4) Heart of Crown: Northern Enchantress (2012)
Northern Enchantress is the first expansion and establishes the format for each future set. Its key addition is the new princess card: Princess of the North Anastasia. It also includes 13 new types of common cards, resulting in a set that has 67 new cards in total. Adding other races such as dwarves and elves does plenty to flesh out the Heart of Crown setting while not changing up the core gameplay of Heart of Crown too much. The new princess’ art is certainly concerning, with a lot of skin on a character that appears to be a child, making this a hard set to recommend, even if the new addition of magic-based cards adds more interactivity.
3) Heart of Crown: Six City Alliance (2014)
Six City Alliance has a few neat mechanics that come along with its new princess, new rare card, and 13 new types of common cards. This set is heavily based on curses and negative interactions. Players can clog each other’s hands and use the new princess to raise the cost of the cards in the market. The negative interactions might be polarizing, but if players are wanting a loud and mean addition to Heart of Crown this is the best that they can do. Unfortunately, this is another set with a child in a mostly undressed state, making it hard to wholeheartedly recommend.
2) Heart of Crown: Path Before Heaven (2015)
Path Before Heaven is the first expansion that follows the Fairy Garden standalone game. It includes a new princess, 10 support cards, and 13 new types of common cards. The new cards have an emphasis on needing prerequisites effects to occur before their own effects can play out, resulting in more planning needed but stronger combos. The new princess is built around getting supporter cards, which in turn make the princess’s effects even stronger after succession. Building up to the election is much more exciting thanks to this expansion, even if the new strategic cards might slow the experience down a little.
1) Heart of Crown: Far East Territory (2012)
Far East Territory adds a new princess (Ouka, Far East Mathematician Princess) and 12 new types of common cards. While there are five fewer cards in this set than in Northern Enchantress, it feels like they do much more with less. Far East Territory‘s common cards emphasize trade with the new region, dramatically changing the feel of Heart of Crown, much like Romantic Vacation did for Tanto Cuore. This is the set that revealed how much depth Heart of Crown can have, which is fully realized when Heart of Crown: Fairy Garden was released one year later.
