Dominion and Intrigue second editions confirmed, with a new look and new cards

Donald X. Vaccarino's beloved deck-building card game Dominion is getting an upgrade.

Rio Grande Games’ Jay Tummelson announced on BoardGameGeek that the 2008 Spiel des Jahres winner and its follow-up standalone release/expansion Intrigue would be released in revamped second editions very soon.

Among the most notable changes in the base game and its 2009 add-on is a ‘facelift’, with the box covers updated and rules and card text cleaned up for legibility and clarity. The second edition of Dominion’s base cards’ artwork has been changed to match previous base cards.

The base cards included in Intrigue have been removed, meaning the set will be cheaper, while cards in both releases have been replaced “to make them even more interesting and fun to play”, said Tummelson.

The seven new cards for each game will be offered in separate packs to avoid existing Dominion owners having to buy the entire boxes again.

Vaccarino also weighed in on the changes, detailing changes to the base game and Intrigue while confirming that “other sets are not getting new cards”, but “all sets prior to Empires are getting general rulebook and card layout improvements, whenever new printings are ordered”.

He added that “in the long term” the upgrade packs would be discontinued as the second edition releases become the more ubiquitous versions.

Tummelson concluded that “the games have been produced and we expect to begin shipping them to distributors next week” – meaning you can expect to see the new versions sooner, rather than later.