Welcome to the Dark Ages of Dominion

Hey there! Ready to dive into the medieval world of Dominion Dark Ages? Well, you’re in the right place. I’m here to guide you through the game rules and help you become a master of this exciting expansion pack.

Exploring the Dark Ages

The Dark Ages expansion takes you back in time to a period of chaos and uncertainty. As you play, you’ll encounter ruined villages, plague-ridden cities, and dangerous bandits. But fear not! With cunning strategy and careful planning, you can rise above the darkness and emerge victorious.

Building Your Deck

Alright, let’s get down to business. In Dominion Dark Ages, you’ll start with a small deck of basic cards. These humble cards are your tools to build a more powerful deck. By acquiring new cards from the Dark Ages set, you can expand your options and gain an edge over your opponents.

But beware! The Dark Ages isn’t all rainbows and unicorns. You’ll also encounter nasty Ruins cards that clog up your deck and bring chaos to your game plan. So, choose your cards wisely and be prepared for surprises along the way.

Embracing the Darkness

As you delve deeper into the Dark Ages, you’ll discover that some cards thrive in the shadows. Knights and Madmen are just a taste of the dark forces at your disposal. Unleash their power on your opponents and watch them tremble.

Additionally, Dark Ages introduces the concept of trashing cards. When you trash a card, you remove it from your deck, forever banishing it from your sight. It can be a tough decision to make, but don’t worry. Sometimes, sacrifices need to be made to achieve greatness.

The Importance of Strategy

Remember, my friend, victory in Dominion Dark Ages is not a matter of luck. It all comes down to your strategic choices. Throughout the game, you’ll need to adapt your tactics, respond to your opponents’ moves, and seize opportunities as they arise.

Will you focus on building a powerful deck filled with treasure? Or will you specialize in trashing cards and disrupting your rivals’ plans? The choice is yours, and it’s a game-changer.

Get Ready for Dark Ages Dominion

So, my dear adventurer, are you ready for the challenge that awaits you in Dominion Dark Ages? Are you prepared to navigate the treacherous paths of the past and emerge victorious? If so, grab your deck and shuffle away. The Dark Ages are calling, and only the mightiest of strategists will prevail.

Life has been tough. To save some money, I’ve left my old castle and settled in a beautiful ravine. To be honest, I never really liked that castle. It was always being raided, and never at a decent hour.

And if it wasn’t raiders, it was the plague. Sometimes, both would strike at the same time. You can imagine the chaos and the lack of available seating.

The ravine is so much better. It’s sunny, and I can toss my trash wherever I want. In my spare time, I’ve taken up begging. Begging sounds great in theory, but in reality, no one has any money to spare.

I ask the villagers for twigs, and they ask me for twigs in return. It’s a never-ending cycle where no one seems to come out on top. But hey, that’s just how life goes sometimes.

What’s up, guys? You know those times when everything seems to go wrong? Well, picture this: you’re minding your own business, doing your thing, when BAM! Out of nowhere, disaster strikes. It could be a plague, or barbarians attacking, or maybe everyone suddenly forgets how to read. Yeah, it’s pretty rough.

The Building Blocks

• Dark Ages has 330 Action cards
• 10 Treasure cards
• 12 Victory cards
• 20 Action cards
• 10 Knight cards
• 35 Randomizer cards
• 50 Ruins cards
• 18 Shelter cards

Getting Started

Before we play our first game, let’s take out the three sets of cards and place them in the card tray. The inlay inside the box shows us a way to organize the cards.

To play Dark Ages, we’ll need the Treasure cards, Victory cards, Curse cards, and Trash card from Dominion, which is a standalone expansion like Dominion: Intrigue or Dominion: Base Cards.

Hey there! So, like I said before, Dominion is a pretty cool game. The way it works is, every time you play, you get to pick 10 sets of Kingdom cards. Now, you have a couple ways of choosing those sets. One way is to just pick them randomly. If you go with that option, you’ll want to mix in the randomizer cards from this expansion with any other Dominion games you’re using. That way, you’ll get a nice mix of cards that keeps things interesting.

If only Kingdom cards from Dark Ages are in play, something special happens at the beginning of the game. The normal starting Estates are replaced with Shelter cards. So, instead of the usual starting deck of three Estates and seven Coppers, each player starts with seven Coppers, a Hovel, a Necropolis, and an Overgrown Estate.

If you’re playing with a mix of Kingdom cards from Dark Ages and other sets, whether or not to use Shelters is determined randomly. Take a random Kingdom card being used, such as the last card dealt from the Randomizer deck. If this card is from Dark Ages, then Shelters are used instead of starting Estates.

It’s important to note that you shouldn’t use the same card to decide on Shelters as you use to decide on using Platinum and Colony cards from Prosperity. Those are separate considerations.

Using Shelters doesn’t change the number of Estates in the Estate Supply pile. There are still 8 Estates for games with 2 players and 12 Estates for games with 3 or more players.

Hey there! Let’s talk about something cool in the game of Dominion. So, I want to tell you about a special type of card called a Looter. Some examples of Looter cards are Cultist, Death Cart, and Marauder. Now, whenever there’s a Looter card in play, we get to add something extra to the game called the Ruins pile. Exciting, right?

Now, let me explain how it works. We take all the Ruins cards and shuffle them up. Then, we count how many players there are. For each player, besides the first one, we add 10 Ruins cards to the pile. That means if there are two players, we put 10 cards in the pile. If there are three players, we put in 20 cards. And if there are four players, we put in 30 cards. You get the idea!

Once we have our Ruins pile ready, we put it face down, with the top card face up. Any extra Ruins cards that we didn’t use, we can just put them back in the box. We don’t need them for this game.

Now, here’s a little bonus tip: If we’re also playing with a special pile of cards called Knights, we should shuffle those cards as well, before we start the game. Then, we put the Knights pile face down, with the top card face up. Oh, and by the way, the Knights pile doesn’t get a Trade Route token, even if the top Knight card happens to be a Victory card. Just something to keep in mind!

Rules to Follow

When I play an Action card, I do two things. First, I need to put it face-up into the play area. Then, I follow the instructions on the card. Even if I can’t move the card into play, I still have to follow its instructions.

The Play Area

Action and Treasure cards that I play face-up go into the play area. They stay there until I decide to move them somewhere else, usually when I discard them during the Clean-up phase. Only the cards that I have played are considered to be in play. Cards that are set aside, thrown away, in the Supply, or in my hand, deck, and discard pile are not in play. Cards with reaction abilities, like the Beggar’s card, don’t count as being in play.

In the game Dark Ages, there are two special Treasure cards with their own rules. One of them is called Counterfeit and is included in the Supply if it is chosen as one of the 10 Kingdom cards for the game. The other one is called Spoils and is not part of the Supply unless the Bandit Camp, Marauder, or Pillage cards are being used in the game.

These cards have special abilities and work just like normal Treasures. They are played during the Buy phase, alongside regular Treasures, and interact with cards that affect Treasures.

When it comes to playing the Treasure cards, you have flexibility. You can choose the order in which you play them, and you can even decide not to play some or all of the Treasure cards in your hand. However, during the Buy phase, if you want to play any Treasures, you must do so before buying any cards. Even if you have the ability to make multiple purchases, you cannot play additional Treasures after making a purchase.

When two things happen to me at the same time, I get to choose the order in which I do them. For example, let’s say my Rats get trashed and I have Market Square in my hand. In this situation, I have the power to decide whether I want to resolve the “when-trashed” ability of the Rats first or the reaction of Market Square first.

Now, let’s talk about when two things happen to different players at the same time. In this case, we follow a turn order starting with the player whose turn it is. For instance, if I play Marauder, the other players will gain Ruins cards one by one, following the turn order.

But what happens if I need to do something with my Deck, like draw, reveal, set aside, look at, or trash cards, and I don’t have enough cards left in my Deck? Well, here’s what I do: I set aside the remaining cards in my Deck, shuffle my Discard pile to create a fresh Deck, and then I can carry out the action with the set aside cards plus however many more cards I need from my newly shuffled Deck.

If there aren’t enough cards left, I do what I can with however many I have. If my deck is empty, I don’t shuffle my discard pile until I actually need to do something with my deck and can’t.

In response to a single event, I can reveal multiple reaction cards. Each reaction card is revealed and resolved before revealing another one.

The second reaction card can be one that I didn’t have in hand when I played the first reaction card. For example, I could reveal Secret Chamber (from Intrigue) in response to an attack card and draw a Beggar. After I completely resolve the Secret Chamber, I can then reveal the Beggar in response to the same attack card.

Sometimes, a special thing happens where a change wants to move a card, but the change gets confused and doesn’t know where the card is supposed to be. This confusion is called “losing track.” When a change loses track of a card, the card doesn’t move like it’s supposed to, but other things can still happen.

Let me walk you through an example. Say you have a card called Procession and another card called Madman. When you play Procession, you first put Madman into play. Then, you resolve Madman and get +2 Actions along with drawing some cards. You return Madman to the Madman pile. Here’s where it gets interesting. Procession tries to put Madman into play again, but it fails because Madman is in the Madman pile, not in play. However, you still get to resolve Madman again, but this time you only get +2 Actions because it says “if you do” before the card-drawing, and you didn’t actually return Madman to the Madman pile this time. Finally, Procession tries to trash Madman, but it fails once again because Procession expects Madman to be in play, but it’s not there. To cap it off, you gain an Action card costing the same as Madman, if possible.

So here’s the thing: cards don’t forget about other cards they move themselves. But if a card gets moved by another card, then it’s a different story. Let me explain.

Let’s say we have a card called Procession. Now, if Procession puts a card called Madman into play, it doesn’t forget about Madman. But, and this is important, if Madman moves itself, that’s when Procession loses track of it. It’s like when you play hide and seek and you move, and the seeker loses track of you because you moved yourself. Procession works the same way with Madman.

Now, there are a few ways a card can lose track of another card. One way is if something else moves the card. Another way is if the card is on top of a deck and gets covered up. And finally, if the card is the top card of a discard pile and gets covered up, it also gets lost.

Now, here’s something else to keep in mind. When you gain a card and it goes to a place that’s not a discard pile, it doesn’t “visit” the discard pile. Nope, it goes directly to where it was gained. For example, let’s say you have a card called Armory. Armory gains cards and sends them straight to the top of a deck, skipping the whole visiting the discard pile thing. It’s like a shortcut!