Dominion is the ancestor of all deck-building games, still a giant in the tabletop arena almost twenty years after it was released. Check out our review of the Dominion base game and our Dominion strategy guide!
Dominion also has plenty of expansions to explore, with the sixteenth released in 2024. In this series Meeple Mountain examines them all to determine which is the greatest. In each article we’ll introduce an expansion, put forward the motion that it deserves to be recognised as the greatest of all Dominion expansions, offer a rebuttal for why it isn’t the greatest and then deliver our verdict.
This time: Intrigue
What does it add?
Released in 2009 and updated in 2016, Intrigue (second edition) adds 26 Kingdom cards and almost no additional rules: if you can play the base game then you can play Intrigue.
But Intrigue isn’t devoid of new ideas: the main themes are choices and multi-use cards.
One of the criticisms of Dominion is that often your hand of cards plays itself. Intrigue’s cards let you decide how to use them. Choices are everywhere, from the 2 cost ‘Pawn’ with its 4 options to the 6-cost Victory/Action card ‘Nobles’ which provides you with either +3 Cards or +2 Actions. Speaking of ‘Nobles’, there are four new additional Victory cards, three of which are also Treasure or Actions, meaning they aren’t complete junk in your deck.
Why is Intrigue the Greatest?
Intrigue takes everything that’s good about the base game and doubles down on it, without adding any additional overhead. Meeple Mountain once published an article about complexity and depth and Intrigue is the perfect example of the article’s argument: the lake of Dominion doubles in depth without being any wider.
But what does this mean beyond tabletop terminology?
Simply put, Intrigue is the gateway to advanced play. Sure, there are plenty of clever things you can do in the base set, but with Intrigue the potential for cunning (and fun) is far greater.
Intrigue rewards the clever player who pays attention. Keeping track of your deck (with more options for trashing and filtering) and being aware of your opponents is key to success. There’s more to explore too, interesting card combinations to discover and cards like ‘Baron’ or ‘Duke’ that ask you to lean hard into their mechanics. And ‘Bridge’ is one of the game’s top ten Actions. Even now there are things that I want to try with this set: I’ve never predicted the next card with ‘Wishing Well’ or trashed ‘Mining Village’ but I want to.
Intrigue often gets knocked for not having a strong theme, but that’s only if you limit your definition of theme to the art and card names. There aren’t ‘Islands’ to maroon cards on as in Seaside or ‘Dungeons’ as in Adventures. Instead, the theme of Intrigue comes through below the surface, in how it lets players play and interact, and in the subtler ploys and strategies that emerge.
Other expansions have various gimmicks, but this is pure Dominion with the stabilisers off, showing just what is possible for a seemingly simple game. And with the highest number of alternative Victory kingdom card piles in any expansion it makes alternative scoring routes far more interesting. Plus, it integrates incredibly well with the base game and every expansion to an extent that few other expansions manage.
Intrigue is a seamless addition to Dominion, an essential second core set revealing the bottomless depths of the system that rewards exploration and smarts. This is why Intrigue is the greatest Dominion expansion.
Why isn’t Intrigue the Greatest?
Sure, there’s a lot of smart stuff going on in Intrigue, but no envelopes were pushed in its creation. If you can play Dominion you can play Intrigue, and if you’ve played Dominion then you’ve played Intrigue. It’s just more of the same. That’s not a bad thing but to be the greatest, an expansion needs to do more.
Intrigue is, 15 years after its original release, a little forgettable in comparison with what’s come since. Its innovations have been improved upon in later expansions, and all those slightly clunky choices on the cards often just slow the game down. It’s also an expansion that’s harder to get a grip on; like its theme, a lot of the Kingdom cards are a little murky, asking you to work harder for not much additional reward.
Whilst Intrigue doesn’t have a high proportion of Attack cards and they aren’t amongst the strongest in the game, it can feel like a very aggressive expansion too (a feeling not helped by there being only 1 Reaction card in the set). The Attack cards are persistent and frequently frustrating, turning the game into an annoying experience of death by paper cuts. Their bark is often worse than their bite, but an opponent repeatedly playing multiple ‘Torturers’ in a turn can make it miserable for the inexperienced.
And even when cards aren’t being directly aggressive, some are just plain annoying: ‘Masquerade’s’ card passing whilst occasionally fun can sometimes just feel like time wasting as you and your opponent(s) trade Coppers. (Plus, the ‘classic Masquerade pin’ is ridiculously aggressive!)
And whilst the theme does come through in the game play, the artwork in Intrigue is the most inconsistent in the entire game. Whilst all art is subjective, the mix of art styles make the visuals very jarring and Intrigue features some of the least well regarded art in the game. Not wishing to disparage the art of ‘Shanty Town’ but it’s possibly the most ill-fitting visual in the entire 500+ card ecosystem.
I get that Intrigue is a solid expansion and you can do lots of clever things. But for newer players Intrigue can feel a bit dense at first (despite being rules light) and for experienced players it’s not the most interesting or challenging. It ends up a little lost in the middle of the pack (or should that be deck?). That is why Intrigue is not the greatest Dominion expansion.
Verdict
Intrigue is a great expansion: solid, reliable and worthy of exploration. The dependable boyfriend you might return to after a whirlwind affair, a safe pair of hands but not all that exciting. Bill Pullman in Sleepless in Seattle. But in the wider Dominion system perhaps it’s just not innovative or attention grabbing enough? Great but not the greatest.
What do you think? Is Intrigue all bluff and no bite or are you plotting our downfall at the backstabbing we’ve just given it. Let us know in the comments below!
Dominion: Intrigue (Second Edition) details
- Designer: Donald X. Vaccarino
- Artists: Alexander Jung, Christof Tisch, Claus Stephan, Franz Vohwinkel, Harald Lieske, Joshua J. Stewart, Lars-Arne "Maura" Kalusky, Lorraine Schleter, Marcel-André Casasola Merkle, Martin Hoffmann, Matthias Catrein, Ryan Laukat
- Publishers: 999 Games, ASS Altenburger Spielkarten, Conclave Editora, Devir, Giochi Uniti, Hobby Japan, Korea Boardgames, Rio Grande Games
- Release Date: 2016
- Player count : 2 - 4
- Age range : 14+
- Time range : 30 minutes
- Mechanism(s): Deck, Bag, and Pool Building, Delayed Purchase, Hand Management, Open Drafting
- BGG Geek Rating: 8.12902 - converted to Meeple Mountain scale: 4.0.
- More articles about Dominion: Intrigue (Second Edition).
Add Comment