Well, Thanksgiving is coming next week, and that makes me nostalgic both for the delicious food and for the really fun Thanksgiving-themed dominion kingdom I created last year which was extremely fun. It had a lot of options for ways to succeed and several fun card combinations that worked well together.
Rating:
We’ve played it, and It’s Good!
Dominion Kingdom:
The Full Buffet
Base Cards: Your choice! (though I prefer playing with Platinums and Colonies)
Game Cards: Cellar, Festival, Diplomat, Mill, Farming Village, Harvest, Horn of Plenty, Baker, Butcher, Guide, Storyteller
Events: Pilgrimage and Alms
Simpler Option for Newer Players
Base Cards: Your choice! (though I prefer playing with Platinums and Colonies)
Game Cards: Cellar, Festival, Throne Room, Diplomat, Mill, Farming Village, Harvest, Horn of Plenty, Baker, Butcher
The Rationale:
Thanksgiving is a celebration of gratitude, especially gratitude for food, plenty, and good harvests. It is also a celebration of being kind to and welcoming of others, something we need more of nowadays. Its most iconic symbols are the Cornucopia, Turkey, Pies, and Pilgrims/Native Americans.
The Horn of Plenty card is literally a Cornucopia, so that had to be in this Dominion kingdom. The harvesting theme is why I chose Harvest and Farming Village. Thanksgiving tends to be a party about food, which is why I chose Cellar, Festival, Mill, Butcher, and Baker. The story of the First Thanksgiving is bound up in its lore, so Storyteller seemed appropriate. Since that story revolves around a Pilgrimage followed by the Pilgrims getting help (Alms) from the Native Americans (their Guide/Diplomat) as a grand gesture of kindness for which gratitude was owed, I figured I’d include the relevant cards.
Yes, the Buffet option has 11 Dominion kingdom cards. I figured that it would be fitting for a Thanksgiving-themed Dominion card combination to be a bit bigger. I certainly feel bigger after each Thanksgiving. The Throne Room doesn’t really fit (except perhaps as the incentive for the Pilgrims to come to America in the first place?), but it helps meet the needs for the game after taking out the Adventures cards/events.
Expansions Used:
Original Game (Cellar, Festival, and Throne Room if using the simpler option)
Intrigue Expansion (Diplomat, Mill)
Cornucopia Expansion (Farming Village, Harvest, Horn of Plenty)
Guilds Expansion (Baker, Butcher)
Adventures Expansion (Guide, Storyteller, Pilgrimage and Alms Events. This expansion is not used in the simpler option.)
How it Played Out:
Spoiler Free:
This Dominion kingdom is a buffet of fun options. Lots of good 4- and 5-cost cards provide plenty of options strategically. Also a variety of options for getting money, actions, extra cards, or the equivalent of extra buys. The events could be very fun, enabling bigger buys sooner. There are also a variety of options for getting rid of useless cards like estates and coppers, so they don’t have to be as annoying. Lots of potential for epic turns.
Spoilers:
Alms + the baker’s coffer is the perfect early-game hack to get either a 4-cost and a 5-cost card guaranteed or possibly a 4-cost and a 6-cost card on your first two turns. An extra fun hack is that alms ignores money you get from actions, so with your festival’s extra buy, you can spend all your coffers/action money on one great card while using alms to get a second 4-cost card as long as you don’t play any treasures.
Using cards like mill, cellar, and festival could make it easy to trigger the extra-action ability of diplomat. Butcher and Harvest could also help in this regard once you have the extra actions to use them, though Mill was the true MVP. Lots of potential for epic turns that way.
Storyteller has the potential to draw half your deck if you can pair it with the extra money from festivals, harvests, mills, and any treasurer cards you want to add to the pot. The danger with storyteller is always to balance getting more cards with not spending all of your money to draw cards that don’t give you money. Pairs well with a cellar to replace some of the useless cards you might draw.
Honestly not sure if anyone ever used the pilgrimage event, but you can if you want to.