The best Dominion expansions, ranked

Dominion has had sixteen expansions since 2009 (two of them now share a box), and a seventeenth is on the way. They all mix, so the question is never "which one works". It is "which one makes our games better next", and the answer depends on what your group is missing.

What is actually in each box?

Reviews tend to describe the new mechanics. We wanted to know what a box gives you to build a deck with. So we sorted all 441 kingdom piles (base game included) by the jobs a strategy needs: villages (+Actions), draw, +Buy, trashing, gaining cards, extra ways to score, and attacks.

Three things stand out. Every box except Alchemy covers almost every job, so you can play any box with the base game and still find several strategies. Seaside is the most interactive box (30% of its piles touch other players) and Renaissance the least (8%). And the later boxes carry their novelty in side cards: Menagerie has 40, Empires 34, Plunder 30.

Which boxes are expensive?

A box full of $5 and $6 cards plays slower early on, because a $5 hand on turn 1 or 2 is rare. Prosperity is the expensive one: 7 of its 25 piles cost $6 or more. Alchemy has a different problem: 10 of 12 piles need a Potion.

Which boxes have the strongest cards?

We have simulated every card of the base game and Intrigue, and five ban-list cards from later boxes, each added to a Big Money deck and played against Big Money alone. Here is the best of each box we tested.

So why isn't the strongest box on top?

Because a very strong card is a problem, not a feature. When Witch is on the table, both players have to buy it and the game is about Curses; we found no card that beats it. That is the opposite of what an expansion should do. The best boxes add many good options and few must-buys.

So strength is one meter among several below, and only where we have simulated the box. We ranked on what makes Dominion fun:

1. Strategy toolkit: how many different decks the box supports on its own (enough villages, draw, +Buy, trashing, gainers, extra points and attacks).
2. Interaction: how many cards touch the other players.
3. Beginner friendly: shorter card text and fewer rules beyond the base game.
4. How it mixes: does it make the boxes you already own feel new? Side cards and Platinum and Colony do; that one is our call.

The meters are counted; the order is our judgement. Hover a meter to see what feeds it. Buy buttons are affiliate links; they never change the order.

Which box should you buy next?

Follow the arrows. Every box shows up once; click one to jump to its entry.

Questions people ask

Which Dominion expansion should I buy first?

Seaside, unless your group already plays a lot of Big Money. Then Prosperity: Colony games run longer, which gives the slower strategies time to pay off.

Can I play an expansion without the base game?

No. Every expansion box needs the base game's Treasure, Victory and Curse cards, including the second edition of Intrigue. The Big Box has the base game and Intrigue together.

Do all expansions work together?

Yes. A kingdom is any 10 piles from any boxes, and the side cards (Events, Projects, Ways, Traits, Prophecies, Landmarks) can join any game. Allies are the exception: they only show up when a Liaison card is in the kingdom.

First or second edition?

Second, if you can choose. The new editions of the base game and Intrigue (2016), Seaside, Prosperity and Hinterlands (2022) and Cornucopia & Guilds (2024) replaced cards that were weak or fiddly. Owners of first editions can buy update packs with only the new cards.

Is Dominion good with two players?

Yes, and every one of our simulations is a two-player game. With two players you use 8 of each Victory card, so games are quick.

More Dominion

• Dominion vs Intrigue: which box first, and what our simulator says about both.
• Which Dominion cards are overpowered? All 52 cards of the base game and Intrigue, tested.
• The ban-list cards: King's Court, Goons, Wharf, Rebuild and Cultist, tested.

How we counted

Card names, sets, costs, types and texts come from the open card database of the dominiontabs project (we pinned one version, November 2026). For every box we took the newest edition and counted its kingdom piles; our counts match the pile numbers on Wikipedia for all 16 boxes. A split pile (two or four different cards in one pile) counts once, with all its cards.

Each job is a keyword rule on the card text: a village gives +2 Actions or more (or Villagers), draw is +2 Cards or more, trashing removes your own cards, a gainer gains a card by cost or copies one, extra VP is a Victory card or VP tokens, interaction is an Attack or a card that mentions other players. We checked the results by hand and fixed eleven edge cases (Treasure Map, for instance, trashes only itself). A few borderline cards could go either way; no box moves more than a pile or two.

The meters: strategy toolkit gives each of the seven jobs full marks at three piles or more. Interaction is the share of interactive piles, with Seaside's share as 10. Beginner friendly is half card length (words per card, shortest box = full marks) and half new rules (new card types, tokens, mats and extra cards; none = full marks). Strongest card maps a win rate against Big Money from 50% (0) to 100% (10), and only appears where the box's tested card is a fair sample. Strength comes from our base-game and Intrigue simulations and the ban-list follow-up: two-player games, bots that play money decks well and engines poorly.

Limits. Counting keywords says what a box contains, not how good the cards are. Release years, editions and card totals are from Wikipedia's Dominion article and the publisher, checked in November 2026. The order of the ranking is our judgement.