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Author Topic: Tanto Cuore  (Read 8952 times)

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zahlman

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Tanto Cuore
« on: August 06, 2012, 07:42:36 pm »
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Another deck-building game. It's been around for a while, but I didn't see a thread, so...

Compared to Dominion, it seems to be far more political, and it's heavily "mat"-oriented. (You even have an option to permanently set aside your starting "estates", built right into the card, and there's competition built around doing so.) Those attributes seem to fit well with the game's (fairly heavy) theming, though. As far as I can tell, there are currently only 32 "Kingdom cards". The cards rules are written poorly by Dominion standards (they seem to have a lot of issues with keeping you honest, in particular), but they're summarized neatly on the cards - the card design has icons built in to indicate vanilla bonuses.

There are two "Estate" equivalents (confusingly, there is a card called Estate, which is totally different) and two "Province" equivalents (one pair from the base set and one pair from the expansion) and you're intended to use one set or the other - there are no "Duchies", but a fair amount of Action-Victory cards. All Victory card piles have only 8 cards regardless of the number of players - except the Estate equivalents; there are a total of 24 of those, but that includes starting decks.

The game is ended by running out two Action card piles (one of which is a sort-of Black Market deck that's always available), but piles have varying quantities of cards to start and cards are never trashed but instead returned to the supply. (A recommendation is made to remove 3 cards from basically each non-Treasure pile for a 2-player game.)

Somewhat curiously, the starting deck composition and hand size are the same, but "basic treasures" (there are no alternative treasures) cost 1 more each compared to in Dominion. Crucially, this means that you can only buy one Silver on your first two turns. This pattern extends to some other analogous cards I see as well. Despite the supply limitations, I suspect that the typical game is slower-paced overall.
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ConMan

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Re: Tanto Cuore
« Reply #1 on: August 06, 2012, 10:11:12 pm »
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I've got TC and its expansion, and according to someone at a game con I went to earlier this year it's now the biggest-selling non-customisable card game in Japan (although I don't know how big that market actually is). It's quite interesting, and the differences from Dominion are enough that it does play quite differently - for example, since the basic currency costs one more than in Dominion, a BM strategy isn't necessarily going to do as well even amongst relatively inexperienced players.

Not mentioned so far is the flavour - rather than building a kingdom, you're collecting maids (which will be incredibly unsurprising to anyone who knows much about modern Japanese culture). All the action and victory cards are different kinds of maid, and the currency you use to employ them is "Love". With a few exceptions, though, the artwork is pretty G/PG-rated, so nothing too racy.

The other big difference not mentioned is the form of attacking - in direct opposition to Donald's maxims, the "attacks" actually do target players. Specifically, you can buy "Illnesses" that attach to a player's chambered maids (some maids can either be moved from your deck or bought directly into your "chambers", making it like an Island) that render them worthless, as well as "Bad Habits" that go straight into the players chambers and act like a Curse except that they get even more powerful if you wind up with too many of them. I think the fact that these attacks use up a Buy rather than being part of a card Action helps balance their targeted nature, and typically you don't wind up using them much unless you need to pull someone's lead down - especially if they've got a powerful Special Maid (the "Black Market" deck mentioned) that you want to neutralise with an Illness.

It's fun, it's definitely heavily based on Dominion, but it's got some neat twists to it and I haven't played it nearly enough to work out how much its strategy differs from Dominion's.
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zahlman

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Re: Tanto Cuore
« Reply #2 on: August 07, 2012, 11:27:44 am »
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for example, since the basic currency costs one more than in Dominion, a BM strategy isn't necessarily going to do as well even amongst relatively inexperienced players.

I noticed that Action cards with rough analogies to basic Dominion cards often cost 1 more as well. Like, there's a "Province" that costs 9, and a "Market" that costs 6, except it also has a weird chaotic alt-VP condition attached to it (you get -2VP each if you have an even number of them, +2VP each if you have an odd number of them greater than 1).

When I said that the rules are written badly, I didn't just meant the wording; the PDF manuals are ill-behaved. Some sections of what should be text aren't selectable though most are, and the text often contradicts the displayed card art. FWIW, the card art seems to be correct in most cases, except that sometimes the card art mentions a bonus twice and the manual and website FAQ clarify that you only get the bonus once. Also, the rules are written in a way that's strongly tied to the set of already available cards, e.g. the section talking about how "Illnesses" work explicitly mentions the Maid who can get rid of them (implying that there will never be another card with a similar power).

So yeah, by our standards it's a mess, though it's good enough for most people to be able to play it... overall, card interactions are probably simpler than what's possible in Dominion, unless you consider mats to be complicated. I'm also not really convinced that nearly as much effort was put into balancing playtesting, but nothing stands out as truly horrible - although there are cards that I can reason out as being almost universally strong or weak based on Dominion experience and reasoning about the effect of the "basic cards cost more" context.

Perhaps most strikingly, there's a vanilla Peddler which costs 4, in a game where Silver costs 4, Provinces cost 9 and the Gold pile is shorter than Dominion's Platinum pile... I'm thinking that's got to be pretty good. There's also a terminal Silver costing 3 with a mini-Spy effect (you choose one player, which can be yourself), and another terminal Silver costing 3 that can be converted to VP (on your mat) instead.

On the flip side, strong draw seems to be quite rare; the base set's Smithy costs 7 and grants +3VP and a buy; the expansion has a vanilla Smithy for 5, but nothing ever gives you more than +3 Cards. Most of the Villages don't seem to give you a +Card, but it seems like you want them anyway just for the chance to chain something - anything - together. (There's a combo that's pretty much explicitly explained in the manual that lets you topdeck a Gold, but it uses two different terminals.) Even the closest equivalent to a Lab, while it costs $5 (rather than the expected-by-now $6), won't stack; "If you have 6 or more cards in your hand [after drawing], you must return a card from your hand to the top of your deck."

To me, the most interesting mechanic is that there are some cards that can be permanently set aside on a mat and generate a benefit each turn, but you need two available Actions to do so. This game really seems to reward engine-building more, except that means you need to worry more about the end-game condition in mirrors since you can end on 2 piles. (Also there's the part where it's so much harder to draw your deck...) Compared to Dominion, though, there is much less opportunity to gain things other than by buying them, so you probably can't build engines that revolve around trying to end the game suddenly once you get a small lead, or around controlling the pile sizes and applying the "threat is stronger than the execution" principle.

Quote
Not mentioned so far is the flavour - rather than building a kingdom, you're collecting maids (which will be incredibly unsurprising to anyone who knows much about modern Japanese culture). All the action and victory cards are different kinds of maid, and the currency you use to employ them is "Love". With a few exceptions, though, the artwork is pretty G/PG-rated, so nothing too racy.

Yeah, I... uh... tried to gloss over that because I didn't want it to become the focus of discussion. :)

Quote
The other big difference not mentioned is the form of attacking - in direct opposition to Donald's maxims, the "attacks" actually do target players. Specifically, you can buy "Illnesses" that attach to a player's chambered maids (some maids can either be moved from your deck or bought directly into your "chambers", making it like an Island) that render them worthless, as well as "Bad Habits" that go straight into the players chambers and act like a Curse except that they get even more powerful if you wind up with too many of them. I think the fact that these attacks use up a Buy rather than being part of a card Action helps balance their targeted nature, and typically you don't wind up using them much unless you need to pull someone's lead down - especially if they've got a powerful Special Maid (the "Black Market" deck mentioned) that you want to neutralise with an Illness.

Another big difference is that there is no Trash pile - you only ever return things to the Supply instead, and there are relatively few opportunities to do so. Definitely nothing remotely resembling Chapel.

The thing with the "Curses" is that since they're only ever played straight to a mat, they don't clog your deck. They're also correspondingly easier to get rid of, since you don't have to line them up in your hand. It only makes sense that they would have more powerful effects than simply -1VP, or they just wouldn't be worthwhile.

I actually really like the "omnipresent Black Market deck", and in fact independently decided to add something similar to a deck-building game of my own that I've been idly working on...

Quote
It's fun, it's definitely heavily based on Dominion, but it's got some neat twists to it and I haven't played it nearly enough to work out how much its strategy differs from Dominion's.

That's kind of why I made the thread, to figure it out? :)
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Kuildeous

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Re: Tanto Cuore
« Reply #3 on: August 07, 2012, 11:36:42 am »
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Quote
Not mentioned so far is the flavour - rather than building a kingdom, you're collecting maids (which will be incredibly unsurprising to anyone who knows much about modern Japanese culture). All the action and victory cards are different kinds of maid, and the currency you use to employ them is "Love". With a few exceptions, though, the artwork is pretty G/PG-rated, so nothing too racy.

Yeah, I... uh... tried to gloss over that because I didn't want it to become the focus of discussion. :)

What?! I can collect maids? Sign me up!
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ConMan

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Re: Tanto Cuore
« Reply #4 on: August 10, 2012, 03:09:02 am »
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I actually really like the "omnipresent Black Market deck", and in fact independently decided to add something similar to a deck-building game of my own that I've been idly working on...
Actually, since the special maids are unique and not just the unselected ones, I'd say it's probably closer to having a Thunderstone deck in there.

Yeah, I... uh... tried to gloss over that because I didn't want it to become the focus of discussion. :)

What?! I can collect maids? Sign me up!
Everyone loves maids!
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Tombolo

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Re: Tanto Cuore
« Reply #5 on: August 17, 2012, 02:48:08 am »
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I HAVE this, but among my friends, "people who enjoy deckbuilders" and "people who won't make fun of me for playing a meido game" are two pretty small groups, and they don't overlap at all, so I don't know that I'll ever get to play if there's not some online version.  :-[
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ConMan

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Re: Tanto Cuore
« Reply #6 on: August 17, 2012, 07:31:04 am »
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Actually, I was thinking that the isotropic code for running Dominion online probably wouldn't require massive amounts of changing to instead run Tanto Cuore. Certainly a lot of the mechanics are the same, or have a close analogue.
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AJD

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Re: Tanto Cuore
« Reply #7 on: August 20, 2012, 09:55:28 pm »
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I don't know what the phrase "Tanto Cuore" actually means; but every time I see it I think it says "Tanto Cruore", which is Latin for 'with so much blood and gore'.
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ConMan

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Re: Tanto Cuore
« Reply #8 on: August 20, 2012, 10:11:45 pm »
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I don't know what the phrase "Tanto Cuore" actually means; but every time I see it I think it says "Tanto Cruore", which is Latin for 'with so much blood and gore'.
Well, you've got the "Tanto" part right. It's allegedly from Italian meaning "Much heart", which probably indicates that they chose a title that mangles Italian as much as they tend to do English.
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AJD

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Re: Tanto Cuore
« Reply #9 on: August 20, 2012, 10:16:10 pm »
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I don't know what the phrase "Tanto Cuore" actually means; but every time I see it I think it says "Tanto Cruore", which is Latin for 'with so much blood and gore'.
Well, you've got the "Tanto" part right. It's allegedly from Italian meaning "Much heart", which probably indicates that they chose a title that mangles Italian as much as they tend to do English.

Oh, okay. That seems like legitimate Italian, actually.

I still want to read it as "cruore" instead of "cuore", though.
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zahlman

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Re: Tanto Cuore
« Reply #10 on: August 21, 2012, 01:05:47 pm »
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I don't know what the phrase "Tanto Cuore" actually means; but every time I see it I think it says "Tanto Cruore", which is Latin for 'with so much blood and gore'.

You might enjoy then...
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Tombolo

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Re: Tanto Cuore
« Reply #11 on: August 21, 2012, 01:08:50 pm »
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I don't know what the phrase "Tanto Cuore" actually means; but every time I see it I think it says "Tanto Cruore", which is Latin for 'with so much blood and gore'.

You might enjoy then...

Man, there are so many things I was expecting that link to be, and Umineko was not one of them.  Well played.
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HLennartz

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Re: Tanto Cuore
« Reply #12 on: August 25, 2012, 04:39:27 pm »
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I would love to get Tanto Cuore to the table. I dig the retheme, although I'm wary of some mechanics...particularly, Curses that can always be bought and directly target players (I imagine there are scaling issues between 2/3/4 player), and cards that stay in play permanently.

I want to play Barbararossa even more, though that'll be harder due to the more salacious art/theme. The reviews of that are even better than Tanto Cuore. It looks like it desperately needs more expansion, though.

Man, there are so many things I was expecting that link to be, and Umineko was not one of them.  Well played.

I've made on a card game based on Umineko, btw. It doesn't focus so much on the meta-world stuff as the paranaoia and backstabbing of Episode 1 and Episode 7's Tea Party (I mean the visual novels, of course).
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ConMan

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Re: Tanto Cuore
« Reply #13 on: August 26, 2012, 07:06:14 am »
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Really, the fact that the "Curses" cost 4, and the fact that there it's probably easier to get rid of them than get them in many boards, means that they're mostly there in situations where you want to slow down the player in the lead - most of the time you'd rather buy a maid, or more Love. "Illness" is probably more useful, especially if someone has an over-powered Special Maid (or you've replaced your -VP maid and want to cancel her penalty). It's easier to screw your opponents over with, for example, the maid who's worth + or - VP depending on whether there's an even or odd number of her in your deck - buy just one, and suddenly they find themselves down a huge number of VP.
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Tombolo

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Re: Tanto Cuore
« Reply #14 on: August 26, 2012, 01:15:40 pm »
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I've made on a card game based on Umineko, btw.

You have my attention if you feel like expounding!
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