I tried a Dominion setup for Independence Day, only to find that the most obviously patriotic card was both basically useless and never got played. To remedy this, I decided to build a new Dominion Kingdom of cards that would pair well with the Flag Bearer card. It’s not very patriotic, but it’s very fun! Here’s the result!

Rating: Good as is. (at least the Dark Ages version is)

The Setup:

Dark Ages Version

Base Cards: Your choice! (though I personally prefer playing with Platinums and Colonies)

Game Cards: Flag bearer, Lurker, Priest, Steward, Swindler, Diplomat, Page, Sentry, Fortress, Rogue

Project: Capitalism, Fair

Non Dark Ages Version: 

Base Cards: Your choice! (though I personally prefer playing with Platinums and Colonies)

Game Cards: Flag bearer, Lurker, Priest, Steward, Swindler, Festival, Diplomat, Giant, Page, Sentry

Project: Capitalism

The Rationale:

The Flag Bearer is most useful in helping you get the Flag artifact which you get by gaining or trashing a Flag Bearer. So, I designed this game around trashing cards from your deck and other people’s decks, as well as allowing you to gain cards from the trash, and other cards that allow you to react to all the attacks going on. Since the theme is Capture the Flag, there are a lot more warfare-related cards and the rest could be considered warfare-adjacent.

Expansions Used:

Original Game (Sentry, optional Festival)

Renaissance Expansion (Flag Bearer, Priest, Capitalism, optional Fair)

Intrigue Expansion (Diplomat, Lurker, Steward, Swindler)

Adventures Expansion (Page, optional Giant)

(Optional) Dark Ages Expansion (Fortress, Rogue)

How it Played Out:

Spoiler Free:

This game was pretty wild. The flag changed hands a lot, and having it was very helpful. A variety of strategies was used, and there were lots of fun combos to play. All the cards had fun potential to make great plays. Led to a very exciting end!

With Spoilers:

Trashing cards early was very helpful, and the steward/Sentry were especially good at that.

Capitalism was extremely powerful, though the power of lurkers, sentries, and diplomats still made it useful to go for action cards.

Swindler got used a lot, which is good for diplomats, and makes it useful to get gold/platinum/other cards where there’s only 1 card of that value.

Using lurker to trash a fortress straight into your hand to play it immediately was a beautiful combination, and only more so because if the swindler trashed your Fortress, you’d both get that fortress into your hand and the swindler player would have to give you another card costing 4.

Using Priest to trash followed by other trash cards like steward (an easier combo to do since capitalism meant that you could play both after you’d run out of actions) and fortress could give you something to trash endlessly if you ran out of cards that you actually wanted to trash in your hand.

The rogue was a lot better than I’d realized initially, since it both gave money (and so capitalism meant it was always playable) and allowed you to pick up golds and any good action cards from the trash that your lurkers hadn’t had time to grab yet.

Trashing the flagbearer proved useful (whether with lurker or other trash cards), though gaining flagbearers to potentially trash later seems prudent, as Capitalism essentially turns it into a silver, and those in the trash pile got picked up fairly quickly. Ironically, when the swindler trashed the flag bearer, the person who lost the flag bearer ended up with the flag, so that was another way that the swindler could accidentally be helpful/throw the game into chaos.

Strategic revealing of diplomats was important, since enough attack cards got played (swindler, rogue, and warrior (a page upgrade)) that you often ended up with the choice. Some hands were good enough it wasn’t worth revealing the diplomat, whereas with others revealing it could make your next turn infinitely better.

None of the cards were useless, although I did wait a little on the page, with the result that I only got to play my champion on either my last or second-to-last turn. Pity. My only true complaint is that getting and keeping control of the flag did not end up being nearly as crucial as I’d originally hoped.

If you like Fantasy, Superheroes, Humor, or Science Fiction, you might like to read some of my free short stories here.

If you need help with Math, Physics, or ACT/SAT Test Prep, you might want to check out my tutoring business.