It's far and away the best of the three sets. If you're looking for the most variety in strategies, but only want to buy a single set, pick up Tanto Cuore: Expanding The House. cards) as the sole source of your score - and in fact, the winner is often not the person with the most Maid Chiefs.Įvery version of Tanto Cuore is individually playable right out of the box, without any need to pick up the base set prior to getting expansions. This is fundamental to many strategies, as you're not focused on Maid Chiefs (Estate / Province / etc. Scoring: While the VP mechanic functions the same as Dominion as a general rule, a significant number of the General Maids (Kingdom cards) are worth VP on top of their other effects. Of note, the Reminiscence deck is somewhat stacked during game setup, with stronger ones coming out in the later portion of the game, and one that ends the game immediately upon purchase. In short, they have weird acquisition methods, but they provide significant boosts in both VP and utility.
A Reminiscence card might require 5 currency cards, regardless of value - or 3 cards that each cost 4 to purchase. Reminiscence: Unique to Romantic Vacation, Reminiscence cards are purchased in a different fashion than normal cards. Buildings provide several relatively cost-effective forms of gaining VP without gumming up your deck (and in some cases, removing unwanted cards from it!) Buildings are a safe way to supplement your strategy, or can be a strategy unto themselves! In games with more than 2 players, this can lead to serious hate-stacking on a player perceived as winning.īuildings: Unique to Expanding the House, buildings are an alternative strategy for winning. If you have 4 or more bad habits, they become -2 VP each. Unlike curses, Bad Habits don't gum up your deck (they're set to the side), but they can be purchased directly for 2 currency, and given to other players. Removing these from your deck early is critical to many strategies.Ĭurses: Tanto Cuore's curse equivalents only exist with the base set. A significant application of this mechanic also applies to the Chambermaid Chief (Equivalent to the Estate card), which can be Chambered at a 2 action cost. Many cards are also worth VP when Chambered. This is particularly useful for cards that are cheap and accelerate your early game, but are chaff in the late-game. In the base set, Illnesses can be bought for 4 currency to disable another player's private maid, and they require the opponent to discard a 3 Love (Gold) card at the start of their turn to get the ability back.Ĭhamber Mechanic: Several General Maids (Kingdom cards) have a Chamber ability, allowing you to spend an action to remove the card from your deck. Only a player's most recently purchased Private Maid has any effect, so you can't stack them. These benefits are things such as the ability to discard your hand and redraw at the start of your turn, or always having +1 buy. Unlike Knights, Private Maids don't go into your deck, but instead sit to the side and provide passive benefits. These are like the Knights in Dominion's Dark Ages expansion, in that each card is different and you can only buy the top from the stack (though Private Maids allow you to purchase the top two).
Private Maids: The base game and Expanding the House provide Private Maids. This means currency strategy is significantly more complex than in Dominion.
All of the currencies in Tanto Cuore are +1 cost (no free copper!) compared to their Dominion counterparts, and the currencies are VERY limited (the 3 Love card, equal to the Gold card in Dominion, only has EIGHT cards available in any given game). Here's a rundown of the core differences between Dominion and Tanto Cuore:Įconomy: Tanto Cuore's economic game is drastically different.
The first two expansions are Expanding the House and Romantic Vacation. There are currently 3 sets, though a fourth is in print and should be available very soon. While the two games play very similarly on the surface, I feel that Tanto Cuore has significantly more depth. Many people refer to Tanto Cuore as a retheme of Dominion. I play both Tanto Cuore and Dominion quite regularly.