Your First Three Games of Dominion

Your first three games of Dominion are where habits form. Some of those habits are rules played a little wrong because nobody checked. Others are legal choices that quietly lose. This lesson covers both, checked against the second edition rulebook.

Rules slips to catch early

Shuffling too soon. You shuffle your discard pile only when you need a card and your deck cannot supply it. If your deck has 2 cards left at Clean-up, you shuffle your discard pile, put it under those 2, then draw 5. The 2 old cards still come first. Shuffling early changes which cards you see.

Playing a Treasure after buying. Play the Treasures you want, then buy. Once you buy a card, you cannot add more Treasures that turn.

Playing Actions in the Buy phase. Action cards are played in the Action phase only. If you moved to Buy and then noticed a Smithy in your hand, it waits for next turn.

Playing two Actions without +Actions. You get one Action play a turn. A second Smithy needs a card like Village first. Without it, the second Smithy just sits in your hand.

Putting bought cards in your hand. Cards you buy or gain go to your discard pile. A few cards change that, and they say so. Mine is the one in the First Game set: the Treasure it gains goes to your hand, and you can play it that same turn.

Saving money between turns. Unspent coins, Actions, and Buys are gone at Clean-up. Every turn starts at zero.

Looking through your discard pile. You may count the cards in your deck, but you may not look through or count your discard pile. Only the top card is public.

Remodel trashing itself. Remodel is in play once you play it, not in your hand, so it cannot trash itself. The same goes for Chapel in other kingdoms.

Moat after the Attack. You reveal Moat when the Attack is played, before it does anything. Moat then stays in your hand, and it protects only you.

Militia and short hands. A player with 3 or fewer cards in hand discards nothing.

Forgetting the three-pile ending. The game also ends at the end of a turn when any three Supply piles are empty. Curses, Estates, and Copper all count. New tables often watch only the Provinces and get surprised.

The big trap: too many Action cards

Action cards are fun to buy. New players buy one almost every turn. The problem is the one-Action rule. A deck with five cards that each use your only Action draws hands with two or three of them, and plays just one.

Cards like Smithy and Militia are called terminal Actions, because they give no +Action and end your Action phase. Without Villages, one or two terminals is plenty. More than that, and they start colliding in the same hand.

Cards that give +1 Action, such as Market, Merchant, and Cellar, do not have this problem: they hand back the Action they use. Market and Merchant even draw a card to replace themselves.

Silver is not boring

With $3 or $4 early, many beginners buy any Action card they can afford. A Silver is often better. Your deck starts with $7 in 10 cards. Every Silver raises the average hand, and more money means Gold, which means Provinces.

The community site Dominion Strategy uses a plan called Big Money as a yardstick: buy a Province with $8, Gold with $6 or $7, and Silver with $3 to $5. It reports that this plan averages 4 Provinces by around turn 17, with no attacks. If your clever deck has fewer Provinces than that, money would have beaten it.

Green too early

Victory cards are worth points and nothing else. Every Estate or Duchy you buy is a card that will someday take a slot in your hand and give you no money.

The usual beginner mistake is buying a Duchy on turn 6 because $5 felt like too much to waste on Silver. Early, build. Points come once your deck can afford Provinces, or once the Provinces are running low.

The opposite mistake also happens: skipping a Province because your deck “isn’t ready.” In your first games, with $8, buy the Province. The game often ends before the perfect deck arrives.

Ignoring the Attack

When an opponent buys Militia, your hands start shrinking to 3 cards on many turns. Moat is your defense in the First Game set. Better still, when you discard to Militia, keep your best cards: your Gold, your Silvers, and any card that draws more cards.

A quick checklist for game three

Before you buy each card, ask:

1. How many terminal Actions do I already have?
2. Would a Silver or Gold make my hands better?
3. Is it time for points yet, or still time to build?

That habit fixes most of what goes wrong in the first three games. Our Dominion strategy for beginners article goes deeper on Big Money and when to leave it behind.