I was teaching a new player how to play Dominion the other day, and because he was an experienced game-player, I felt like the first game could be a little more involved than the standard first game, which only has very simple cards and only the core concepts. It went well, but it occurred to me that even with an experienced player, I could have completely sabotaged his interest in the game by starting him off wrong.
The question I asked myself is, what's the worst possible kingdom to play when you're introducing someone new to the game? It's almost comical what I came up with, and maybe it can be improved (worsened) still further.
My goal was to increase the following as much as possible:
(1) Concepts. Good first kingdoms only introduce some of the core concepts, like +actions, +buys, attacking, and maybe trashing (Chapel) or filtering (Cellar/Warehouse). But there are other concepts too, like durations, victory tokens, banes, and so forth. So let's include as many of these as we can -- the more challenging to grasp, the better.
(2) Complicated cards. Smithy is an easy card, as it just does one simple thing. But I remember playing with Bishop several games before I stopped forgetting individual things that it did.
(3) Grueling cards. Witch is easy to learn, but it's tough for a new player to get anywhere if he hasn't yet learned how to endure receiving a barrage of curses.
With those goals in mind, here's what I got:
Black Market - Introduces the strange Black Market deck concept, plus the abnormality of buying cards during your action phase. Hilariously, requires a new player to understand up to all of other possible kingdom cards.
Trade Route - Puts tokens on certain kingdom piles, which is a weird concept. Trashing. Monetary value changes over the course of the game.
Young Witch - Grueling attack. Adds a card to the kingdom. Introduces bane concept, which adds a power onto another card that a new player hasn't even experienced normally yet.
Tournament - Complicated card with interactions for all players. Requires familiarization with the five prize cards. Among them are: (1) Trust Steed, an analysis paralysis card; (2) Followers, a grueling attack; (3) Princess, with price reduction leading to complicated buy phase figuring in non-computer games; (4) a non-base treasure card.
Governor - Lots of options and lots of ramifications to each option mean analysis paralysis.
Saboteur - The attack is grueling, psychologically so even when it's a poor strategic choice. It's also somewhat complicated, particularly with price-changing effects in play.
King's Court - Makes everything more complicated. Also, when combined with duration cards (below), special rules about when it stays out.
Outpost - Introduces duration cards. The main reason for including this is because, when combined with King's Court and/or Possession, it can be a nightmare to untangle the rules about when extra turns happen and when you draw three cards during clean-up instead of five.
Native Village - We need a village to provide for the possibility of long, complicated turns that are hard to account for, especially when used with King's Court. Of the villages, this one is the most exotic, being somewhat complicated, including a decision, introducing a mat concept, and being difficult to intuit how best to play.
Goons - Complicated card. Victory token concept. Somewhat grueling attack. Introduces the idea of "while in play" clauses not being repeated by Throne Room and King's Court.
Possession - Introduces potion concept. Complicated card. Grueling interaction, especially with King's Court.
Is it safe to say that if this was your first kingdom, you'd never have played a second game of Dominion?
