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[Roadrunner7671]

When did you start playing Dominion? Any horror stories (village idiot, Thief is a good card, etc)? What order did you buy/play with the expansions? Did you at first not like Dominion?

So many questions!

[Seprix]

I've never played Dominiom before. I have no horrir stories either.

[Roadrunner7671]

I've never played Dominiom before. I have no horrir stories either.

Fixed 

[A Drowned Kernel]

My junior year of college, so either 2009 or 2010. It was pretty much an instant hit in my gaming group. I remember my first or second game had adventurer and I was the only one who bought it and I won so I came to the conclusion that it was super good. I also remember when alchemy came out and my friend was like "man, does Dominion need another expansion?"

[LibraryAdventurer]

IIRC, it was summer of 2012, someone introduced me to the game. They only had Intrigue and said ~'you can play the game with the Base set or Intrigue, but Intrigue is more interesting'. So I got Intrigue first. Now I have about eight expansions including Adventures, and I still don't have the physical base set.

It was about a year later before I found Dominion online and fds (soon after Isotropic shut down).

[J Reggie]

The first time I played Dominion was at a Quaker gathering (I'm a Quaker) in July 2014. People had been playing it throughout the week, and someone had left it in the blanket fort. My friend who had just played her first game decided to teach two of us how to play. We dealt out 10 randomizer cards, which included some of the basic treasures so we were confused. After we had gotten a few turns in, the owner of the game came in and told us we were doing it wrong; for one thing we had shuffled the randomizers in with the rest of the cards. We then played one of the suggested games. I bought a few Gardens, thinking this is such a good card, it makes use of all the cards I buy in the end! They were worth like 2 points and I lost.
A few days later, some guy had Prosperity and we played a 6 player game with Goons and King's Court, except with the house rule that you couldn't King's Court a King's Court. I'm not sure why, but it was after that game that I knew I had to get Dominion.
So the next semester I ordered the big box on Amazon. I didn't play all that much during the year, but it was about a year before I won my first game. I found the strategy wiki and started reading that more and more.
And then the next year, at the 2015 big Quaker gathering, I brought Dominion with me. And played it several times every day. And won a lot. The person who had first introduced me to Dominion was now really into Ascension. I played it twice and won both times (the first time by a lot and the second time by one point) but it just wasn't the same. And throughout the rest of the summer I just couldn't stop reading articles on the wiki and playing online.
For my birthday in August, all I asked for was Amazon gift cards. I bought all of the expansions and got them the first day of that semester. And I got the rest of the promos over the next few months.
Since then, I've had a pretty steady group of people who play IRL every week, and that group was a large part of how I got to know my girlfriend. Also I decided to start posting on the forums, and I found all of you awesome people. Now that I'm leaving college, I've been worried that I'll lose most of my friends and my community. But then I realized I'm part of this community, and I'll stay part of this community no matter where I live. So thanks guys!

Wow, that post was a lot more than "when did I start playing Dominion?". It may sound cheesy, but Dominion had really done a lot for me since I started playing less than 2 years ago.

[Roadrunner7671]

So your Quaker meeting plays Dominion and builds blanket forts. Wow.

[schadd]

i am really convinced that the whole thing where people think the game is bad early on because of smithy and gold is sort of over-represented. the treasure cards have so much less text than the grey ones, why would i bother with those? it was immediately clear that there are a lot of different ways to do things and the primitive engine as well as card interactions are just naturally compelling to understand. as well, information from the interwebs about strategy flowed in slowly and allowed us to realized that we had the privilege of making assumptions that were super wrong and it was controversial that chapel was good but then things started to make sense.

hinterlands was the first expansion we got. we had a concept of 'doublejack' before 'big money'

[Seprix]

i am really convinced that the whole thing where people think the game is bad early on because of smithy and gold is sort of over-represented.

I know one man who thinks this, who is absolutely convinced the best way to win all the time is something-Big Money, every time. He has dismissed this game as boring, and when I thwacked him with an engine, he told me that I set up the kingdom in a particular way so that I'd win automatically. I'm going to have him set up the kingdom next time so he can't possibly whine about it.

I also played a 3 player Adventures game on the same day with this guy and some other guy who has never played Dominion before, and of course, I got last place. Hireling must be pretty good, I guess.

[J Reggie]

So your Quaker meeting plays Dominion and builds blanket forts. Wow.

That's pretty much young-adult Quakers for you. I'd like to try silent IRL Dominion sometime, but it'd have to be with people who really know the game.

[Roadrunner7671]

So your Quaker meeting plays Dominion and builds blanket forts. Wow.

That's pretty much young-adult Quakers for you. I'd like to try silent IRL Dominion sometime, but it'd have to be with people who really know the game.

I used to go to Quaker meetings quite often, but you have to wake up really early for that. It's a great way to meet seniors though (or at least my Quaker meeting is).

[Elanchana]

My first game of Dominion ever involved thinking that revealing Moat removed it from your hand.

My second game involved Chancellor being crucial to my victory.

My third game involved getting destroyed by Thief.

My fourth game involved Goons and Elestan.


Edit: Oh, and I first started playing seriously in the summer of 2014. So ALMOST two years.

[Seprix]

I begun my Dominion journey two years ago, when I lived in Virginia. I was in high school, after class, on some Wednesday board game thing hosted by the programming teacher. He was a great guy, and he had a lot of fun games, but the one I remembered the most was Dominion. (The other game that was super fun was called Shadow Hunters, that game was awesome. Spear of Longinus, bro!)

I think I just bought money the whole time, with a couple of action cards. I wasn't really intrigued by the game, because it was 6 player, and so it was super slow and boring to me. I heard that my teacher was super good at the game, so I decided to study up on the game, so I could get really good, just in case. I ended up finding this forum, though I didn't really join it then. I also saw the card Jester, and somehow got the idea in my head that it was the best card in the game, don't know why.

So I found out Dominion was online, and I started playing. It suddenly got very fun, because it was a lot quicker. To this day, I hate 4 player games and I can only tolerate 3 player games. It's just way too long, I hate waiting. And I've never to this day won a larger than 2 player Dominion game. So yeah.

[Beyond Awesome]

I played in 2011, I think. I started with base. I was a horrible player. I bought coppers for crying out loud. Then again that's what the person who taught me did. He also saw no point for Chapel. I must admit, I was also confused by it.

A few months later, my mom got Intrigue and I thought it was awesome. Then, I started playing on iso. Hinterlands was out at that time. I was still a very bad player. My level was in the negative, then someone told me about this forum, and I got better.

[GendoIkari]

I learned when it was new enough that Intrigue didn't exist yet. A few things I remember:

- When Village and Smithy were both present; that was the obvious first and second buy. And you felt so happy/lucky when you got them both in the same hand on your first shuffle. Didn't occur to me that the results of that were exactly the same as buying Smithy and nothing.

- Spy was super popular; they would always all get bought.

- If you had 2 Throne Rooms and another action in hand, you laid down all 3 cards and played that other action 4 times.

- We sometimes played with all 25 Kingdom piles available. Also once played that way with 6 players.

[JThorne]

I've been playing less than a year. I'm a former MtG addict. It's been 642 days since my last game of Magic (sold my 20-year-old collection. cold turkey.) I tried Dominion while teaching a strategy games elective at a local high school and was immediately hooked. I had a brief "oh, no" moment, but realized that it was, in fact, possible to own the whole thing for a relatively modest investment, including custom storage solution and sleeves, and that it would not consume so much head space. Plus, it's a great family/friends game since there's no mechanism for picking on particular opponents.

I went and read the whole wiki early on and started practicing the principles. I always coach new players, and even not-so-new players who insist on doing, um, shall we say, sub-optimal things. Is it wrong to scold players who open Steward and then use it as coin on Steward/Estate/3xCopper hands so they can get that $5 they really want (and then complain later that they only draw the Steward with cards they don't want to trash?)

Great game. There's always something new to learn to improve your play, but without being overwhelming.

[jsh357]

I started playing in August or September of 2011, right after Cornucopia was released. My friend invited me to play the game on isotropic, and I obliged because I had just recently discovered board games better than stuff I grew up with like Monopoly, Sorry, etc and was enjoying the new experiences. My first game was with 4 players and had Scrying Pool, which seemed really cool to me at the time even though I had no idea what I was doing with it. The fact that I was able to accept all the expansion cards right away is the reason I don't really get why people try to simplify the game so much for new players; to me what made Dominion compelling was that the cards were always new and exciting. I got great strategy tips from those people like 'always buy anything with +card/+action' and 'attacks don't really matter much in this game.' Anyway, my group of online friends all started trying the game out, and we must have played several hundred times together, just learning all the cards. My prior CCG knowledge helped me adapt to certain aspects of the game, like trashing, fairly quickly.

When Hinterlands came around, we had a great time experimenting with the new stuff. It was around then that I had found strategy articles and started reading up, annoying my friends who didn't really care about getting better on the same level. Around when Dark Ages came out and isotropic didn't get it, my group basically stopped playing, and once Goko showed up and iso was shut down, my friends tried it once and never played with me again. So as much as people are probably tired of hearing isotropic pining, for me there was a legitimate loss there so I'm sympathetic to those who miss it.

Several months before Dark Ages came out, I bought all the physical sets and showed my wife how to play the game. She got really in to it for a while. (and still beats me regularly when we play, which is a rare occurrence) Once the buzz kind of died down for her, I was pretty much just stuck with the online community aside from once in a blue moon when visiting the one or two friends I have that play board games. It hasn't been all bad, I've had fun, and playtesting was a cool experience, but sometimes I'm nostalgic for those earlier days.

[markusin]

Introduced to the game through my sister, who learned it through a friend. Loved it. Started looking up all the cards that currently existed at the time on dominionstrategy.com during a CAD software tutorial. This was soon after Hinterlands game out.

Learned a lot about the game through this forum and Isotropic. Still play it occasionally IRL.

I was the guy trying out Chancellor, Gardens, and Thief. That accursed Thief was so useless! I never bought Moneylender because I though trashing Coppers was a bad thing in the long run. The fact that's it's a terminal Silver was lost on me. My sister would often go money-heavy, and her boyfriend at the time was the village idiot, except it wasn't so idiodic when he would load up on Laboratory and leave me frustrated.

[2.71828.....]

I was introduced to Dominion by my sister and her husband back in....oh....a long time ago.  Maybe 2009?  Before they had any kids (now they have 3).  Sounds about right because they only had Intrigue and it came out in 2009.  Anyway, I don't remember much about those games except they were 3-4 player games and everyone was kind of learning at the same time.

Then there was this big break in my Dominion career before a friend of mine at school introduced me to isotropic Dominion as well as the Homage to the Best Card thread.  Unhappily, my introduction to Isotropic was timed just right...you know, spring 2013. Anyway, enough time to play enough Dominion to get me hooked.  I remember my first game when I actually beat a great player.  It was against lespeutere, and I saved the log.  Looking at it now, I was still a total noob, but progression happened over time and many thousand games for me.  I probably would never have gotten involved with f.ds had it not been for Kirian's GokoDom tournament.  I enjoy tournaments and such a lot, and GokoDom II: Suntastic Summerish Season was just what I needed to push me into the fray.  My performance left something to be desired, but it got me in the door.  Posting my games (like my first post on the forums), talking about them...that was primarily all I did on the forum.  Until that fateful day....when I played Toy Story Mafia.  What a great game.  And so I became more and more involved on the forum.  Kept playing more and more Dominion.  And here I am.  Still playing Dominion.  Still getting better (hopefully). 

[werothegreat]

Most of the long-time forumers seem to be saying they got into Dominion in 2011, and that's more or less the case for me; the summer of 2011 is when I really got interested in playing Dominion.  But I was introduced to the game in December of 2010: my sister had bought it as a gift "for the family" for Christmas, and the four of us (me, sister, parents) played a couple games, and it seemed pretty neat.  My sister quite liked it, and had played with a couple of the expansions, but for me it was more of a "well, that was fun" sort of thing.

For whatever reason, in the summer of 2011 I was intrigued (ha) by the game again.  I scrounged out the box from under the family room coffee table and just kind of read through the rules some more, picking through the cards, and eventually convinced some of my friends from high school to play with me.  I think there were five of us all playing base set games, having a blast, cheering on the guy who bought all the Villages (not me).  By that point, I had pretty much decided that the "family" copy was now "my" copy, and I brought it back to college with me.

At college, I showed it to other people, some more interested than others.  One group of people had played with it before, and I was encouraged to pick up expansions, which I did - Intrigue, then Prosperity, then Alchemy.  I remember first opening up Alchemy and getting my ass kicked by the guy who picked up University (I only really saw the +2 Actions on it) and basically gained the entire Laboratory pile.  Then there were the all-Prosperity games with Mountebank, Peddler, Rabble, King's Court, Worker's Village, City, Watchtower and Grand Market all shoved in together with the Colonies and Platina.  It was at this point that I was realizing that there was more to most of these cards than what a cursory glance was telling me.  There were more interesting interactions.

Eventually I found isotropic, and then these forums.  I remember getting all excited for Hinterlands coming out, and all amped up by the previews.  I got Seaside for Christmas that year, and ended up getting Hinterlands and Cornucopia eventually as well, coming back to the spring semester at college with every expansion.  I remember trying to figure out where I'd put all the boxes.

Once Dark Ages came out, I had moved to a different state, and didn't really have anyone in person to play with anymore, but I still got the set anyway.  I loved the game, and I loved the community of players I had found.

[SirSlugma]

Back in September-or-so of 2011, I played a game with some base set cards, and like an average person, bought some of everything and got crushed by a now-hilarious deck that consisted of like a few Adventurers and a Chapeled-down deck that had some Golds for the Adventurers to find.  Somehow this bought like 4 provinces pretty fast and won.  The next game we mixed in some Intrigue cards in a 6-player (!) game that ended in everyone destroying everyone's deck with all the Saboteurs.  I think I bought some Nobles but they all got trashed.

Despite this disaster, I actually loved the game and ended up playing a bunch on Isotropic (!!) shortly after.  But when my friend finally caved and bought Seaside and we spent an entire day playing Base/Seaside kingdoms using all the cards we had at that point, I knew this game was on a whole other level from anything I'd played before.

[dedicateddan]

I started playing in 2011 with Ross Merriam and Mat Marr after scrubbing out of Pro Tour Philadelphia

Mat, having played the game before, went for a Smithy-BM variant, while everyone else stacked Workshops. Workshop gains a card costing up to $4, so it must be better than Gold, right? Eventually we realized you need to hit $8 to buy a Province, although the Workshop players were having more fun, so we kept buying Workshops anyways

When I moved to California, my friend Dustin (from Minnesota) re-introduced me to the game and I started playing online. I started playing competitively in 2014 after Silverspawn introduced me to isotropish and f.ds

[Aleimon Thimble]

I first played Dominion around 2010 or 2011. A friend of mine owned Intrigue and we started playing. I can't remember most of the 'strategies' I used, but I do remember one game where I bought a huge number of Nobles because I thought using one for +2 Actions and the next for +3 Cards was really good. I guess it was a basic engine, although the specifics of it could have been better.

Although I immediately liked the game and wanted to play it whenever I was at his place, I didn't become hooked instantly. After some time we started to hang out not as often anymore, and I didn't play Dominion for quite some time. Then in late 2014, I joined a local board game club and rediscovered Dominion, playing the Base game and later Prosperity and Dark Ages for the first time. I got crushed by the more experienced players who did cool engine-like stuff, though, so that's when I started looking up strategy advice online. And behold, in early 2015 I stumbled upon the Dominion Strategy wiki. I've been addicted since.

[drsteelhammer]

I was introduced by two friends by the end of 2013/beginning of 2014. I usually heavily dislike deckbuilders so, I  declined playing for quite a while, thank goodness they were persistent since Dominion has none of the issues I have with deckbuilders. Unfortunately, my friends are the kind of people who don't like reading manuals nor have they the patience for me to read the manual properly. That resulted in some horrible variations of the game:

-We never shuffled, we just put the cards we used on a turn on the bottom.

-We shuffled after every turn

Luckily, it still got me interested, and we got the rules correctly after a few more awkward experiences. After a few months I was hyped enough to read some strategy advice (the Chapel revolution began). Eventually, I bought another expansion for the group, but I never got to play with anyone else since I didn't have any base cards which meant that I played only a few times a month. I was still pretty horrible, buying pretty much random stuff everytime altough some things that you might call engines came around.

After one of my friends moved away I discovered online Dominion in February 2015 so we could still play. We all paid 13€ to get all the expansions online, luckily on my account
I got immediately hooked to the game, first playing through the campaigns after getting stomped online (kinda hard to play if you have to read 5 new cards each time). I also had a good time watching Qvist's videos, trying to figure out what each of the cards did and why some strategies work and stuff. Then I thought how cool would it be if some people actually livestreamed the game. So I caught one of our Dutch overlords playing against Japan in the world championship, where all the cool people in the chat directed me to the League, which made me stay here.

[Awaclus]

When I started playing Dominion, I was taught by my sister who didn't bother putting the Curses in the supply because Witch wasn't in that game.

A few games later, I was playing my first ever Witch kingdom against just my mom, so I thought that this is when we need the Curses in the Supply. And so I put them in the Supply. All of them.

[Accatitippi]

Funnily, I discovered Isotropic before playing the board game. It was late 2010 or early 2011. I introduced the game to a friend, we played a good deal online (from the same room), got awfully overwhelmed by the number of cards. Then he bought Intrigue, Prosperity, and Cornucopia and we played a lot of f2f dominion, which has always felt very slow to me. #isotropicwasbetter.
I bought Base and Alchemy (planning to buy Seaside) to complete our shared collection, then I moved away and I'm stuck playing games with 5+ Potion cost cards.

I remember one of our first games. I had a rudimental concept of "thinning is whinning", and Upgrade doesn't really thin you, I thought ("0+1" is hard maths). So I went Trade route. He had a concept of "attacking is winning", so he hit me hard with Spy-Swindler superCombo. He won by a wide margin.

He doesn't play much any more, but we still speak fondly of our Sab games.
We discovered Engines looking for the most efficient way of playing a bunch of Saboteurs.

[Eran of Arcadia]

My wife and I sometimes played games with couples we knew from church. In October 2012 one couple invited us over to "play Dominion" - they kept describing it as though we should know exactly what it is. But we went, and played a couple of 5p games. I recall that Village, Harem, Noble Brigand, Trader, Ill-Gotten Gains, and Jack of All Trades were there, and I wanted to load up on Traders to deal with IGG.

At the end of it, they were discussing the various expansions and mentioned that there were several they didn't have. My wife and I basically agreed to get Seaside so that we could bring that one. So for Christmas she got me Seaside plus the Base Cards set so that we could play against each other. For some reason or over we never played with those friends again, and a few months later we moved halfway across the country.

But since then I've been buying expansions and playing. My wife and I play, we play with her parents when they're in town, we've played with a few other couples, and I've just joined a "game group" of people from church who want to get around to Dominion one of these days. Last Christmas I got Intrigue, meaning that for the first time ever I've had all released sets; I've turned to buying Legos to fill the void and I think I'll ask for Empires for Father's Day.

[tufftaeh]

I started playing Dominion in 2008, at the big games fair "Spieltage" in Essen, Germany. My friends made me play a few other games over the three days as well, but I kept on coming back to Hans im Glück to play more Dominion. I've bought each expansion as soon as it was available, but as the first Dominion expansions took their time to be released, I liked Race for the Galaxy more for quite some time until eventually the complexity of all-random Dominion won. Now I'm known at some German gamers meetings as the person who plays only Dominion - and maybe some Roll or Race for the Galaxy... Somehow, I've played only a few games on Isotropic, but several hundreds in the inofficial German browser game. When Goko was finally becoming usable, I bought the full package just before the conversion to MF (lucky me). Now I'm looking forward to the upcoming Oranje client (well, and maybe Adventures still on MF). By the way, Bridge is still the best game in the world, but it's even more exhausting than Dominion and you need a partner to play.

[A Ladder]

3 years ago?
My brother in law is really into board games (he always has a new one every time I see him) and had his friends over with Intrigue one night.
My first games were 6 player and I thought it was fantastic. It played so fast! (Compared to other card games with friends where turns took 20 min each). I don't remember my first game, but the second game I got a double province turn using tribute as the main way to get money...and I was hooked!

I found the forums just after Iso went down (which was sad).

[werothegreat]

I started playing in 2011 with Ross Merriam and Mat Marr after scrubbing out of Pro Tour Philadelphia

This is the most bizarre thing - I went to high school with Ross Merriam.  At first I thought this guy just happened to have the same name, but nope, that's the guy from my hometown.  I'm Facebook friends with his sister.

[Witherweaver]

I was an orphan. I grew up in Pennsylvania in a whorehouse. I read about Donald X and his game on BoardGameGeek or some other site from one of the girls' phones. And I read that some kids had a different life. I could picture it. I dreamt of it. Of being being part of a group, of playing board games, of being wanted. Because the woman who was forced to raise me would look at me every day like she hoped I would disappear. Closest I got to feeling wanted was from a girl who made me go through her John's pockets while they screwed. If I collected enough money, she'd take me to the local board game shop, where they had a copy of Dominion you could play. And I would play with other kids with great ceremony, feeling like a normal kid. It said "game" on the package. It was the only fun thing in my life.

[XerxesPraelor]

Introduced to the game through my sister, who learned it through a friend. Loved it. Started looking up all the cards that currently existed at the time on dominionstrategy.com during a CAD software tutorial. This was soon after Hinterlands game out.

Me too (besides the CAD thing) I found this forum when trying to learn all the cards so that the fan cards I made up wouldn't overlap with any real ones, and to add some diversity into the play experience.

[XerxesPraelor]

When I started playing Dominion, I was taught by my sister who didn't bother putting the Curses in the supply because Witch wasn't in that game.

A few games later, I was playing my first ever Witch kingdom against just my mom, so I thought that this is when we need the Curses in the Supply. And so I put them in the Supply. All of them.

I had a game recently where I forgot to lower the number of curses, and then proceeded to completely flood my sister with curses. From then on, we never forgot again.

[jaybeez]

I first played Dominion at a game night in I think November 2011.  We played Base only, with way too many people (seven, I think) but it didn't matter, I loved the game immediately.  When we finished the second game of Dominion and decided to move on to another game, I said "I'm buying this one.  And soon."  The host of the game night said something to the effect of, "Yeah, you're going to be one of those people that analyzes all the game statistics and stuff and knows every combo and we'll never beat you again."  I said, "Oh no, I'm not going to do that."

I bought the Base set that Christmas, and Intrigue maybe a month later.  Then I started playing on Isotropic and registered for this forum in early 2012.  And here I am.  My friend was right after all, although it's not true that my play group can't beat me now, we usually play 4P and I win <50% of the time.

[Jeebus]

A friend introduced me to the base game when it was somewhat new. After playing one game, I didn't really care for it, since I completely failed to understand why certain cards would be better than others. They all seemed good, and in that game I couldn't see that it made any difference which ones you bought. 

Some time later, at a con, I stepped in for a player who had to leave. It was a Seaside game, and it was kind of fun. I played a few times after that, and started to get it. Still not a game I felt like buying.

Then, at Spill-o-rama in Stavanger, Norway when Prosperity was new, Jay was the guest of honor. He introduced Prosperity, and I got to play a couple of games with him and two other people. First he destroyed us with some sort of Counting House/Bank combo, and I thought those two cards were the key combo of the set. The next game (without those two cards) I won, but I don't remember the kingdom. In any case, I was hooked, and proceeded to buy all the sets.

[Kirian]

My first game of Dominion ever involved thinking that revealing Moat removed it from your hand.

My second game involved Chancellor being crucial to my victory.

My third game involved getting destroyed by Thief.

My fourth game involved Goons and Elestan.


Edit: Oh, and I first started playing seriously in the summer of 2014. So ALMOST two years.

Given that I know Elestan IRL, now I wonder if I know you IRL...

[Ratsia]

I was first about to write "I think I tried Dominion rather soon after it was released", but then decided to check the logs in BGG. That changed the answer to "right after it was released".

My first game of Dominion was on October 23rd, 2008. Essen 2008 ended the same day and I wasn't there, so I had to be playing a copy that had arrived to Finland earlier the same day when one of the local hardcore gamers returned from their annual Essen trip. That must have been one of the first games of the published version on Finnish soil.

During November I ended up playing Dominion during four different dates, so it was clearly an instant hit.

[AJD]

Someone brought it to a Fourth of July party in 2010, and I enjoyed it then, so my then-girlfriend got me base and Alchemy for my birthday later that year. Then she bought herself Seaside and Prosperity in January, and we broke up shortly thereafter, but continued playing Dominion frequently, and about then was also when she told me about Isotropic.

[singletee]

I first played with some friends in college in 2008. Base only because that was all there was. We all thought Bureaucrat was way overpowered. Silver for free, immediately topdeck it, and an attack? Unfair. I only played a few games then. Fast-forward to 2011 and I played once more with a local gaming group; thence I discovered isotropic. Isotropic was the bomb. You could see your entire hand at once and stuff and it was so fast. I found this forum in late 2012 (via the dominionstrategy blog) but never posted until mid-2015.

[Sciserr]

One particularily slow hospital evening at work, a patient taught me a game card game described by her as "easy to learn,hard to master". 2 months later I have purchased every single expansion from base to adventures,  more or less completely ditched Hearthstone and started participating in the Dominion league online. Life is good when you shuffle the right cards

[Moneymodel]

Let's see, I was introduced to the game in Nov/Dec 2011 by my gaming group in college. I thought it was fun, but whatever. A full year later I played it again, and that time got hooked. I got the base set for Christmas, and while I studied abroad that following semester, I made an account on Goko and bought all the expansions.

So short answer, I slowly built up to playing it regularly from the end of 2011 to spring 2013.

[trivialknot]

I forget, maybe 2009?  Me and my brothers got both Base and Intrigue, and it took us a while to realize that we actually hadn't gotten duplicate gifts.

In my very first game, I went straight for the Scout/Great Hall combo.  Not sure if that worked, but it's hilarious in retrospect.

[Davio]

When Base, Intrigue and Seaside were out (and Alchemy, maybe Prosperity).

So that makes it 2010.

I only remember that Festival was a great card.

[Dingan]

A "horror" story I remember from my super early days of playing was getting torched by Torturer.  I then thought it was a super OP'ed card.  Next game, I bought like 6 of them, but there were no villages.  I would play a Torturer, then draw like 2 more Torturers.  I remember getting beat real badly again.  I learned that having a lot of a powerful card is not enough; drawing Coppers would be better than those extra Torturers.  I think I even called those types of cards something, what we call them as "terminals".  But I don't remember what I called them.

[Accatitippi]

A "horror" story I remember from my super early days of playing was getting torched by Torturer.  I then thought it was a super OP'ed card.  Next game, I bought like 6 of them, but there were no villages.  I would play a Torturer, then draw like 2 more Torturers.  I remember getting beat real badly again.  I learned that having a lot of a powerful card is not enough; drawing Coppers would be better than those extra Torturers.  I think I even called those types of cards something, what we call them as "terminals".  But I don't remember what I called them.

We had Normal Actions, Villages, and Ghosts.

In my mind, I still sometime refer to all-terminal kingdoms as "completely normal".

[Willvon]

I first started playing Dominion in December 2010. I had read a lot of great reviews about it, but particularly I was looking for a good two-person game for my wife and I. There seemed to be great consensus on Dominion being excellent for 2 players. Still I wasn't sure about a "board game" that was just cards.  "Where's the board?" I soon found out that it was definitely not necessary.

Since Prosperity had just been released shortly before my purchase, I had a few expansions to choose from. Ultimately, I chose base Dominion and Prosperity as my first purchases. I believe it was the addition of Colonies and Platinums along with victory tokens that made me go with Prosperity, rather than Intrigue or Seaside.  To this day, there are many cards in Prosperity that I enjoy seeing in the game.  The attacks in Prosperity also didn't seem as "mean" as some in Intrigue and Seaside.

Ironically, the day I received the games, some friends from out of state stopped in for a visit. So I had this new game I was dying to play, but it was designed for 4 people and we had 6. I knew Intrigue added cards and rules for 6, so I looked them up.  Our first game was 5 people. (My wife sat out to do some other things.) We played with just the treasures from the base set and used some blanks for the extra Provinces and Estates. We played the recommended first game. It was a big hit. We played several games over the next couple of days.  Though at first we were confused by it, it did not take us too long to understand the benefits of Chapel. My wife particularly loved it. It is probably still her favorite card to this day.

After our friends left, we tried it with just the two of us, and it was even better. Shortly thereafter I purchased Intrigue, soon followed by Seaside. It did not take me long to start sleeving my investment. A great side benefit is that you can slide something different into the sleeve to test new cards or create ones that you don't have at the time. I have purchased all of the expansions and promos except for Alchemy. I had absolutely no interest in Possession and wasn't so sure about some of the others in the expansion. After I bought the basis treasures set, I now had Potions. So I used my extra old sleeved treasures to make the cards I wanted to try from Alchemy, tho it has eventually grown to include all of them but Possession.

My wife loves to play board games with me, but no other game comes close to Dominion as to how often she wants to play it. We both love the variety the game has and how each kingdom has its unique aspects that direct the flow of the game. We play at least weekly, and usually more than once per week. I have tried to introduce other games into our routine. We enjoy most of them, but we always come back to Dominion because it is our favorite.

[pacovf]

I found out about Dominion all the way back in 2009, because of Brettspielwelt, which I think I only signed up for at first to play Powergrid (or was it Caylus). I got hooked reaaaally quick. Asked my housemate if he wanted to split the cost of Intrigue between the two of us. We bought Seaside shortly after. We started bringing people from college to play with us (I remember an awesome 5 player game with Pirate ship; I was the only one that realized what was going to happen, and used Secret Chamber + Pearl Diver + Conspirator to "escape" the pin before it was too late). I signed up for this forum by the end of the year to learn strategies (second forum I ever signed up for, after Civfanatics). At some point I realized that I enjoyed the wit of the people in here nearly as much or more than actual Dominion, so I kept hanging out here even after I lost my gaming group.

Oh and Kirian, I am not as old as you think I am

[Titandrake]

Oh and Kirian, I am not as old as you think I am

Now I wonder how old people think I am. Although, I have littered around enough info for people to figure that out.

I started playing in between Seaside and Prosperity, summer 2010. I got hooked by my 2nd game (the first game I won, by playing Festival/Gardens). Played it a bunch in real life, then discovered Iso and started playing a ton there once I didn't have easy access to paper Dominion. Fun fact: I've never owned Dominion. Ever.

I wasn't active all the time, I took a few months-long hiatuses when I went on huge loss streaks. That year was also the year I wrote my own Dominion implementation in Java and playtested a custom expansion on it. (The old-timers here probably remember which expansion that was.) I think I also sent a pull request for Geronimoo's Simulator? Now that I look back, Dominion has given me many excuses to practice programming, a lot more than I would have done otherwise.

I don't play Dominion that often, but I still try to get a few games in now and then. The forums on the other hand are an incredibly addictive habit. It's a very unique community, and although I suspect similar communities exist, I haven't found any of them.

[ashersky]

I started playing Dominion after the kingdom was set up on the table.


*ducks*

[ackmondual]

First game of Dominion was at a board game convention that focused on Eurogames, the year Dominion came out in 2008.  It looked interesting, with numerous stacks of cards.  It was on my "want to play list".  I never ended up getting to it, or so I thought.  It was 2am.  There were roughly 5 or 6 tables of average 3.5 players each still going on that late at night.  I asked if anybody was around to teach Dominion, and if there were any sets still available.  One guy said yes, pointing me to a group.  I did my first 4p game then (First game preset).  So simple, but so magical.  Did another game (back-to-back with Big Money preset).  Somebody saw the utility of Chapel, thinning out your deck.  Don't think anybody tried out Throne Room, as I remember somebody saying you'd need to have 2 actions to be able to utilize it (missing that TR itself lets you play a card from your hand, without requiring an action at that point).  When we checked out some of the other cards that came with the game, but didn't get a chance to get to, Thief looked nasty.

[ipofanes]

I started when base became Spiel des Jahres. I was instantly hooked as I realised that it is like Magic, only with a level playing field. In the first games I thought that you must use all your buys, and consequently bought more copper than was good to me. The existence of the Chapel card suggested that deck thinning, as in Magic, should be a thing. My (then 6yo) son had lots of fun with the Spy -> Thief combo.

[Haddock]

as I remember somebody saying you'd need to have 2 actions to be able to utilize it (missing that TR itself lets you play a card from your hand, without requiring an action at that point). 

Wow.  That would be a seriously bad card!

I played my first game ages ago (my 1st year as an undergrad, I think - ie. 5ish years ago) at the house of a friend of mine.  I can't even remember how it went, except that I didn't win, but did OK.  I think the utility of Chapel was demonstrated to me pretty clearly by the guy who taught me (he won).  I remember absolutely adoring it, but couldn't get it myself because I was poor.

Then a couple of years passed, I had more money and I bought a copy of the game for my flatmate for his birthday, taught him and my other flatmate the rules (which had stuck in my head, pretty much, "such an awesome game", etc.), and went from there.  It was clear enough to them how much I loved the game that all future expansions were gifts to me from them rather than the other way around!
That was maybe 2 years ago now.  Long enough for me to feel able to theorycraft pretty well, but my execution in 2 player games remains deeply average, if only because noone plays 2p games with me IRL any more - I win those fairly consistently against my IRL friends, who don't (afaik) frequent f.ds.

[Max]

I got invited on a date, he was a bit of a dork, he brought it with him, I fell in love with the wrong thing.

(This is the better story, but I'm torn as to whether he showed me isotropic first)

[junkers]

I was instantly hooked as I realised that it is like Magic, only with a level playing field.

I only started playing Magic a couple of years back, but I quickly learned what a wallet-draining experience it was going to be. To dig myself out of that pit, I picked up vanilla and convinced a friend to play it - of course we used all Curses for the first ten games. We are not smart men.

We quickly moved onto Seaside: Pirate Shipping each other to eternity and Embargoing every damn thing out of spite. And despite never having a lot of time for IRL games, I've still managed to pick up all the expansions and we've now roped other folks into it.

Good times.

Now that I look back, Dominion has given me many excuses to practice programming, a lot more than I would have done otherwise.

I've definitely found that playing Dominion in my second language has helped me along. Partly due to import costs/times of English versions, partly due to just increased usage of common, but not everyday words. Like Alchemist. When does that not come in handy?