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.
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.
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...
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?