A Step Up?

A new trend in board games this year seems to be that everyone wants to release their own game that's "like Dominion." This is hardly surprising, as the "like a trading card game, but all in one box" concept has pushed Dominion to big sales and multiple expansions.

But since writing that initial review of Dominion a while back, I've soured on the game considerably. It was not immediately obvious, but repeated plays exposed the poor balance at the core of the game. In my experience, it simply isn't worth it to take much interest in buying cards with game text. Three, maybe four, will help your deck out, but more than that seems to be self-defeating; you'd best just stick with acquiring more money cards (when you can't afford the big points). At the end of every Dominion game I've played (and thought to check), the winner is always the player with the fewest "text" cards in his deck. And since game text is what trading card games are all about (even not-a-trading-card-game-games), that makes the game rather boring, in my opinion.

Enter one of the new Dominion clones, Ascension. It has a more Dungeons and Dragons kind of feel to it (though not as much, I gather, as the other recent Dominion clone, Thunderstone), where you pick up items and heroes and slay monsters. It admirably addresses the "text equals bad" problem by simply lifting Dominion's restriction of only playing one "action card" during a turn. In Ascension, you can play all your special cards on every turn, and they're definitely "special" enough that you'll want to pick them up when you can afford them.

The pace also seems to be improved over Dominion. I've played four-player Dominion games where it feels like an eternity passes between your turns, yet all but the most involved Ascension turns seem to move at a good clip.

But after a few plays, my opinion is that these improvements in Ascension came with an unfortunate loss as well -- there simply isn't much strategy to it. (Though I suppose my argument is there isn't much strategy to Dominion either -- just the one that works.) Rather than set piles of cards to purchase, as Dominion has, Ascension has a row of six single cards, dealt off a single, shuffled super-deck. When one card is bought, the next card off the deck replaces it. There's no ability to plan ahead; what you want may well be gone -- for good -- before your next turn arrives. And if an awesome card comes available when it's someone else's turn? Well, that luck of the draw may well decide the game in his favor, not yours. All you can really do is wait for your turn, play all your cards (no decisions to make there), then acquire the most expensive card(s) you can each turn (hardly any decisions to make there either).

In short... well, I don't want to say it's like Fluxx. But the game does smell an awful lot like Fluxx in its "you don't really play the game so much as it plays you" vibe. Its brief 30-minute run time, even with four players, might make me think that's okay, save for the fact that there are plenty of other 30-minute games I find more enjoyable.

Still, I think I'd be willing to play Ascension if that's what the group was playing. Dominion, I think I'd just sit out on.