Laurie and I just finished playing Domaine for the first time.  In brief, it's about making domains around your castles to get money to make them larger to get victory points to win the game (what else?).  

It's good for 2 to 4 players, although the 2 player rules could use a little clarification (you use a neutral guy when placing pieces at the beginning, but it's unclear if you should play for the guy or just let the stuff sit there).  It takes about an hour or so to play and comes with lots of little plastic pieces (sorry, no wood found here).

The board changes each play for some variety in play.  Having played it once, we both found it was fun to play but requires a bit more direct confrontation than we are used to in games.   (We like games that don't require it -- more of a race style than direct competition style.)  I can see that for four players it will get very crowded very early in the game.  Luckily, the victory points are reduced as the numbers of players are added.

Basically, you take turns either playing (and paying for playing) an action card to expand your territory or strengthen your territory or you sell a card to get some money to have more options in your next turn. 

Scoring happens immediately.  At first, it was unclear why scoring was done while playing since score can go up and down.  But you win instantly once you reach a certain score, so the victory points track is important.  However, should you lose your place, you can recount the scores easily. That is, the score is represented by what your territory encloses and mirrored on the victory path for easy counting.

In our first game, Laurie had a couple of rather large domaines that she made a truce with my neighboring ones, effectively protecting the from me.  I was then stuck with the other part of the board both trying to get points while not letting her get more over there.  For about 10 moves before the end, she was within one move of winning while I was struggling at less than half her score.  For quite some time it seemed quite futile to me.  However, we weren't playing the neutral character.  Had we been, it may have been quite different. That said, she also did have her castles much closer to the edge than I had mine. 

She didn't want to play again right away.  So here I am writing this.  Maybe she'll let me play again soon. ;)

I liked the game because the rules are relatively simple, gameplay is quick, and you don't have a whole lote of choice of what to do (you either play or sell a card and then draw).  Although it didn't feel totally balanced while playing two player, I'll have to play more before judging that completely.

More information can be found here at catan.com.

Posted by Shane on December 12, 2006 10:35 PM | Permalink