Thunderstone is a great card game especially for people who are not experienced TCG players. It is based on the Dominion-proved mechanic of buying cards for your revolving deck of cards. Instead of just collecting victory points, though, you buy adventurers, weapons and dungeoneering equipment and go deep into the dungeon to slay monsters - and collect Victory Points from those.

As it turns out, this makes the game much more fun an less "linear" than the "Spiel des Jahres". And that's saying something, isn't it?

You want to know more?

Just as in Dominion in in Thunderstone you have a resource deck (initially stacked with 6 Militias, 2 Iron Rations, 2 Daggers, and 2 Torches). Looking at the six cards you draw each round, you decide whether to go to the Village to boost your forces, or go into the dungeon to smite some monsters.

In the beginning you'll most likely head for the village. The sum of all gold pieces on your cards gives you the budget to go shop with, but you can only take a card. This can be either a hero (which at level 1 cost something between 5 and 9 gold), an item, spell or any other villager card you have randomly put out.

At the end of the turn all cards go on the discard pile, only to be reshuffled once your draw pile runs out. And that's going to happen quite frequently.

At some point you are going to have improved your deck that you feel you have a chance at going monster bashing. Now you head for the dungeon and select a monster at dungeon level 1 (the furthest away from the monster pile), level 2, or level 3. The trick is that in the dungeon it's dark, and for each level you get -2 Attack, unless you bring sufficient light sources (like Torches or Flaming Swords). Then you put out your hand, count up your Attack and Magic Attack, and if it reaches the light points, you defeat the monster, and get XP. Of course this monster might dilute your deck as well. Can't have everything.

Once you have collected some XP and return to the village, you can automatically update your Militia to a proper level 1 fighter for example (for 3 XP), or level up your existing hero to level 2 (for 2 XP), or a level 2 hero to a level 3 hero (for 3 XP).

Now you are swiftly approaching the end game: Somewhere in the last 11 cards of the 31-card monster deck is the Thunderstone. Once that one appears in the monster queue and is unearthed at dungeon level 1, the game ends and Victory Points are counted (for defeated monsters and heroes leveled up to level 3). The player with the most VP obviously wins the game.

With 8 monster classes (each is a stack of 10 different monster cards of varying power), 11 different hero types and a slew of weapons and other village cards, just as in Dominion the game changes every time you play it. It certainly is our tip for "best game you are most likely not to know about".