The Dominion First Game Kingdom, Card by Card

The rulebook picks ten cards for your first game: Cellar, Market, Merchant, Militia, Mine, Moat, Remodel, Smithy, Village, and Workshop. They were chosen because none of them is hard to explain, and together they show almost every idea in the game. This lesson walks through them in cost order, with the rulings from the second edition rulebook that new tables most often get wrong.

You do not need to memorize any of this. The text is on the cards. What helps is knowing what kind of card you are looking at, because every Kingdom card does one or more of five jobs:

• Actions: lets you play more Action cards this turn.
• Draw: puts more cards in your hand.
• Money: adds coins for your Buy phase.
• Improve: removes weak cards or swaps them for better ones.
• Attack: makes things worse for the other players.

The $2 cards

Cellar gives +1 Action, then lets you discard any number of cards from your hand and draw that many. Use it to throw away Estates and other dead cards for fresh ones. If drawing makes you shuffle, the cards you just discarded get shuffled in too. Job: draw, in a way, since it swaps bad cards for new ones without growing your hand.

Moat is +2 Cards on your turn. Its second ability works on other players’ turns: when someone plays an Attack, you may reveal Moat from your hand before the Attack does anything, and it does not affect you. Moat stays in your hand. Jobs: draw, and defense.

The $3 cards

Village gives +1 Card and +2 Actions. It replaces itself and lets you play two more Action cards. On its own it does almost nothing. With Smithies and Militias in your deck, it lets you play several of them in one turn. Job: Actions.

Merchant gives +1 Card and +1 Action, and the first time you play a Silver this turn, that Silver makes $1 more. A Merchant with no Silver in hand just replaces itself. If you play two Merchants, both bonuses apply to that first Silver. Job: money, if you own Silvers.

Workshop gains you a card costing up to $4. The card goes to your discard pile, and you cannot add coins to gain something pricier. A Workshop turn plus a Buy means two new cards. Job: improve, by adding cards.

The $4 cards

Smithy is +3 Cards. That is all, and it is plenty: a hand of 5 becomes a hand of 7. It uses your Action and gives none back, so two Smithies in one hand means one sits there. Job: draw.

Militia gives +$2, and every other player discards down to 3 cards in hand. A player who already has 3 or fewer discards nothing. Jobs: money and attack.

Remodel trashes a card from your hand and gains a card costing up to $2 more than it. Turn an Estate ($2) into a Smithy or Silver ($4). Late in the game, turn a Gold ($6) into a Province ($8). Remodel cannot trash itself, because it is in play, not in your hand. If you have another card in hand, you must trash one. Job: improve.

The $5 cards

Market gives +1 Card, +1 Action, +1 Buy, and +$1. It never hurts a hand: it replaces itself, keeps your Actions where they were, and adds a coin and a Buy. Jobs: money and more Buys.

Mine lets you trash a Treasure from your hand and gain a Treasure costing up to $3 more, straight to your hand. Copper becomes Silver, Silver becomes Gold, and you can play the new card this same turn. If you choose not to trash, or have no Treasure, you gain nothing. Job: improve.

Three words worth learning now

Players use a few shorthand words for card types. You will see them in the rest of this course.

• Terminal: an Action that gives no +Action, such as Smithy, Militia, Moat, Workshop, Remodel, and Mine. Playing one ends your Action phase unless you have Actions left over.
• Cantrip: a card that gives at least +1 Card and +1 Action, so it replaces itself and leaves your Actions unchanged. Market and Merchant are cantrips.
• Village: any card that gives +2 Actions or more. In this kingdom, that is Village itself.

These words make the beginner trap easy to see. A deck with many terminals and no villages draws hands it cannot play.

Between games

The rulebook has a small rule for the next game: if the last game was not a tie, the winner goes last, and the player to their left goes first. It is a gentle handicap that keeps a rematch fair.

When your group knows these ten cards, the teach sheet still covers setup, and the rulebook’s other kingdoms are waiting. The expansions lesson lists them.