by jdarnold
We had a real nice 4 player session of playing Eminent Domain on Friday evening. As I hadn't played it at all, we kind of stumbled through the first playing, figuring things out as we went. It really isn't that tough a game to figure out, luckily. It took a few rounds for everyone to keep the duality of the cards in mind - first thing to do is to (optionally) play a card for its action and the next thing to do is to pick a card from the table as a roll. We kept wanting to play a card from our hand as the roll.I also messed up for a few rounds the hand size. At first I thought it was if you had fewer you could fill back up to five while if you had more you didn't have to discard. Then I thought that everyone had to get to 5 cards. Then I read the rules and figured out that just the active player had to get to 5 cards.
But I think that was my only major rule screw up. I also figured everyone was smart enough to deal with the tech cards right from the beginning, but perhaps that wasn't a good idea. It may have slowed the game down a bit too much at the start. But we got into the flow and finished a four player game from box opening to final play in about 90 minutes (twice that suggested on the box). I managed to stay ahead of Marta with a score in the mid-20s. Not sure what my strategy was. Maybe just get planets early and exploit their usefulness.
The second game we concentrated on playing at a better clip, including overlapping some of the bits of play, like making sure you grabbed your card for a dissent while the lead player was figuring out what to do with their roll. It still took us a good hour of play, so I am not sure how accurate a 45 minute play is. But maybe if you know more about the tech cards, which give a wide variety of special powers, you won't need to study them so much.
And somehow, once again, I came out on top, again barely keeping ahead of Marta, and again with a score in the mid-20s. And, again, I am not sure what my strategy was, besides getting planets and making sure I was doing something positive on every turn, as their aren't really that many rounds in the game. You had better make sure you are moving forward every play!
But I really enjoyed it. Eminent Domain is a nice combination of a little bit of deck building with roll choosing, and the tech cards gave it enough color. I would have to play it a few more times to get any kind of strategy feel, but it is good enough to make me want to do that. Perhaps I'll bring it out for family game night some evening soon.