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Comment by SubiculumCode | Hacker News Reader

Or another way of saying it, when the default no-thinking baseline strategy can win frequently enough by chance that it becomes difficult to learn from a single game. In this case, just 'buy silver, then gold, then provinces) can win too often just by chance.

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Yeah, but that's what makes it such a good game, in my opinion. Ten or so years ago I played a lot with / against two friends. With other "deep"(-ish) games someone who's never played before never has even a remote chance against experienced players - we had other games we'd never pull out with a n00b at the table - but with Dominion you can give them that strategy, plus a few tips, like "trashing cards is really helpful", and they know enough to hang. They'll lose, mostly, but they won't be immediately crushed, and they'll want to play again.

Anyway, the main fun is trying to get an approach working with unfamiliar card combinations - and yes, we owned all the expansions, thank you for asking. :-)

There's a level of play in Dominion where it feels like there's two turns. One starts before the first card is played where you devise a strategy given the board. The second is just playing it out. Dominion leaves very little room for strategy switching - if you devise a second rate strategy, there's no realistic way to catch up. Very little of a player's choices depend on the actions opponents have taken. Short of a stack running out, curses, and a few others, you're mostly playing solo. That lack of being able to adapt is why I can't, even after hundreds of games, I can't bring myself to play it anymore.

That's a fair point. Fortunately, most games are short enough that you don't lose a lot of time when that happens. Mostly, though, I see a way I could have tweaked my card mix a bit to have made it work, so I want to play the same board again.

But, sure, if you're looking for a game with a lot of player interaction then Dominion isn't for you.

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