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[Herbalist23]

Hi all,

my wife and I just started playing dominion a couple weeks ago, and on the discussion boards there are a lot of references to the "engine" of the game.  Can someone please explain how that works and what it's referring to strategically, and possibly any links to articles explaining it?

Thanks

AV

[drg]

"engine" is referring to getting your deck going.  If you draw village-village-smithy-smithy, then you are about to play a lot of actions and have a lot of cards in your hand, and what the term is referring to is trying to set up your deck so that you will draw that, or whatever combination of action cards you want to, so that you can keep playing them hopefully every turn.

[WanderingWinder]

Yes. To elaborate, drg's example is an "actions/cards engine", which draws large portions of your deck by using powerful +actions cards, like village, and +cards cards, like smithy.
There are minions engines, which use minion to produce coin and sift through your deck to get more minions. Conspirator engines have non-terminals to activate conspirators, then conspirators to get coin. Goons engines work on a way of reliably playing multiple goons in a turn.
etc. etc. there are dozens of other examples, but like drg says, it's basically the plan of working (and winning) of a deck.

[ShuffleNCut]

I don't think there's any one given engine people are always referring to (got any links or examples?).

Generally when someone refers to an engine in a deck they're referring to whatever combination of cards makes the deck generate enough money/cards/VP to move towards winning every turn.


For example of general engines:
-5+ Minions in a deck gives you a Minion engine.  They will combine with each other to create money and to cycle through your deck so you can find good cards (or more Minions) to play over and over again in order to win.

-Several King's Courts plus cards like Grand Market, City, Market, or Peddler will give you money, actions, and cards to draw MORE King's Courts and good cards.  This creates an engine where you play a billion actions every turn and end up drawing your deck and buying multiple victory cards.

-A super thin deck (thanks to Chapel, Remake, etc) with a few cycling cards (Village, Great Hall, Hamlet, Pawn, etc) and a bunch of Conspirators will draw a bunch of cards every turn while giving you a bunch of money to buy Province/Colony.  This would be a Conspirator engine.

-A deck with lots of +Action, some +Cards and a bunch of Goons will ignore buying green cards and try to win the game buying many cheap cards for +3/4/5 VP chips each every turn.  This would be an example of a Goons engine.


EDIT: ...And apparently WW gave the exact same examples a minute or two quicker.  Damn my elaboration.

[danshep]

The terminology of 'engine' is what got me out of the realm of the complete amateur.

You need to think of your deck as a machine who's job is to produce coin to gain victory points (or occasionally victory points directly). The cards that you put in (or trash) are parts of that engine. Talking about your deck as an engine helps you move from the question of "Should I buy a festival or a laboratory?" to "What does my engine need?".

When I first started, I'd think "Do I have enough village cards for my terminals", but a good engine asks first "Do I have enough coin for provinces/colonies/other victory target?" then maybe "Do I have enough +buys to spend my money effectively". There's no use buying a village if it just lets you play two woodcutters.

Anything not part of the engine will gum it up. Curses, Copper and Estates 'gum up' almost all engines (except for a lumbering garden), but any action that is not part of your core engine can break it too. For most engines, a +1 action/+1 card 'cantrip' does no harm, but if you're running a Big Money + Smithy engine, you're gumming that up too.

[Superdad]

Indeed, an engine is what pushes a car in a certain direction.

Your deck's engine is what pushes your deck in a certain direction.

That's about as simple as it gets.

[Matt_Arnold]

The visceral adrenaline of Dominion feels like Mario Kart to me. (Except turtle shells are aimed at everyone, not the leader.) Your deck is the racetrack.

I have always felt like Dominion could be re-themed as a racing game. However, you are building more parts for your craft as it travels.

Estate/Duchy/Province => Mile/League/Fathom
Treasury => Flywheel
Warehouse => Cornering
Chapel => Ballast Hatch
Witch => Monkey Wrench
Curse => Defect
King's Court => Flaming DeLorean Tracks

etc.