Tabletop Game Review: Tanto Cuore: Expanding the House

Tanto Cuore: Expanding the House

Japanime Games

Players: 1-4

Play Time: 45-60 Minutes

Tanto Cuore is the game that set Japanime Games up for success. It’s only natural that the hit deck-builder game gets an expansion. Japanime Games is celebrating Tanto Cuore‘s 10 year anniversary, so let’s take a look at Tanto Cuore: Expanding the House, the first expansion in the franchise.

Tanto Cuore is a competitive deck-building game for 2-4 players. Players will take turns filling their house with their favorite maids as they race to earn the most victory points at the end. I won’t spend much time talking about the rules of the base game since I covered them in my review of the original Tanto Cuore, but I will go over the new mechanics that Expanding the House brings to the table.

Tanto Cuore: Expanding the House‘s main addition to the game are buildings for houses. The three new buildings act as construction cards that can enhance and protect houses from illnesses and bad habits. The Garden card awards a victory point for each one in a player’s house and if a player obtains four gardens they are immune to event cards.  Lily Gardens give players a crazy 4 victory points, but the number of these buildings can’t exceed the number of Gardens and Ririko’s in a player’s house. Finally, the Estate gives two victory points, but a maid chief must be placed under the Estate.

Tanto Cuore: Expanding the House can be played as a standalone game if desired. The set contains two need maid chiefs, 16 new general maids, and 9 new private maids. All of the new maids feel fresh and play at least a little differently than the base maids. Quite a few maids interact with buildings, which isn’t surprising when you consider the theme of this set.

While Expanding the House can be played as its own game, I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it. Without the events from the first set, the buildings don’t have as much weight as they could. Gardens don’t have much value beyond points when there aren’t events to attack other players with. This alone makes Expanding the House loses its identity a bit, and most players will prefer to just play with the base title. Still, the new maids are fun to play with, and some of my favorite card effects come from Expanding the House. This set isn’t a bad game by any means, it just isn’t as enjoyable as the original.

As an expansion, Expanding the House is much more enjoyable. The buildings complement the event cards from the base game perfectly, allowing for more interaction. Players will need to decide how much to invest in gardens, and if they fail to do so they can suffer from many illnesses and bad habits. The new private maids can be added to the existing stack, leading to much more variety. The general maids can be mixed and matched to create the ideal game. More options are always a good thing, and this certainly applies to Tanto Cuore.

While it doesn’t live up to the expectation of the original, Tanto Cuore: Expanding the House is still an enjoyable time. It doesn’t play as well as a standalone due to the cards not having much synergy without the base maids. Still, it’s a fun time as an expansion, and still a decent deck builder even by itself.

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