I was waiting for occasion to play Total Domination for some time; there was possibility to see the almost final prototype on Essen Fair 2023 but the full session had to wait once I got the production copy.
The game arrived recently and without hesitation I brought it to the table; it plays well both multiplayer and solo so I decided to test both modes. As the game is relatively quick, we managed to play it 4-player twice during one evening. Below you will find comprehensive material regarding this title – game description, session reports and finally, my initial impressions. Enjoy!
Historical background and game overview
Total Domination is a strategic wargame for 2-4 players and playable in 90 minutes. Players command the military forces of Germany, United Kingdom (UK), Japan, and Soviet Union (USSR) during the Second World War. Through smart play of your operation cards, you will help your team (Allies or Axis) earn Victory Points (VPs) and deny them to your opponents by controlling territories, conducting diplomacy, and researching technologies.
You will do it through seven turns of the game (1939-1945), with increasing number of cards to be played each year. Thanks to technology advancement – be it land, naval, industry, espionage or bomb – each factions follows its unique development path. Potential entry of China and US to war will be a boost to Allied side but can also end up as source of VPs for Axis.
Session Reports
As mentioned, I had a pleasure to play the game already couple of times. First, with Kuba G., Kuba J and Srdjan. It was supposed to be an introductory play, but after initial session, as night was early, we immediately played second time.
As the game has pretty decent Solo mode – although difficult to win, you will see – I immediately decided to test this too. That was fun – definitely good to learn the rules and familiarize with the mechanics – although a bit skewed due to play against the bot 🙂
Enjoy the reports! PS. Remember you can enlarge each picture by clicking on it.
Multiplayer Session Reports
The first game was of course a testing ground – still, as everybody was starting with the same experience, the odds were fair and equal. The Axis developed Land (my Germans) and Navy (Srdjan, Japan) technologies which allowed them for quick advances – especially on USSR via Egypt/Persia (Rommel succeeded!) The key to victory was speed and focused technology development – the Allied powers were already kicking off its huge economical potential, but not fast enough.
Allies equipped with the knowledge from the first game quickly invested in Land & Lease, bringing the US and China to the game pretty early. A lot of Air Fleets were used here, USSR invested heavily in land technologies (no more German attacks in Persia!), while Japan was crushed to a final unit at some moment in the game. Still, the result was in question till the final play of card by UK/US (they had to reach 39 points)!
Solitaire Session Report
Having such a good experience – and knowledge of the rules – I jumped pretty soon to solo game. That more to consolidate my knowledge of rules and test myself against maybe not be most clever , but definitely a very demanding bot.
Playing against bot really helps you to learn mechanics; the priorities of bots (Axis, Germany & Japan) shows you what possibly can be chosen as good path in development. Some things are simplified – like no air fleet nor U-Bots – but this is compensated by the speed of enemy production, movement and attack.
First Impressions
These were definitely enjoyable sessions thanks to which I have a good insight into the game mechanics, how they influence each other as well as the flow of the gameplay. So let me share my impressions now:
- I have many great, deep, detailed games… which play whole evening if not two! Total Domination, due to it short time to play, is a perfect addition to my collection of games. You can bring this to table even twice in one evening and still play fully.
- One thing which I have to stipulate and which indeed made a great impression on me is significantly reduced randomness. This is this visible in three dimensions. First of all, there is no dice – all combat is resolved as per your technology advancement, automatically. Secondly, there is a card draft for each turn, which allows you to at least have couple of good cards – there is no way you would have only lowest ops ones in your hand. Finally, you can save one card between turns. If you got two great technologies on hand (and you can play only one per turn), you can save the other for the following turn, not to be afraid that you will not get that great advancement next time.
- The game is simply beautiful. I do not have miniatures, I play with counters – still, it makes very nice impression, both map, cards and other elements (look at technology tracks!)
- One thing where you need to wrap your head around is the presentation of base map. It is set of rectangles connected in various ways (land, naval, off board). From playability perspective that works great; still one needs some time to get accustomed to this.
- I also have a feeling that some technologies are less often chosen than the others; the mechanism to grant additional VPs for variety of development is however a good counter-measure for this.
In summary, I may openly say I had fun playing Total Domination. This is a light, fast and brutal simulation ow WWII conflict, playable in very reasonable time. Still, it has some great mechanics like randomness limitation or optional rules, adding more depth. On top of this, you can lay solo to learn rules better.
See you in another review!
The Boardgames Chronicle 
While i played the Soviet Russia i had an opportunity to completely crush Japan (my friend using UK/USA destroyed enemy armies with his overpowered fleets – with all techs developed) before the final round(i could occupy both production regions and disable the entire poduction), which would most likely make the Allied win easier, but i don’t like boardgames in which You can compeltely wipe out enemy. I didn’t want Srdjan to stay late and wait for us finishing long end round, so i picked more balanced way and prepared for the fight against the Germans in Europe. This time Germans didn’t land in Persia(like in our test game), but Russians invaded Italy through Persia, Libya and Egypt 😉 to give little time for UK ally who kept loosing almost all his armies destroyed by Germans(heavy fights for France and even England) or Japan active in the oceans. Poland and Romania have been untouched for a very long time, til 1943 or 1944 when i moved Russian forces to have Germany in the cross-fire alongside the UK.
Solid game, but the map construction (jump points on edges) may cause little troubles, it’s easy to forget that some regions can be attacked easily from a seeminly distant point.
Test game was very quick, but the 2nd one was loong. Very even game with solid strategists, after turn 2-3 each round has been very tactical. Germans have a huge advantage(very few points required to achieve victory_ and in the early rounds the Allies need to watch them closely. We’ve almost lost(in the early/mid game Axis might have calculated their points badly, and missed one which could give them a win, but if they counted well, maybe Allied move in the final turn would take that point away). In the late game we had to take some risks – saving cards(to have the last move in the next round), investing in techs instead easy kills. At some point it felt more like chess between 4 player, each move required heavy thinking, difficult to plan ahead, as situation has been changing quickly.
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Short game play is always a selling point!
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True, too many titles in my collection which are hard to finish in one session!
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