Dominion - Nocturne: Review
Information:
Mechanics: Deck-Building
Player Age: 14+Player Count: 2 - 4 PlayersTime to Play: 30 Minutes
Game Designer: Donald X. VaccarinoGame Artist: Matthias Catrein, Elisa Cella, Garret DeChellis, Radosław JaszczukPublisher: Rio Grande GamesYear Published: 2017BGG Weight: 2.9Disclaimer: A review copy for the game was provided by the publisher.
Player Age: 14+
Game Designer: Donald X. Vaccarino
Introduction:
Dominion is a classic deck of game, of assessing the setup and working towards an efficient deck to score the most points. For the original review click here. This review is focused on the expansion Nocturne. The expansion is packed with content at 500 cards featuring 33 new kingdom cards and an array of other decks of cards. There are an array of new types of cards in this expansion, one prominent card type from earlier expansions is the duration cards that have effects that last longer than the turn they are played.
Heirlooms:
Some of the kingdom cards in the game come with a new paired card called an heirloom. If this kingdom card is used in the game, each player will have one of their starting copper cards replaced by this heirloom. Each heirloom is still a treasure but contains an action that gives the players a difference start from game to game. This is not a variable setup, it is simply giving the players a better start and shakes up the starting deck.
Night Phase:
The night phase is an added phase which will occur after the buy phase. Any amount of night cards can be played in this phase. The one exception to this rule is the werewolf who can be played as an action or in the night phase, with different effects based on when it's played. This phase is very interesting some simply help players plan for the next round, some however require deeper thinking and create opportunities that players have to plan towards like the exorcist which requires a card toin the player's hand to trash or the devil's workshop which gives a benefit based on the amount of cards the player gains for the turn.
Doom and Hex Cards:
There are several doom cards that are tied to hex cards. These will give hexes to players. These hexes are a stack of 12 random cards that will be drawn and affect players negatively when the doom cards activate.
Some of these hex cards will award players certain states. If a player gains miserable a second time it will flip to twice miserable and lead to negative four points being gained at the end of the game.
Boons:
Boons are the opposite of the doom and gloom, they are instead positive effects. Like hexes they don't enter a player's decks and are activated through certain cards.
An interesting card is the pixie who discards the top boon from the deck, if the player likes this boon they can trash the pixie to activate this boon twice.
Interesting Cards:
Bats and Vampires:
There are a lot of additional cards in this expansion, a clear example of this is the vampire which will bounce back and forth from the vampire and bat state.
Druid:
A particular fun card is the druid which will have three books revealed for the whole game, when their card is activated the player can activate one of those boons, this gives plenty of tactical versatility for the player when they play a druid.
Necromancer:
Talking about tactical decisions, the necromancer will raise for a turn one of the action cards in the trash pile (as long as they are not a duration). To sweeten the pot, the necromancer has three different zombies which will start the game in the trash, this is one of those cards that add a lot of versatility as the card is played.
Final Thoughts:
- New night mechanism.
- Return of the duration cards.
- Plenty of content at 500 cards
- Heirlooms help make games feel different with symmetric changes to the starting deck.
- Some players may not like the added randomness that the boon and hexes add.
This is my first foray into the expansions of Dominion, wow they pack a lot of variability, while focusing on several focal points. The main mechanism would be the night phase, this is a phase after treasures that creates another phase , which some may think it bogs down the experience. I did not find that the case at all, to me it adds another layer of planning, some night cards when purchased are also directly placed into your hand, letting their benefit of planned right kick-off straight away. There are some fun tactical cards in this set that give the players more range of choices on their turn like the zombie and the druid. I always like variable setup on games, as they shake up how each game feels, dominion already does this a lot with the random ten kingdom cards each game. Now there are also heirloom cards which will change one copper card for a new and improved starting treasure, based on how many heirloom cards are used. This is not asymmetrical, instead every player will start with this change. If you enjoy dominion and want a big expansion to change how each game feels I can easily recommend Nocturne, even more if this spooky is a theme that beckons. Some players might not like the random factors of the hex and boon deck, but there are a wide range of cards which don't pull directly from these decks.
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