Word Domination is, of course, a word game. But! It’s also a game about being a nefarious mastermind stealing the various landmarks of the world. Like the Eiffel Tower. Or the National Redwood Forest. The board is comprised of several letter tiles. Each player will also have one letter tile in their hand. Each of these tiles represents some national monument. The game plays one to four players, lasts about thirty minutes, and is played over six rounds.
On each player’s turn, they will place their letter tile down on the board to expand the grid. The player must then spell a word using any of the letters on the board. These letters do not have to be connected, a la Boggle, but the player must use the tile that they placed that turn and cannot use the same tile twice. The player will then place their zeppelins on every tile that they used. If, on a subsequent turn, that player manages to place a second zeppelin on any tile, they get to steal that tile! When you steal a tile, you take the letter tile and put it face up near you (but apart from your hand). You will replace its space in the grid with a face down tile (“Stolen” side up) with your zeppelin still on it.
“Why would I want to steal these tiles?” you may ask. Well, besides the fact that you are clearly an evil, malevolent villain who has somehow figured out how to steal giant monuments, stealing tiles is how you get points! Each stolen tile will provide one point at the end of the game. However, if you manage to arrange your stolen tiles in groups of three or more, you will double their points. Additionally, once you have stolen a tile, you and only you will be able to use that letter in any word you make.
Now, of course, you never want some other evil genius to steal monuments. Whenever, you place a zeppelin on a space, you will remove any zeppelins that aren’t yours. There are also black tiles for the harder to use letters which, instead of monuments, represent special tools which allow you to do a special action on the board, such as removing a zeppelin or changing the position of any one tile on the grid.
If you ever feel like adding complexity or shaking up the game, it also comes with various characters! Each character has two optional traits: First, they each have a special ability. These will allow you to execute a powerful action that completely changes the state of the game. However, the cost consists of some of the tiles you have previously stolen. You’ll still keep their spots on the board, but you won’t be able to use their letters anymore! The second trait is a weakness. This comes in the form of a word like SPEECHES. If you end up using any letters that appear in that word, you will take penalties at the end of the game.
So, Word Domination leverages the mechanics of a word game to play an area control game. The mechanisms feed into each other fairly well. Spelling longer words let you take control of more space on the board and stealing tiles removes your opponents’ options. Luckily, the scoring rules provide a counter against the usual strength of possessing an extensive vocabulary of excessively lengthy words that don’t see much use. As previously mentioned, you can double the tile values when you have three or more stolen tiles clustered together, thus you can certainly hold your own with fewer stolen tiles that are strategically clustered in groups.
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