Dominion Strategy Forum

Dominion => Variants and Fan Cards => Topic started by: sitnaltax on June 23, 2020, 01:05:27 am

Title: Geminion: A Kids' Variant Dominion (print n' play included)
Post by: sitnaltax on June 23, 2020, 01:05:27 am

I've created Geminion: a variant of Dominion to play with my 5-year-old. She seems to like it (enough to request it) so I thought I'd share with the Dominion fans here. My estimate of kid-appropriate ages is from about 5 (should be at least OK at adding small numbers; the game helps with that skill) to maybe 8, or whatever point the math + reading + dexterity skills are good enough to play real Dominion.

There's a real game in here adults can think about, although it's not tremendously deep and you'll probably go through the 4 or so reasonable strategies pretty quickly and decide which one you like.

The instructions and downloadable/printable PDF are here: https://github.com/sitnaltax/kids-dominion

If you have suggestions, or interesting experiences, let me know.

Title: Re: Geminion: A Kids' Variant Dominion (print n' play included)
Post by: sitnaltax on June 28, 2020, 03:01:11 pm

On the off chance that anyone has printed and played, here are some balance and user-friendliness changes I'm considering, and would be curious to hear feedback:

• Wish is weak. It needs to either draw 4 or give gems (3?) when you play it.
• Helper might be weak, although you can use it to spike a Gem Hoard (Province-analogue) on your second pass through the deck, which is strong.
• I'm increasing the cost of Penny and Gem Cache to 1 or 2. This will make it harder to "accidentally" buy them if someone else uses Cleaner to recycle them.
• In general, buying coins feels unrewarding because the last pass through your deck, they're worthless. One way to mitigate this would be to allow you to spend coins to get VP (either cards, tokens, or items worth Gems that don't deplete the supply). I'm mostly concerned that this would increase the complexity too much.

One thing I've noticed is that the strategy of buying a Gem Mine at every opportunity is quite strong, something like a Workshop/Gardens rush. (The no-shuffle rule makes it stronger than it would otherwise be because you can keep hitting 4 and concentrate all the gem cards into hands that don't buy anything.) I don't intend to nerf this because this is an appealing and easy way for kids to succeed.