Dominion (card game)

Dominion

Box cover art
Designers	Donald X. Vaccarino
Publishers	Rio Grande Games
Players	2 to 4 (up to 6 with additional base cards)
Setup time	5–10 minutes
Playing time	~30 minutes
Chance	Medium
Skills	Resource management, Planning

Dominion is a card game created by Donald X. Vaccarino and published by Rio Grande Games. Originally published in 2008, it was the first deck-building game, and inspired a genre of games building on its central mechanic.^[1]

In Dominion, each player takes turns repeatedly drawing through their own personal deck of cards. Each player's deck starts small, but players can purchase new cards from a common supply to upgrade their deck; these new cards can then be drawn and used on future turns. Players ultimately seek to build the strongest deck with the most victory points needed to win the game.

The game has a medieval theme with card names referencing pre-industrial, monarchical, and feudal social structures. Comparisons about the game's feel are often drawn with collectible card games such as Magic: The Gathering.^[2] As of September 2024, sixteen expansions to the original Dominion have been released.

When Dominion was released at the Spiel game fair in 2008, it was voted "best game of the fair" by the Fairplay polls.^[3] The next year it won the Spiel des Jahres^[4] and Deutscher Spiele Preis awards. It was one of five winning games in American Mensa's 2009 MindGame competition. By 2017, more than 2.5 million copies of Dominion and its expansions had been sold worldwide.^[5]