Deck building remains one of the most broadly applicable mechanisms in game design. Dominion invented it, but the breadth of games that have used it since is extraordinary: Clank! adds movement, Star Realms adds direct combat, Aeon's End breaks the shuffle, Legendary Encounters adds cooperative play, Thunderstone Quest adds dungeon crawling.

The appeal is the arc: you start with a weak deck, make acquisition decisions each turn, and watch the deck you have built either cohere or fail to cohere based on those decisions. Unlike deck construction games, you build during play, which makes the planning real-time rather than meta-game.

For groups new to deck building, Star Realms is the fastest entry — it is cheap, plays in 20 minutes, and creates visceral direct conflict. For groups who want more depth, Dominion remains the purest expression of the mechanism and has never been surpassed on those terms.