Rio Grande Games: Dominion - Base Cards Set - 250 Victory, Treasure & Curse Cards, Updated Graphics, Board Game Content, Upgrade Pack

This review is for the Renaissance expansion, as the Renaissance was listed together with the Second Edition base Dominion set. Dominion: Renaissance is great. It balances adding some clever mechanics that promote interesting and varied strategies while still remaining very approachable and fun to play. It will be equally fun for both high-level and casual play. Renaissance is quite possibly the best expansion created yet. It's easy enough to be a first expansion as well. If you have any interest in Dominion and are looking for more, I can wholeheartedly recommend this one (even over Prosperity and Seaside). I have a personal love for Adventures, Empires and even most aspects of Nocturne, but they are slightly more complex (especially Nocturne). The mechanics: The coin and action saving tokens (collected on your Coffers and Villagers mats, respectively) are great to use. Coffers return from the Guilds expansion. Having the ability to smooth out your purchasing power across turns or even save up for a big turn is very powerful and strategic. The Villagers can really get you out of a bind when you draw actions you couldn't otherwise play. They even allow you to use more cards that don't give +Action in your deck than you otherwise would. The provided cards also dole them out in interesting ways. The Artifacts are passive ability-granting cards that you hold on to that stay out of your deck. There is only one copy of each and players fulfilling certain conditions on the corresponding Kingdom card can take it away for themselves. Flag Bearer in particular seems to get stolen a lot, as the person holding it basically gets a 6 card hand instead of 5. They are fun and provide a interesting form of player interaction aside from Attack cards, though there are only 4 Kingdom cards that use Artifacts. This expansion is light on attack cards: there are only 2, which isn't really a problem due to the Artifacts. The Projects provide an extra ability for the rest of the game after you buy them, and are often very useful. Sometimes it comes down to when you should buy them, not if. Some are very fun, such as Citadel, that's like an automatic Throne Room at the start of each turn. There are 20 in total and you'll want to include 1 or 2 in every game you play, whether or not you use the other Renaissance cards in a given game. There are also a fair number of Kingdom cards that don't use any of the new mechanics. Some use parts of mechanics from prior sets (e.g. Duration cards from Seaside, when-trash abilities from Dark Ages, and when-gain abilities from Hinterlands, cost reduction from Intrigue, etc.). These are also well put together and interesting without being overly complex. Even the most complex cards, (possibly Improve, Research and the Capitalism Project) aren't that hard to understand. The components: The only slight issue is here are some slight printing coloration issues where the tint of the card fronts doesn't always match that of prior expansions - they are generally lighter. The backs are ever so slightly different as well, but not enough to notice unless you're looking. It hasn't been an issue in my play group yet. The other components (mats, tokens, and wooden project tracking cubes) are high quality and look nice.

I already had enough to play with 5-6 players but now I can play with more! Love it! Came with an extra trash pile and other cool cards. Def elevates the game.

We really like Dominion, but the truth is, we prefer Ticket to Ride. Don't get me wrong, we do enjoy a game of Dominion but the majority of the extensions are either not appealing to us, or simply too expensive. The fact that Dominion is for only 4 players IS an obstacle... Enter the Base Cards, which provide 2 major improvements over Dominion. The Base Cards now allows you to play with up to 6 players with additional base cards: plenty of Copper (60), Silver (40) and Gold (30) as well as Estate (24), Duchy (12), Provinces (12) and curses cards(30). You even get 16 potions to increase the pile if you bought Alchemy. With 5 players, use 15 provinces/duchy and for 6 players, use 18 provinces. That's right, with this set, you have 6 extra cards so in theory, you could play with up to 8 players! You should however add 1 Kingdom card per player above 4 and ignore the "3 supply pile" rule. But each of these cards are completely redesigned with much nicer pictures so that they are more than just a big number, so I recommend that for 2-4 player games, you can just use the new cards. For me however, the biggest advantage to the game is the addition of 12 Colony (11g to buy, 10 victory points) and 12 Platinum coin (9g to buy and gives 5 gold). You can otherwise only get these 2 cards from the Prosperity expansion (for almost 3 times the cost of the base cards) and you can add them to ANY game of Dominion, not just those with Prosperity. I personally sleeve my cards but I managed to fit everything I might use in my Dominion box by putting the Platinum and the Colony in the randomizer cards spaces, and then, simply used an elastic to place the randomizer cards on top of the index column. I also placed the extra Gold, Silver, Etc... there. My base card box only has the extra curses (we don't like playing with the Witch) and Poitions (since we don't have alchemy). All and all, a great buy for a very low price.

I was uncertain whether this would be worth the money: sure, it's cheap, but it doesn't really let you do anything you couldn't before. In practice, I find it's surprisingly convenient. When we want to play with an expansion, now we just grab that expansion and the Base Cards, instead of lugging around the bulky base set box. The small size of the Base Cards box makes a huge difference. The new art is also a big draw. It's definitely an upgrade over the original; the potion is particularly beautiful. One drawback, though, is that it makes it harder to see (at a glance) the difference between card cost and value, both for victory and treasure. Take the Province: the original cards have a huge "6" on the front, but with the new cards, I've caught myself more than once counting them for 8 at game's end. We also had a new player try to buy a Gold for 3! These problems are minor (especially for experienced players), but they do pop up from time to time. Overall, the Base Card expansion is a surprisingly satisfying buy for Dominion lovers who have multiple expansions (we have all of them). That's the target demographic - if you're satisfied with just the Base Set and/or Intrigue, don't bother picking this up just for the new art.

Every tired of copper, silver, and gold all appearing the same on the old stock cards? Not anymore! Custom nice artwork for each victory point card and treasure card! Estates look like actual estates now! Includes Colonies and Platinum for the Prosperity expansion and potions for the alchemy expansion. All are custom made and actually look like platinum, curses, and duchies, also a new trash card! Also the base cards allows you to double the number of players up to 8 if you combine your original 12 provinces with the base cards 12 provinces as you need 24 provinces for 8 players. Be warned 8 player games can last a lot longer than the original.

If you're looking at these cards, beware that this is not a playable set of cards. This is a set of base cards that include treasure cards, curses and victory cards. This set is great is you want to buy an expansion pack instead of the original dominion game. The original dominion game comes with a set of these cards. The expansion sets do not include these cards, so you either need the original game or you need this pack. This pack of cards is also great if you own several expansion sets. This way you can bring this set of base cards with whatever expansion set you're going to be playing with and you don't need to bring the entire original set with you. It's also a nice set that includes platinum cards, colony cards and potion cards. The original set does not include these cards. So it adds some different elements to the game that you don't get with the original set of base cards. Very handy set and I recommend it if you have several sets of dominion games.

When I heard this mini expansion was coming out I was really excited. Anyone who is a fan of Dominion knows that new cards = pure joy and excitement. This expansion promised new Treasure and Victory cards with new art as well has new curse cards and a new Trash card (again, all with new art). Honestly the art is a little underwhelming. Don't get me wrong...the new art is good on most of the cards...but I guess I just expected more. The best looking are the Treasure Cards and the worst are the Curse Cards (the have a Crow on them, that's it...lame!) The purpose of the mini expansion is to allow other non-base expansions to be played as standalone games (like Dominion Seaside , Dominion: Alchemy , Dominion Hinterlands , Dominion: Prosperity and Dominion: Cornucopia ), so the new art was just an added bonus really. But honestly, for another $10-$15 on Amazon (it was $19.99 when I bought this expansion) you could get either of the base games Dominion or Dominion Intrigue and get more kingdom cards to boot! Get this if you're a completionist like me, otherwise, you could probably pass on it. UPDATE 09/11/12: After having more time to play with these cards, I like them a little bit more than I did initially. I still stand by my prior complaints, but I'd give them 4 stars instead of 3.

Pro: I like the new expansion. It adds some nice new options to an already full game. Con: The closest thing I have to a problem with this is that there are fewer cards than a box this size needs, so the extra "cost" involved is for the metal tokens, which a) although good quality, are the same tokens as were included in other expansions except for a few wooden cubes, and b) one could use a handful of mixed coins or other stuff found around the house just as easily. As of the writing of this review, the game is on sale at a discounted price, and that price (16% off) I feel is a more accurate value, due to there being fewer cards. Still, over all, that does not bring the review down a full star, and I would not have felt cheated if I had paid full price.