Dominion Alchemy arrived in stock yesterday. This is an expansion for Dominion and/or Dominion Intrigue. As you can see from its cover Rio Grande Games have gone for a 'Dumbledore and Harry Potter' look (except Dumbledore has stolen Harry's glasses and Harry can't see whats going on,) to illustrate the expansions introduction of 'potions' to the game. Despite this rather funny cover I am confident that Dominion Alchemy will add new depth in a positive way to your Dominion gaming experience. It adds 12 new action cards and the Potion card. Here are a couple of examples:
  • GOLEM: Reveal cards from your deck until you reveal 2 Action cards other than Golem cards. Discard the other cards then play the cards in any order.
  • APOTHECARY: +1 card: +1 Action: Reveal the top 4 cards of your deck. Put the revealed coppers and Potions into your hand, put the other cards back on top of your deck
  • ALCHEMIST: +2 Cards: +1 Action: When you discard this from play you may put this on top of your deck if you have a potion in play.


Over the summer of 2009-2010 we played heaps of Dominion (and Intrigue.), everyone we taught it to loved it and most got their own copy. Its addictive nature comes from three aspects of gaming that it does better than any other game I know.
  1. Fast paced: Especially when you know the game well. Its super intense, turns come round in seconds and you mind goes into over drive trying to build your dominion (deck) faster than or opponents. While you doing that you have to stay mindful of what others are doing to try and counter their attacks. Then there is the timing of when you start building up your victory cards. After many, many games - a hard and fast rule for knowing when to pounce still evades me.
  2. Short: Not always a good thing, but it is in Dominion because of aspect 3 (below). The box says 30mins, but you can often crank through a game in 15-20. This is great for getting a game in while the dinner is on - which usually leads to everyone wanting to play another few games after tea too.
  3. Infinitely replay-able: No really, it is. Whether you have just won, or lost the game, there is always an epic sense of 'lets go again.' I think it comes from the fact that you are always learning more about how to best use cards or combination of cards, and so you want to have another shot. Also, there are 25 action cards in the game but you only use 10 per game. Just changing one or two of them can massively change the way the game pans. Then you add in the expansions and if you played every night for a year you would still not have exhausted the possibilities available.

If you haven't tried the dominion series yet I would fully recommend it.