The goal
Everyone starts with a tiny web presence: 7 Ad Clicks and 3 .xyz Domains. Each turn you play cards from your hand to earn money, then buy new cards that go into your deck. When the game ends, the player whose deck holds the most ◆ points (from Domain cards) has taken over the web.
Setup
The table holds the Supply: three Treasures (Ad Click $1, Affiliate Link $2, IPO $3), three Domains (.xyz 1◆, .net 3◆, .com 6◆), Spam (−1◆), and 10 kingdom cards picked at random or from a preset. Each player shuffles their 10 starting cards and draws 5.
Your turn
- Action phase. You have 1 Action. Spend it to play an Action card from your hand and do what it says. Cards that give +Actions let you keep playing.
- Buy phase. Play your Treasures (the game does this for you by default), then buy one card from the Supply whose cost is no more than your $. +Buy lets you buy more than one card, splitting your $.
- Clean-up. Everything you played, everything left in your hand, and everything you bought goes to your discard pile. Draw 5 new cards. When your deck runs out, shuffle your discard pile to form a new deck.
The game ends
…at the end of any turn where the .com Domain pile is empty, or any three Supply piles are empty (four with 5–6 players). Most ◆ wins. Ties go to whoever took fewer turns; if still tied, the winners share the web.
Words on the cards
- Delete
- Send a card to
/dev/null(the trash). It leaves the game. Deleting weak cards makes your good cards come up more often. - Gain
- Take a card from the Supply without paying for it.
- ☠ Exploit
- An Action that hurts every other player.
- ⛨ Firewall
- When another player plays an Exploit while you have a Firewall in hand, it is revealed automatically and the Exploit does not affect you.
- ◆ Domain
- Victory cards. They are worth points at the end but do nothing in your hand, so buying them too early slows you down.
- ✖ Spam
- Worth −1◆ and clogs your hand. Delete it if you can.
Coming from Dominion?
The rules are Dominion's base game rules: same turn structure, same setup sizes, same end conditions and tiebreak. Only the names change, and three cards play differently.
| Domainion | Dominion |
|---|---|
| Ad Click / Affiliate Link / IPO | Copper / Silver / Gold |
| .xyz / .net / .com Domain | Estate / Duchy / Province |
| Spam | Curse |
| ◆ | Victory points |
Delete, /dev/null | Trash |
| ☠ Exploit / ⛨ Firewall | Attack / Reaction |
| Kingdom card | Plays like | Difference |
|---|---|---|
| Cache Clear | Cellar | Same |
| Garbage Collector | Chapel | Same |
| Firewall | Moat | Revealed for you automatically; you never have to choose. |
| Wayback Machine | Harbinger | Same |
| Influencer | Merchant (Affiliate Link = Silver) | Same |
| Webring | Vassal | Same |
| Incubator | Village | Same |
| Registrar | Workshop | Same |
| Domain Squatter | Bureaucrat | Same |
| Link Farm | Gardens | Same |
| DDoS | Militia | Same |
| Domain Flipper | Salvager (Seaside), at $4 | Also gives +$1. |
| Scraper | Poacher | Same |
| Rebrand | Remodel | Same |
| Web Crawler | Smithy | Same |
| Mirror Site | Throne Room | Same |
| Phishing Scam | Bandit | Same |
| Open Source | Council Room | Same |
| Hackathon | Festival | Same |
| Dev Sandbox | Laboratory | Same |
| Search Index | Library | Same |
| Domain Auction | Market | Same |
| Crypto Miner | Mine | Same |
| Content Moderator | Sentry | Same |
| Spambot | Witch | Each other player discards their top card and gains Spam only if it cost $3 or more. A plain Witch won 89% of simulated games. |
| Acqui-hire | Artisan | Same |
Rows marked ≠ differ from the Dominion card.
Strategy tips
- Early on, buy Treasures and Actions, not Domains. Start buying .coms once you can hit $8 regularly.
- Too many cards without +Actions (“terminals”) collide in your hand. Pair them with Incubators or Hackathons, or keep to one or two.
- A thin deck is a fast deck: Garbage Collector, Content Moderator and Rebrand turn your starting junk into something better.
- Watch the .com pile. When it is low, a .net at $5 is often better than another IPO.
Bots
Easy bots play loosely and are good for learning. Normal bots play a disciplined money strategy with the strongest attack or draw card on the table. Hard bots simulate hundreds of games against the kingdom before turn one and play the plan that tested best.