The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

Back in my birthday times, I had a boyfriend get me a present! It was clearly the best game of all time, because it was a game involving collecting sexy maids and placing them in your private chamber to increase your amount of “service.” It is called Tanto Cuore. It is a game that I own. It’s pretty fun.

Tanto Cuore is basically Dominion. It came out in the waves of deck-building games that hit when Dominion became popular. However, there are several twists on the formula in the game that I rather like, which make it feel fairly different from a normal Dominion game. Let me go over them now.

First off, there is a mechanic where you can move maids from your deck into your “Private chamber” by burning actions. Once they’re in your chamber, they count towards victory, but they aren’t in your deck. It’s sort of like Island from the Seaside expansion. Not all maids can do this, but a lot of them can. The best part is the “Estates” of the game are maids that can do this. Moving those starting “Estates” out of your deck is awesome, even if it does cost 2 actions, which is a big setback. It also lets you stock up on little cards with small benefits early, then tug them out of your deck so you can use your big cards more often as the game progresses. It’s a nice little mechanic that doesn’t require you to always have to have certain “deck thinning” cards out for people to use.

Secondly, there are so many alternate ways to get victory points than just buying flat victory point cards! So many cards have little bonuses attached to them if you collect certain things. There’s a set of three “Crescent Sisters” who give you a point bonus for every full set of them you have. The “Estate” card, Colette Framboise (Did I mention I love how fucking ridiculous all the card names in this are, too? I love it.) gives you a 5 point bonus if you own more of her than any other player, which actually gives you a reason to buy “estates.” Ophelia Grail will either be worth extra positive VP or negative VP depending on if you have an even or odd number of her card in your deck. And so on. There’s way more strategy variety because there are more ways to rack up VP than “Buy Gold, Buy Province” in every permutation of the cards.

Third, they have this deck of “Private Maids.” You only deal two of them out at a time to buy, at random, and they are essentially buffs. Are the constant buffs worth spending your money on, instead of cards? You get to decide, but what Private Maids show up in the game drastically changes it. It’s pretty cool!

Finally, there is way more interaction between players in this game. It is SUPER EASY to attack players. In Dominion, attacking normally involved investing so many resources in attack cards that, in my experience, you ended out screwing yourself out of getting enough victory points. In this game, two Love (the “gold” resource) gets you a Bad Habit (a Curse) to throw on any player. If a player has 4 or more Bad Habits, they are worth -2 instead of -1. It’s trivial to use an extra buy to attack an opponent, or still do something useful on a turn with a shitty draw by playing a Bad Habit. It helps make a bad turn not so bad, and makes attacking a much, much more viable option, especially in card configurations with more buys on the board in general.

Seriously, it’s just a really fun “variant” of Dominion, and the flavor is totally stupid in an awesome way. Well, if you can laugh at the ridiculousness of Japanese Maid Fetishes or whatever. I mean, just by hearing the premise, you know if you’re going to like the flavor. I think it adds to the game, and the art is nice. I will definitely play more, and I’m interested in the expansions, but damn, are they expensive. This game is kind of expensive! Oh well. Give it a try if you can. It’s nice.