As an alternative to the Dominion base game, you can also use the Dominion: Intrigue expansion as a standalone (or as a base for the other expansions). It provides a substantially different 'flavor', although the rules are the same.
A full collection of Dominion and all promos and expansions is thousands of cards plus special tiles and metal tokens, and even the base game alone is very cumbersome as a loose "stack of cards".