to build their empire, and six mastery cards which they can reference throughout the game to help build their skills and powers.
Each turn, the players lays down one of their dominoes onto the table and then takes the corresponding knowledge based on what nodes they match up on their domino. There are six types of knowledge in the game, and they are as follows. Yellow, commerce, this represents the principle of trade negotiation and travel.
Orange, craftsmanship, this represents the disciplines of construction, farming, mining, wood working, stone masonry and metallurgy. Blue, art, this represents painting, sculpture, theater, poetry, and oratory arts such as public speaking and diplomacy.
Green, sciences, this represents the disciplines of mathematics, medicine, astronomy, and alchemy. Red, society, this represents the ideas of administration, government, military, and schooling. And purple, the legend, this represents the concept of theology and worship.
Players collect knowledge resources as they place their dominoes onto the board. And this is how those score. Players score one knowledge for each color node that they have next to each other. They also score one additional knowledge for any matching color sets that they have adjacent to each other.
And they score one additional knowledge for the tile color that they're laying down. They also score an additional knowledge of the city color for any adjacent tile that they have next to the city a domino that's being placed. Then we move into the building phase.
After placing their city tile, they can take two actions on their turn. Both are optional. They are to build or upgrade a city and they can build or improve on a mastery. Building or upgrading a city. When there's a city tile on the board without a city token placed inside of it, it's up for grabs to any player who decides to build on it.
Level one cities cost the players three to build in. And to upgrade to levels two or three, they cost six and nine of that color. However, players may decrease the cost of these cities by adding to their mastery tech tree. They'll also acquire conquest points as you build cities.
For each additional level, you'll acquire an additional conquest point and you'll increase your reserve limit for the color of knowledge that you had built the city on. After placing their domino and building a city, players may then build or upgrade a mastery.
Each player starts the game with a campfire, and using the nodes on their starting campfire they may expand their mastery tree. The node halves must match in order to be placed into the mastery tree. For example, you could place this mastery into this spot, but you could not place this mastery tile into this spot.
Each of these masteries has a cost associated with it. The first row costs three knowledge, the second row costs six, and the final row costs nine knowledge. Players may freely flip through all of these cards. Some of the nine knowledge cards have prerequisites that you must have in order to build this into your mastery tree.
But wait, there's more. If you can afford to build a monument, you can build that instead of a mastery card. This will add a monument city tile to the board, as well as a monument card into your mastery tree. Some of them will even have wild node crystals on them.
The catch, however, is that each monument can only be built once, period. So, choose your monument placement carefully. There are multiple cards for each monument, and the player who collects more of them dominates that monument. The game takes place over three ages.
And this is important because at the end of each age, players will have the opportunity to influence these six leaders. The player with the most of each knowledge left over will influence that leader, and all players will set their knowledge back to zero at the end of each age.
The players may then use any of the leaders' influence during the next age. At the start of age one, each player draws seven city tiles. They may only be given these tiles once at the start of the game. At the start of age two and three, they'll add five additional city tiles to their hand.
There is no direct conflict or warfare in Dominations. Throughout the game, players will also be awarded conquest points, as well. These are acquired in several ways. You'll gain them by building cities, receiving one for each level city that you build or improve upon, and then you'll gain them through mastery cards which award them at the end of each age.
Dominations is a strategic civ-building game that will challenge players' intellect and allow them to create the civilizations of their dreams. It's the fastest play civ-building game that I've played in a long time. And it's perfect for two players, but it's also just as good with four.
