Dominion Empires Board Game - Strategy Card Game for Family Fun

Great gift but this is an expansion so you will need to either also give the original game or make sure the receiver has it already.Our 20 year old son asked for this expansion game for his birthday, and since usually he has a hard time finding something he wants we were quick to execute. My husband and 2 sons played this several times while they were both home for a few weeks at the beginning of the summer. It is somewhat complicated, and they are both better at it than we are, but after a few times we've gotten a lot better at it. This gives them an opportunity to instruct us and give strategy pointers, and it has been a fun family game. Worth the investment to learn the game!Just as Dominion was growing stale, Donald X and his merry band of play-testers came up with some concepts that have infused the game with new life and myriad possibilities. This revival started with Adventures, where we were introduced to Events and Reserve cards, and now with Empires we get Landmarks and Debt tokens. The game has evolved from the primitive stages to the world of capitalistic conquest.Empires comes with a small number of attacks, but they are amusing and sometimes brutal. Legionary has destroyed a game or two of mine, forcing me to discard down to 2 cards before drawing one, while Enchantress has disrupted a few games with her card-shifting ways. Catapult is a handy way of trashing, while punishing your opponents at the same time. This expansion has other good trashers with Sacrifice and Temple, and some fun game mechanics involving split piles--a 10-card pile that has 5 of one card on top, and 5 of another on the bottom. The bottom cards usually provide a strategy to go with the top cards, and can become a goal unto themselves.The real fun for me, though, is the Debt token concept. These are cards that can be gained for a certain amount of Debt tokens, which must be paid off before you can buy anymore cards. There is the immediate drawback of the debt, but as in the real world, the wise usage of this can lead to big gains. Overlord costs 8 Debt, but can function as any Action on the board costing 5 or less. City Quarter also costs 8 Debt, but can be a game-changer. As for Capital, you buy this Treasure for 5 coins, and when you play it, you get 6 coins of purchasing power and an extra Buy. The only catch is that you gain 6 Debt tokens when you do so. Sure, you might take a hit for a turn or even two, but as with Tactician (from Dominion: Seasides), the payoff can be huge. The real mind-blower is Fortune, which costs 8 coins and 8 Debt tokens. It doubles your buying power once in a turn, and can shift a game quickly from buying cards that cost 4 and 5 to buying Golds, Platinums, and multiple Victory cards.Another fun card is Castles. The pile of 12 Castles is set out with the cheapest Castle on the top, the Humble Castle. By upgrading and gaining more Castles, you can reach the King's Castle. Fighting over the Castle pile could be a strategy unto itself, where a player can run out 3 piles before the other player gets too deep into the Provinces or Colonies.I haven't even touched on all the ideas in the Landmarks and Events. The possibilities seem endless, especially when mixing Empires and Adventures with other Dominion sets. The way I see it, Dominion just keeps getting better. Instead of rushing out ideas just to make a buck, Donald X seems to really think through these concepts and make the game something that continues to grow, evolve, and add new surprises. When many were frustrated with the cheaper quality of some of the game pieces and cards in Adventures, he listened and made sure that the next expansion had quality cards and even better Victory tokens than before. In caring about the game and its fans, he has truly built an Empire.I really like the landmarks and debt addition to the game.Wow...just when I thought nothing could top my fav Adventures expansion...along came Empires! I have purchased one for myself, my sister's family as well as my brother's family! The addition of landmarks is such a fantastic way to play a game you're familiar with and yet completely change it up with new ways to earn victory points! We also started using their idea of putting 5 higher priced/more valuable cards beneath 5 cheaper cards in some of our kingdom piles...so fun! Not sure why we hadn't thought of this ourselves but would simply have 11 or 12 kingdom piles for our home games because we couldn't decide which of our favs to kick out of the supply. Thanks for the idea, Empires! Obviously we have also enjoyed playing with this expansion's predetermined split piles as well.This expansion is awesome...so much so that I'm flying out to my sister's house for a quick weekend getaway in a couple of weeks simply to have a Dom marathon with my 9 year old nephew, my sister and her husband! The introduction of debt tokens and the requirement to pay off one's debt before being able to make any further purchases is a lesson she's excited to teach her son! Dominion can definitely be played with younger children as long as at least one adult knows what they're doing. It teaches reading, math, strategy, patience, etc and I have even introduced it to a six year old who now loves it and his dad said he's never seen his son sit and be engaged for so long in his life! Initially he made fun of us and our "nerdy" game but now he enjoys playing as well after seeing his boys do so well...pretty darn cool! ?This expansion and the Prosperity expansion are must haves.Caveat, I love Dominion. This is more Dominion, so I love it. The new mechanics are fun, and give some good variability to the game. Debt is an interesting mechanic, but it ultimately is just a new and limited form of currency that only applies to 6 of the 29 kingdom cards and 1 each of the events and Landmark cards. Otherwise it is unused throughout the entirety of Dominion except for those 8 cards (so far).It was supposedly conceived as a sequel to Prosperity, but I have to say I would not have clued in on that without doing some reading. There are more Victory cards sure, but the highest costing Kingdom card is 5 coins if you don't consider the few cards that cost 8 debt. If you are the sequel to Prosperity, that introduced 5 coin Platinum treasure and 8 coin cost cards, well you see my confusion as to calling this a sequel. It brings back the split upgrade feature of Adventures, but only on one item, the castles, which pretty much only provide victory points. It offers 2 duration cards, SeaSide is still my favorite expansion so yay there.Adventures was a far more extensive expansion, I understand it is bigger by design but this feels underwhelming after that one. This actually feels like an expansion to the Adventures expansion, as we get more events and the locations mechanic feels like an extension of the event mechanic. If you love Dominion, have at, but this is probably down around Hinterlands territory for me in the order of acquisition, ie one of the last expansions someone building a dominion set should worry about buying.A great new addition to the dominion game. It adds new game dynamics such as two card supply piles where you have to buy the top half of the pile in order to get down to the better cards beneath. There is also the added dynamic of debt where you can buy cards for debt tokens which must be paid back before you can buy again in your buy phase. Castles start to make a feature in this game too they get better the further down the supply pile you get.The new cards really re-invigorate this series!Brilliant new gameVery goodExcellent game, very high quality cards and tokens, immensely great addition to the Dominion franchise.