UlasanAnime.com – At Anime Expo, a booth was observed selling the localized version of Tanto Cuore, a deck-building card game. While the term “tabletop game” is used here in the context of games found on Boardgamegeek, the game’s artwork features contributions from several popular Japanese artists known within the anime, manga, and gaming communities, making its presence at an anime convention fitting. The game is packaged in a cardboard box, slightly larger than a decade-old card box for Aquarian Age, a semi-popular anime-style Trading Card Game, which also featured artwork by Aoi Nanase, an artist whose work the author admits not to be a major fan of.
The booth was run by a tabletop game retailer that was also spearheading the localization efforts for Tanto Cuore. The game is originally Japanese and is described as a “maid” themed spin on the popular deck-building game Dominion. For those familiar with Dominion, the “maid” theme simply means that instead of kingdom cards, the game uses maid cards. For newcomers to deck-building games, the core mechanic involves a personal deck of cards from which players draw and play cards based on their abilities. These abilities typically allow players to add or remove cards from their deck, or influence victory points and conditions. A key aspect of deck-building games is upgrading the deck by acquiring better cards and removing weaker ones, competing with other players for desirable cards, and strategically managing the deck to enable powerful card combinations.
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In Tanto Cuore, these mechanics are applied to a theme involving maids, love, serving, and employment, presenting a rather peculiar concept. The author muses on the implications of amassing a large number of maids, accumulating victory points, and the potential interpretations of living like a king, having an abundance of “love” to spend, or managing numerous “concubines.” The question also arises regarding maids who are part of the deck but not actively serving, and the desire for more readily available “Marianne” cards.
Currently, there is limited official English information available for Tanto Cuore. Two expansions have been released in Japanese, with additional special promo items also available. While translated rules and card lists for the first and second expansions can be found through common sources and directly from Arclight’s website, the localization company intends to release these expansions in English only if sales of the base game are sufficiently strong. The company is actively seeking marketing support, acknowledging that a receptive demographic for this particular brand of Japanese fantasy “lunacy” likely exists within the board game community. The author emphasizes that the game itself is solid, offering unique refinements in an elegant and simple “Japanese maid” style, and possesses the same compelling grip as Dominion and similar games, making it a legitimate title even before considering its “moe-moe-meido” appeal.
Arclight, the Japanese company publishing Tanto Cuore, also produces other original games, including an “idol game” and titles like “Dynamite Nurses.” They also handle localized Western favorites such as Thunderstone and established board games like Powergrid. The author expresses interest in Arclight’s idol game and generally prefers cover art from artists other than Aoi Nanase. Another game mentioned is “Anime-Nazi-Bishoujo-Invades-Russia” (Barbarossa), which includes translated card and rule texts, and is considered tempting due to the low likelihood of its publication in the US.
A romanized list of artists who contributed to the base set of Tanto Cuore is provided, with a note of disappointment that this information was not similarly presented on the English language website, especially given the popularity of some of these artists and their existing listings on Boardgamegeek. The official card lists on Arclight’s site do feature romanized artist names, prompting a question about the discrepancy.
CARNELIAN,??COMTA,??Takahito Ekuchi,??Takuya Fujima,??Takehito Harada,??Akira Hayase,??Kira Inugami,??Ishigaa,??kawaku,??KEI,??Souji Kusaka,??Misa Matoki,??Rin Minase,??Miki Miyashita,??Misoka Nagatsuki,??Nana,??Aoi Nanase,??Hiroki Ozaki,??Poyoyon Rock,??Ruchie,??Satoru Satou,??Mushimaro Tachikawa,??Yuiko Tokui,??Ofuu Yamadori.
