“I’m baaaaaaaaaaaack!!!”
In a complete reversal of what we’ve been told since 2012, Rio Grande Games has announced that they will be releasing Dominion: Empires, an expansion to the wildly popular deck-building game Dominion, coming in April 2016. Yes! You read that right! APRIL 2016! That’s less than 3 months from now! A new Dominion expansion comes out before we even get to do the next Philippine Presidential Elections.
Four years ago, the nail was pretty much in the coffin for Dominion. Designer, Donald X. Vaccarino (or DVX, as the cool kids call him), had mentioned many times that Dominion was nearing the end of its development cycle. And who could blame em? The game had vastly outlived anybody’s expectations. After 8 expansions and over a thousand cards (enough cards to last several blocks in MTG), it was understandable that we had gotten our money’s worth of Dominion. Even DVX’s creative genius must have its limits. As the cliché goes, “all good things must come to an end.”
OR SO WE THOUGHT.
“The reports on my death has been greatly exaggerated.”
Two years later, he announces Dominion: Adventures! The community rejoices! We knew he still had it in him! We get one last more! These must have been the secret cards he had stashed under his couch; forgotten cards ideas he had scribbled in notes and ledgers. YES! ONE LAST HURRAH FOR DOMINION!
But the announcement of Dominion: Empires changes everything.
Perhaps Dominion isn’t as dead as we thought. After all, if Rio Grande Games has kept on making new expansions, then people must have kept on buying them; enough to justify successive print runs. It also brings up the question of “why announce the end of Dominion at all?” It seems like DVX had enough material waiting in the wings, enough to create at least 600 more cards since Guilds!
In the end, maybe nobody cares about the answer to those questions. After all, more Dominion can only be a good thing. And if they keep making em’ we’ll keep buying em.
What’s new in Dominion: Empires?
Dominion: Empires introduces the concept of “buying now and paying later”. Specifics on how exactly this would work is sparse right now. My guess is that it would work similarly to Duration actions, orange bordered cards that were first introduced in Seaside. These cards give you an effect the turn you play it, and another effect once the turn goes back to you again. Maybe Empires will have its own riff on that.
Empires might be a different take on the Duration cards of Seaside
Empires also introduces new cards called Landmarks, which have been described to be a new way to score points. Rio Grande Games representative have said that Landmarks will be an entirely new mechanism, similar to Events in Adventures, and not just a new card type.
Something good this way comes!
Look for more coverage on Dominion: Empires in the next few months as previews start coming in! But how about you, dear readers? Are you as excited about the new Dominion expansion as we are? Or do you think Dominion has had its run? What do you think are the new mechanisms in Empires? Hit us up in the comments below with your thoughts!
Image Sources:
www.boardgamegeek.com