Game Daze Chandler Fashion Center Employee Recommendation, September 2011

Tylor -

Domaine is a resource-building strategy game where you try to have the most points inside your “domains”. The way that works is you have starting castles and starting knights which you place around the board. You then try to build walls around certain mines to collect resources to fund your building of walls and knights. The more areas within your walls the more points you have. The amount of points needed to end the game is determined by the number of players so the more people you have the more difficult but fun it will be! So who among your friends is the better ruler, the person who will provide the required needs to grow and win the game?

Game Daze Park Place Mall Employee Recommendation, May 2011

Janae -

Domaine is a strategy game with the object of reaching a set number of points before the other players. Players collect points by enclosing land within borders. To begin, players take turns placing their castles accompanied by one knight onto the board. Then the game begins. On a players turn they can begin by selling a card to the Chancery for ducats if they desire to. Players then discard a card to either place borders, place knights (which will help protect their domaines), expand existing domaines, enter an alliance with an opponent’s domaine (which prevents either domaine from expanding into each other), or removed an opponent’s knight and gain one of their own. Once an area is completely surrounded by borders, the players collect the points and move their crest token forward on the score tracker. In the domaine, forests count as one point, villages as 3, and the city as 5. Mines will gain the player money at the beginning of each turn, and if players control a total of 3 mines of the same type, players gain an additional 5 points. The first player to reach the set goal of points wins.

Domaine is great strategy game. The race to get so many points first is made even more exciting by the constant change of who controls what. For as soon as a player expands into another’s domaine, the invader gains points, and the target loses points. Especially near the end of the game, this starts to happen every turn, and players begin to scramble to get as many points as possible, making it very exciting.

Game play is also simple enough that younger children can play. Reading is not a required ability for game play, so children as young as 7 or 8 could play the game easily. This makes Domaine great as a family game, that will challenge both kids and adults without being too difficult to play.