Dominion’s 14th board game expansion, Allies, is all about making friends
No red weddings here.
The 14th expansion for Dominion, a classic beginner board game, has been revealed as Allies and is all about making friends.
Dominion: Allies is is focused around an enormous celebration to commemorate a newly formed alliance between the players’ kingdoms and the barbarians from the north, whose previously hostile forces have travelled to the city to enjoy the festivities. With the trickier aspects of the negotiations now out of the way, the northerners and the Kingdom are able to feast together and hopefully get along with one another - at least until the final negotiations are completed.
The newest expansion for the deckbuilding game adds 400 cards, including 31 kingdom card piles that feature allies for players to use within their respective decks. Ally cards will do a variety of favours for players - with no confirmation as to what these favours could be - with split piles that players can rotate throughout the game.
Dominion is a board game for two to four people that sees players each becoming rulers of their own respective kingdoms. As monarchs, the players have impressive ambitions for their kingdoms, but they’re going to have to compete with their rival rulers if they want to achieve their goals. In Dominion, players take turns to build out their decks using the cards available in the marketplace. Which cards are available depends on what players have chosen to include during set-up, with cards allowing players to perform actions or acquire victory points.
Using their hand of cards, players are also able to directly interfere with their opponents by doing things like looking through their deck or removing cards from their hand. Whichever player manages to acquire the most victory points from their deck of cards by the end of the game is named the winner.
Dominion: Allies was created by Donald X. Vaccarino, the designer behind the original Dominion and other tabletop titles such as Kingdom Builder - a tile-laying game that has players creating their own territories - and Nefarious, a card game about becoming an evil genius scientist.
Rio Grande Games is the studio responsible for releasing Allies, alongside the core game, and is set to release several other games such as Dice Realms - a board game about creating a realm using customisable dice from the creator of Race for the Galaxy - and a train board game called Free Ride.
Dominion: Allies is set to be released in December - according to BoardGameGeek - at a retail price of $44.95 (£32).