Dominion Strategy

Disclaimer: Dominion does a really great job of balancing its Kingdom cards. Pretty much every card has some situations where it shines, and some situations where it doesn’t. Nevertheless, some cards just end up being flat-out better than others, either because they are more useful more often, or just ridiculously good when they are useful. Don’t expect this list to be very scientific.

See also: The Five Best $5 Attacks.

Dominion: Prosperity

Honorable Mention: Venture

Venture is basically the better version of Adventurer, in the same way that Warehouse is the better version of Cellar and Hoard is the better version of Explorer.  In any trimmed deck, Venture is usually better than Gold, and sometimes better than Platinum, especially when Bank is in play.  A Venture-powered deck is immune to the endgame green card slowdown and resilient against Cursing attacks.  And even though it’s much worse in untrimmed decks, it’s still strictly superior to Silver so long as you draw a Copper with it.

It takes a while to appreciate the power of Venture, but the first time you realize the power of chained Ventures is when you begin to realize how much of a ridiculous game-changer Venture is in the presence of any good trashing.

Dominion: Seaside

5. Tactician

One of the fundamental principles of Dominion is that one good thing tends to be better than two mediocre things.  Tactician is a good example: having a big hand is helpful for just about every strategy, and so just about every hand is worth giving up for an even better one.  It counters quite a few attacks directly (Ghost Ship, Militia), and helps you set up combos that are otherwise too difficult to pull off (e.g., Throne Room x4 + Bridge x4).  Tactician even works with itself in certain rare situations, when you can find some way to discard your hand but still have money to buy cards (either using Actions for money, or something like Black Market/Tactician).

About the only time Tactician isn’t useful is in extremely trimmed Chapel-like decks, since there’s no point to giving up a turn if you’re drawing your whole deck anyway. But even with trashing, Tactician helps trash your stuff quickly, and you can trash it for some benefit later (e.g., using a Tactician turn to Forge away your crap, and then Forge the Tactician into something more useful).

Dominion: Prosperity

4. Vault

It’s amazing how the +2 Cards can turn one of the crappiest Actions in the game (Secret Chamber) into one of the best.  I suspect this card sets a new baseline for “Big Money plus”, a la Smithy-BigMoney or Envoy-BigMoney: every time you play it, you’re guaranteed a Gold, and every time you play it and draw a Gold, you’re guaranteed a Province.  There are some fancy combos you can set up with it (Festival/Vault/Library), but in general, Vault is effective enough just played singly, to get the Golds, Grand Markets, or Provinces.

Like Tactician, Vault does best in poor-quality decks, since there aren’t many cards you really want to discard for $1 in a Chapel deck.  And it’s not quite as fun in Colony games, where you’re looking for Platinums rather than Golds.  On the other hand, there’s no other Dominion card as consistent or “safe” as Vault for improving your deck.

Dominion: Prosperity

3. City

A notorious “trap” card, but activated Cities are some of the most fun cards Dominion has to offer.  If you haven’t already made progress on the Provinces or Colonies, there’s basically nothing that can stop a full-blown activated City stack.  If you know you’re building for them, it leads to Fishing Village-type situations where you can get away with buying many more terminal Actions than usual.  City stacks tend to lead to hilarious games when King’s Court, Bridge, and/or Goons are involved.

On the other hand, as a general rule, I avoid them in most Province games.  Unless another pile (usually Curses) is emptying, the only hope of upgrading your Cities is by emptying the City pile, and buying out all 10 Cities takes quite a while.  In addition, you might very well find that Level 2 Cities don’t actually help you much, since unless you have a ton of Monuments or Saboteurs or some fun terminal Action, you could have bought Laboratories instead if you just wanted to draw your deck.  By the time you hit Level 3 Cities, your opponent very well might find a way to end it on piles before you can use your fully-upgraded Cities.

Dominion

2. Laboratory

You can basically never go wrong with buying a Laboratory.  This is the only $5 (so far) for which this is true other than Market, and realistically you aren’t going to strike much fear in your opponents with a Market-based deck.  Among non-terminal non-attacks, Laboratory and Alchemist are second only to Grand Market in win rate.

The fact that it’s totally OK to never stop buying Lab is a huge point in its favor.   A common problem with decks built around a terminal is getting stuck on the wrong money amount and thus unable to continue buying engine components.  For instance, a deck built around Mine that keeps stalling at $5 has to either buy more Mines and hope they don’t conflict, or buy something that doesn’t really work with the deck.  Alternatively, a standard +Actions/+Cards engine has to balance getting +Actions and +Cards separately, and is dependent on drawing its cards in the right order.  Laboratory-based decks face no such problems, and is therefore the easiest and most reliable engine to build.

1. Wharf

Wharf is to cards as Fishing Village is to Actions.  This picture says it all:

That red line is not Outpost.

Dominion: Seaside

With the right +Actions, Wharf completely smacks Laboratory: after all, the Wharf duration bonus is equivalent to having played two Labs.  Indeed, it’s the only +2 Cards in the game that is worth building a draw engine around.  With Throne Room and/or King’s Court in play, it just becomes absolutely unreal, letting you get multiplied benefits both this turn and the next.

It loses a lot of strength without +Actions, but even then, you can safely get multiple Wharves with less chance of drawing them together, because you’ll often have one in play rather than in your deck.  The +Buy is really just the icing on the cake.

Disclaimer: Dominion does a really great job of balancing its Kingdom cards. Pretty much every card has some situations where it shines, and some situations where it doesn’t. Nevertheless, some cards just end up being flat-out better than others, either because they are more useful more often, or just ridiculously good when they are useful. Don’t expect this list to be very scientific.

The biggest problem I had with this list was that any honest list of the best $5’s would basically just be attacks.  As great as Laboratory is, it’s simply not a viable defense against Mountebank or Torturer or Minion.  So I’ve decided to split this list into two parts: the best $5 attacks and the best $5 non-attacks.  If you want, consider this list to be the “real” best $5 cards, since any of the top five are going to be more important than any other option at $5.

This image could have taken the place of this entire post.

Dominion: Prosperity

Honorable Mention: Rabble

It’s kind of silly to have an Honorable Mention, since there’s only seven $5 attacks, and one was already the worst $5 card, and in any case (by process of elimination), it’s obvious what belongs here.  But since I’ve gone to the effort of writing up all the other cards, I might as well give Rabble its moment in the sun.  It’s only really effective when your opponent has Victory cards, but it can be unbelievably devastating once chained together in the late game.  Games with competing Rabble engines are a lot of fun, since you’re both locked into a game of chicken, daring the other into buying the Victory cards.  It can shut down a draw chain without Cellar or Warehouse, or it can absolutely ruin your opponent’s next turn.

That having been said, the other $5 attacks are in a class by themselves.  Rabble isn’t quite as bad as Saboteur, but it’s got a long way to go before it can join the elite pantheon of attacks.  No other attack is as weak early on: in fact, this is one I’d almost certainly pass over for a peaceful $5 early on.

Dominion: Intrigue

5. Minion

It’s amazing to me that Minion can be #5 on this list, since passing it up in most 2-player games is suicide.  But it’s less flexible than the other attacks: it’s not that effective for Colony, and it’s not great in multiplayer since it’s harder to get that critical mass of Minions.  Plus, they’re quite vulnerable to getting bogged down with Curses, such that most of the Minions are used for drawing instead of the money.

But if you can do better than a 5-5 split in 2-player, you are usually well on your way to victory.  Its non-attack function is very strong: quite a few cards combo well with a Minion deck, and because it self-synergizes, it’s usually easy (even without trashing) to get Minions going.  But its attack really becomes killer once you get into Province-buying territory, since you are forcing your opponent to cycle faster, meaning his green cards are being mixed faster into his deck and he has fewer turns to run his fully-optimized engine.

Dominion: Intrigue

4. Torturer

This is probably the best-named card in the game.  I’ve seen people quit Dominion over Torturer.  And not in the completely unnecessary sense like with Saboteur, I mean in the completely justified sense of “because you got your Torturer chain off first, I am now doomed to be Torturer-pinned into oblivion for the rest of the game”.  There’s an art to building an effective Torturer train as quickly as possible, but the first person to land the multiple-Torturer blow is usually the one that ends up prevailing.  As much as I hate reactions in 2-player games, Torturer is one of those few situations where I give in and grab Lighthouses or Watchtowers to defend.

Unfortunately, Torturer is a total whiff if there aren’t any +Actions, since a single Torturer by itself is not very scary at all.  And naturally, it works absolutely terribly with Curse-givers, since it only has bite if there are still Curses left to take.  This also means the attack has a built-in expiration date: make it past the 10 (or however many) Curses and the attack becomes a total non-factor.  Plus, gaining Curses into hand is usually not nearly as big a deal as gaining them into deck if you can just trash it immediately.

Dominion: Seaside

3. Ghost Ship

Ghost Ship draws only 2 cards, compared to Torturer and Rabble.  Plus it has the unfortunate distinction of being the only $5 attack that doesn’t really work well Throned or Kinged.  So you won’t be building a good engine with Ghost Ship any time soon.  The good news is you won’t have to, because Ghost Ship is about the meanest single attack there is in the game.

Oh, yes, Mountebank and Witch (you know they’re coming up) are stronger, and there’s nothing meaner than a Torturer or Minion chain, but as single attacks go, it’s hard to fathom one crueler than Ghost Ship.  With relatively few exceptions, you’re basically ruining either your current hand or your next.  Worse, Ghost Ship is one of the two attacks in the game that does not anti-synergize with most other attacks; if anything, it gets even better.

Once in a while, Ghost Ship attacks are helpful as mini-Havens.  If you’re lucky enough to draw 5 Platinums in one hand, you’d be pretty thankful to Ghost Ship for letting you save two for next turn.  But most of the time you have no better option than to put off your good cards until next turn, hoping he doesn’t draw another Ghost Ship.  Getting pinned by Torturer chains is painful and frustrating, but getting trapped in Ghost Ship lockdown is as depressing as Dominion can get.

Dominion

2. Witch

Witch is a defining card in Dominion: along with Chapel, Thief, and Gardens, Donald X. called it one of the four pillars of the base game.  Even beginners quickly realize why: Curses are the strongest attack in the game, and Witch is as straightforward a Cursing attack as it gets. There’s no condition for gaining, like Mountebank; no option for the player to choose, like Torturer; no top-decking to let them trash it immediately, like Sea Hag: just “gain a Curse”.  This unconditional Cursing makes it hands-down superior to Mountebank in games when both are present, since the Witch’s Curses will never be stopped without a Reaction.  Indeed, if all five of these attacks were on the same board, Witch would be my first choice: it is the only one that will actually shut down all of the other attacks.  (Except maybe Ghost Ship.)

Dominion: Prosperity

1. Mountebank

So why does Mountebank get the nod over Witch?  Three reasons, in ascending order:

1. It continues attacking even after the Curses are exhausted.  Realistically, this is not a huge deal, since after the Curses run out there are not that many turns left before the game ends.  But it’s nice to be able to do some damage to your opponent’s deck.
2. It gives +$2 instead of +2 Cards.  Although there are certain benefits to Witch’s +2 Cards (for instance, faster deck cycling), it is much easier to draw two Witches dead than two Mountebanks.  And as you will often want at least two of these Cursing attacks, drawing one of them dead can spell the difference between splitting the Curses 5-5 and 6-4.
3. It’s just flat-out meaner.  Mountebank is the most devastating Turn 1 opening; it has the highest “win rate with” and the fourth-lowest “win rate without” out of any card in the game; it; an early Throned or Kinged Mountebank is basically game over.  And although it’s theoretically counterable by Moneylender/Counting House/other Copper-dependent cards, the extra Coppers slow your opponents down from getting back around to their own Mountebank.

Disclaimer: Dominion does a really great job of balancing its Kingdom cards. Pretty much every card has some situations where it shines, and some situations where it doesn’t. Nevertheless, some cards just end up being flat-out better than others, either because they are more useful more often, or just ridiculously good when they are useful. Don’t expect this list to be very scientific.

The bad $5 cards tend to be bad in a different way from the bad $4 and $3’s.  None of them are actually that bad for your deck (well, except maybe Saboteur), since most of them are strictly superior to Silver.  It’s only when you start comparing them to the good $5’s that you realize just how steep their opportunity cost is: I’m happy to get all my Silvers swapped for Stashes, but I would infinitely prefer Mountebanks instead.

Dominion: Prosperity

Honorable Mention: Counting House

I hate putting this on here, since hey, it’s a specialized strategy, and if you try to add Counting House to a normal strategy of course it won’t work well.  But it’s really, really hard to get a decent Counting House engine going.  Warehouse is about your best option, but without +Buy, it’s difficult to find turns to buy Copper, which means you aren’t ever going to get more than $7 from Counting House.  And while that sounds like a lot, it really isn’t if you have no other source of money!  It does counter Mountebank decently, and is of course immune to handsize-decreasing attacks.  But it’s rarely the best strategy on the board.

Dominion

5. Mine

It got a boost in Prosperity, but without Platinums, it’s just far too slow.  Trash your Coppers … one at a time … to get Silvers.  With any half-decent trashing, you’re better off just trashing your Coppers altogether.  In an extremely Action-rich environment, it can be useful to upgrade all your Treasures very slowly, but you might as well just use Expand instead.  Most of the trash-for-benefit Actions are nice for the flexibility they give you in the endgame; Mine does no such thing, and in fact gets worse and worse as the game goes on: if you don’t see the card again, Mine is a Copper you have to spend an Action on.

Dominion: Prosperity

4. Contraband

Incredibly dangerous.  It’s excellent when there are multiple good options at $6+, but when there isn’t, it’s trivial to shut down a Contraband player by repeatedly denying Gold.  If you can survive that, you’ll find yourself in late game wishing your Contrabands were just Coppers, since Contrabands are unplayable anyway lest you get blocked from Provinces.  The +Buy is nice, and can be helpful in setting up cheap Action chains, but one Gold is almost always going to be preferable to two Villages.

Dominion: Seaside

3. Explorer

Borderline in Province games, near-useless in Colony games, and totally smoked by Hoard.  Admittedly, very few $5 cards give +$3, but it’s too difficult to get that all lined up.  If you’re saturated with Provinces, you should probably be buying Duchies; if you have great draw, then you should have probably gotten another draw engine component instead of the Explorer, and the Gold is probably just going to gum up your engine anyway.  So you have to get this early, and then it’s just basically a Silver-gaining machine that gets a little better in the late game, assuming you can compete for Provinces with a Silver-based deck.

Promotional

2. Stash

Many of the $5 Kingdom cards are “Silver-with-a-benefit” cards.  Stash is one of them, but got stuck with pretty much the worst benefit.  You can’t move it around your deck whenever you please — only when you shuffle — so it’s difficult to make an informed decision as to where to put it.   They get a little better with multiple copies, since you can stack them all together to get a Province, but then you’re running a Silver-based deck: good luck in Colony games, or trying to deal with any handsize-affecting attack whatsoever.  Not to mention their unique backs make it easy for people to mess with you.

Dominion: Intrigue

1. Saboteur

Maybe this isn’t really the absolute worst $5 card, but it’s got all the X-factors working against it: wildly overrated, leads to groupthink, encourages an unfun game, high-variance, even makes people quit playing Dominion.  There’s a (very small) strategy space around this card in advanced games, but I think (like Possession), Saboteur should probably be taken out of beginner games until they gain a greater appreciation for when exactly to use it.  There’s a reason why it has the highest “win rate without” out of all the $5’s.