Dominion Endgame and Scoring Math

Dominion games are often decided in the last four or five turns. One player buys a Duchy where another bought a Gold. Someone ends the game on three piles while everyone else watched the Provinces. None of this is luck. The endgame runs on numbers you can see.

The values, side by side

Provinces are the most efficient of the basic Victory cards, and their pile is the game clock. With 2 players there are 8 Provinces, 48 points in all. With 3 or 4 there are 12.

When to start buying points

Every Victory card makes future hands worse, so timing is everything.

• Provinces: buy one whenever you hit $8, from the midgame on. This is almost always right.
• Duchies: the Dominion Strategy guide to Big Money suggests buying a Duchy with $5 once 5 Provinces are left. As the pile shrinks further, a Duchy can beat a Gold at $6 or $7, because the Gold may only be drawn once more.
• Estates: only in the last turn or two, with $2 to $4 and nothing better to do.

The point of all three rules is the same. Late in the game, your deck has few shuffles left. A card that improves future hands has less time to pay off than points do.

The penultimate Province rule

Players at Dominion tables have a name for one classic trap: the penultimate Province rule. Do not buy the second-to-last Province if it lets an opponent win by buying the last one.

A two-player example. Two Provinces are left. You have 30 points, your opponent has 32, and you have $8.

• Buy the Province and you lead 36 to 32. If your opponent hits $8 next turn, they buy the last Province, the game ends, and they win 38 to 36.
• Buy a Duchy instead and you lead 33 to 32 with two Provinces left. If your opponent buys one now, the game is not over, and the last Province is yours to win with.

The test is simple: after your buy, will you be more than 6 points ahead? If not, think twice before taking the second-to-last Province.

Three-pile endings

The game also ends at the end of a turn when any three Supply piles are empty. Curses, Estates, and Copper count too.

• If you are ahead, look for a way to empty the third pile. With +Buy, you can take the last two cards of a pile in one turn.
• If you are behind, do not buy the last card of a nearly empty pile unless it wins you the game.
• With 2 players, the Estate pile holds only 8 cards, so late Estate buying can bring a three-pile ending closer than people expect.

The tiebreaker changes the math

If players tie on points, the tied player who took fewer turns wins. If they took the same number of turns, they share the win.

That matters when you end the game. Say you are the first player in a two-player game. If you end the game on your turn with the scores tied, you have taken one more turn than your opponent, so they win. The second player who ends the game on a tie has taken the same number of turns as the first, so they share it. The first player needs to be strictly ahead to end the game on their own turn.

Small edges worth knowing

• Remodel a Gold into a Province. Gold costs $6, so Remodel can turn it into a card costing up to $8. It can even take the last Province and end the game.
• Gardens rounds down. Each Gardens is worth 1 point per full 10 cards you own. At 37 cards, each is worth 3. At 40, each is worth 4. If you are 2 or 3 cards short of the next ten, cheap buys or a spare Buy can push you over.
• Curses come off your score. A deck with 5 Curses starts the count 5 points down, and the Curses also cost you hands all game.

Counting the score

The Province pile is public, and everyone sees each card as it is bought. You may count your own deck, but not look through your discard pile. So the easiest way to know the score is to keep a rough tally as cards are bought: each Province 6, each Duchy 3.

A last-turns checklist

1. How many Provinces are left, and how many turns does that leave?
2. Will this buy leave me more than 6 points ahead with one Province left?
3. Can anyone end the game on piles this turn?
4. If the scores tie, who wins on turns?

Our article on board game balance math looks at how pile sizes like Dominion’s eight Provinces shape a game.