Dominion expands into the witching hour with Dominion: Nocturne

August 8, 2017 - 7:31am

Since 2015 a big box expansion has come out for Dominion every year and it appears that 2017 will be no different as Dominion: Nocturne has been announced with an anticipated October 2017 release date. Designer Donald X Vaccarino, artist Garret DeChellis and Rio Grande Games have begun exploring the darker side of the Dominion universe for the 11th expansion:

You've always been a night person; lately you've even considered becoming a vampire. There are a lot of advantages: you don't age; you don't have to see yourself in mirrors anymore; if someone asks you to do something, you can just turn into a bat, and then say, sorry, I'm a bat. There are probably some downsides though. You always think of the statue in the town square, that came to life, and now works as the tavern barmaid. The pedestal came to life too, so she has to hop around. The village blacksmith turns into a wolf whenever there's a full moon; when there's a crescent moon, he turns into a chihuahua. That's how this stuff goes sometimes. Still, when you breathe in the night air, you feel ready for anything.

The next expansion is a big box expansion and includes:

500 cards
33 new Kingdom Cards
Night cards, which are played after the Buy phase
Heirlooms that replace starting Coppers
Fate and Doom cards that give out Boons and Hexes

The game is also listed as including a variety of additional cards that "other cards can provide." The game is currently scheduled for a mid-October release date. The Last Expansion... Again Dominion: Guilds was the 8th expansion, released in 2013, and was the final planned expansion at the time according to designer Vaccarino. Two years later the Dominion machine started working again with yearly expansions. Since then we have seen big box expansions Dominion: Adventures in 2015 and Dominion: Empires in 2016. New editions of the base game and Dominion: Intrigue were also released in 2016 alongside upgrade packs for the first edition of Dominion and the first edition of Dominion: Intrigue. Dominion: Nocturne will be the third box expansion for Dominion since the final planned expansion was released 4 years ago. Award Winning Franchise It's not surprising that the world of Dominion continues to expand. The original Dominion spent 2008-2010 cleaning up major awards:

Though only Dominion: Prosperity has actually won the Golden Geek award for best board game expansion, all but one of the other 10 expansions have been nominated for the award. Safe betting odds in Las Vegas at this point are favorable at this point. Dominion continues to make regular appearances on The Dice Tower's Top Ten lists including:

Tom's #8 Game on the 10 Games Every Game Should Own list
Tom's #5 and both Eric and The People ranked it the #1 Deck/Pool Building Game
The People ranked it #1 and both Tom and Eric ranked the game #2 in the Top Games From 2008 list