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 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: Seaside
What does it add?
The main draw of Seaside is Duration cards: Actions and/or Treasures that do something when played and then stay on the table to do something on your next turn. As the Duration cards suggest, the main theme of Seaside is manipulating your next turn: alongside the 16 Duration cards, there are three standard Actions that influence your next turn.
The first edition also introduced player mats and tokens for tracking the effects of various cards. Whilst the second edition has reduced the number of mat types and removed the tokens completely, these are additions to the Dominion system that have been used repeatedly in subsequent expansions.
Why is Seaside the Greatest?
Duration cards.
*mic drop and the author walks off stage*
Wait, you want me to write more than that? Ok, Seaside is the greatest expansion because Duration cards are the single best innovation across the whole system.
When Dominion was first developed, Donald X. Vaccarino planned out a release cycle of 7 (which became 8) expansions, each with its own theme and additional mechanics. Intrigue added choices, Alchemy added a second currency, Dark Ages added rats, etc. Out of every innovation from that cycle, Duration cards were the first to be revisited in 2015’s Adventures and they’ve featured in every subsequent expansion (with 2022’s Plunder acting as a Seaside semi-sequel, with its focus on both the nautical and duration themes).
When both the designer and the playing public can’t get enough of something, you know you’ve got a good thing going on.
The impact of Duration cards is huge. No other Kingdom card type has had as great an effect on Dominion gameplay. There’s just something incredibly enjoyable about starting your turn with the usual 5 cards in hand and then one or more Duration cards from your last turn triggering to give you more stuff. It vastly expands your options for the turn, amplifying the classic Dominion dopamine hit.
And those player mats are ace, or at least the cards that use them are. The ‘Island’ Victory card stores itself and another card of your choice on the Island mat for the rest of the game, meaning that you can squirrel away two Victory cards for endgame scoring without them gumming up your deck. ‘Native Village’ meanwhile lets you save cards on your mat to be recalled on a later turn. You can be playing your turns normally, quietly storing cards away in the background and then flex with an incredible turn, calling all those reserves back into your hand. It’s awesome when it works just right.
With its thematic coherence, relatively simple additional rules and significant impact on gameplay, Seaside is often recommended as an ideal first expansion for those looking to branch out from the base game. It’s easy to plug in, revitalises and electrifies the traditional gameplay loop and still adds a lot to explore and discover. That is why Seaside is the greatest Dominion expansion.
Why isn’t Seaside the Greatest?
Ok, this is a tricky one to argue because Duration cards are, admittedly, pretty great. But they have their own problems, so let’s turn the tide and set sail for Seaside’s flotilla of flaws.
As argued in the ‘For’ section, Duration cards have a huge impact on how the game is played and can lead to massive turns. In fact, many have labelled Seaside a power-creep expansion, with the way that turns can inflate preposterously thanks to the previous turn’s Duration cards. And Seaside has some very powerful cards.
Not only does this potential power creep devalue other cards in Dominion, it also means that some games are over before they’ve even started. With some especially strong Attacks in the set, it can make for a miserable (if brief) experience, although some of the harshest Attack cards were excised with the second edition.
The experience can also depend on the number of Duration cards available in a game. Unlike in some later expansions, none of the Duration cards are complicated, but there are so many of them that their effects can stack up in a Duration-heavy game. Keeping track of everything becomes harder, the physical process of gameplay more cumbersome and the gaps between turns can stretch.
Seaside is a bit of a weird experience then, with powerful cards that speed the game up, strong attacks that sour the tone and Durations that can slow the administration side of the game down. Some games with Seaside are fantastic, whilst others feel like there are chasms gaping between turns plagued by harsh attacks, and you never manage a decent turn before the game is over too quickly.
Admittedly, this can be the case with anything in Dominion. It all depends on the Kingdom piles available (and the second edition improves things), but Seaside is an expansion that’s often best mixed with another set rather than being played entirely by itself. Those Duration cards are fantastic with one or two sprinkled into a game (and there are some interesting non-Duration cards in the set too), but by themselves they make for an unstable experience. That is why Seaside is not the greatest Dominion expansion.
Verdict
I’ve been really scraping the ‘Not the Greatest’ barrel here because Seaside is a fantastic expansion and whilst the criticisms above are true, they’re relatively minor issues and hardly unique to this expansion. Seaside set a high bar for Dominion expansions and for the first seven or so years of Dominion’s existence it was comfortably in the top two. With Duration cards featuring in every expansion from 2015 onwards, however, Seaside’s unique selling point has been slowly eroded away by the waves and pillaged completely by Plunder. Despite more recent competition though, Seaside remains a strong contender for the greatest Dominion expansion, its relative simplicity yet game-changing impact making it a worthy first port of call for the newer Dominion player.
Have we done Seaside justice? Is it an old seadog past its prime or the experienced captain still sailing strong? Let us know in the comments below!
Dominion: Seaside (Second Edition) details
- Designer: Donald X. Vaccarino
- Artists: Alejandro Gutiérrez Franco, Alexander Jung, Christof Tisch, Claus Stephan, Dennis Lohausen, Franz Vohwinkel, Harald Lieske, Julien Delval, Lars-Arne "Maura" Kalusky, Marcel-André Casasola Merkle, Martin Hoffmann, Matthias Catrein, R. C. Torres, Radosław Jaszczuk, Ryan Laukat, Simon Jannerland, Tomasz Jedruszek
- Publishers: 999 Games, ASS Altenburger Spielkarten, Devir, Hobby Japan, IUVI Games, Rio Grande Games
- Release Date: 2022
- Player count : 2 - 4
- Age range : 13+
- Time range : 30 minutes
- Mechanism(s): Deck, Bag, and Pool Building, Hand Management, Open Drafting
- BGG Geek Rating: 8.25442 - converted to Meeple Mountain scale: 4.0.
- More articles about Dominion: Seaside (Second Edition).
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