My brother came to visit and I got a chance to try the new Dominion: Intrigue, the stand-alone expansion for Dominion. We played through the three default setups listed in the rule book, which gave us a pretty good idea of the different cards in the expansion.

There’s lots of new stuff in the expansion. There are for example victory point cards that actually do something, like offer actions and money. My brother used Great Hall (1 VP, +1 card, +1 action) to good effect and Harem (2 VP, +2 money) is another attractive card.

Many cards offer extra choices, like the Pawn, which gives you the choice of two from one money, one card, one action or one buy. There’s actual decision-making in the cards, gasp! Some of the new attack cards I don’t like that much, like Saboteur, but some are really nice (like Swindler: opponent destroys a card from top of the deck, you replace it with another card of the same price).

All in all, this is a great expansion. As a stand-alone game, not quite as elegant as the basic Dominion, but if you like the basic game, this is a must buy expansion, no doubt about it.