Heart of Crown - Fairy Garden: Review

Heart of Crown - Fairy Garden: Review

Information:

Mechanics: Deck Builder, Card Drafting, Variable Player Powers, Hand Management
Player Age: 12+ 

Player Count: 2 - 4 Players

Time to Play: 45 Minutes 
Game Designer: Ginkgo

Publisher: Japanime Games

Expandable: Another base game and four expansions available

Year Published: 2013

BGG Weight: 2.7
Disclaimer: A review copy for the game was provided by the publisher.

Objective:

With the aid of the infamous Fae creatures, your aim is to elect a queen and fill the kingdom with supporters and common folk (represented by earning 20 succession points).

Card Anatomy:

Each card will have a cost which is found on the top left, and an ability, coins or succession points on the bottom of the card. There are several types of cards including succession, princess, actions, calamity, and territory cards. All cards besides the princess, succession and calamity cards have link symbols. When playing multiple cards on your turn, a card can only be played next to a linking symbol from a previous card. Some cards may have zero, one or two linking symbols.

Princess Cards:

These are the princesses you hope to elect, where each princess will either have a unique ability and/or succession points. All princesses cost 6 coins and once gained, will open the ability for you to score succession cards.

Basic Market Cards:

These market cards will remain in a static pile that can always be purchased unless the pile is depleted. They come in two types of cards; territory and succession.

Territory Cards:
These cards will generate you one, two or three coins and will help you to build a strong deck before you back your princess.

Succession Cards:
These are the folks that will help you win the game. They will come in points of 2, 3 or 5 and are most useful to gain once the princess has been backed. There are also apprentice cards that will be in your starting deck and have -2 succession points so these will either clog your deck or negatively impact the points in your domain.

Common Cards:

These cards will create the supply pile (marketplace) throughout the game. The majority of  these cards will be action cards but unique territory and succession cards will also appear within the common cards. Only 10 of these will be used per game and 30 of these cards are included in the base game, so there is plenty of variability for the main deck.

Rare Cards:

There are two rare cards in this game, both of which are succession cards. These will be shuffled with the common cards to create the supply pile. They are much more costly than the common cards. There is also only one of each type in the deck but they are a lot stronger than the common or basic market cards.

Calamity Cards:

These cards will negatively clog your deck. In this set they are represented as the curse cards and they can only be gained or removed through unique common cards.

Setup:

- Display all princess cards face up.
- Create a pile of curse cards equal to four times the number of players.

• - Create a starting deck of seven farming cards and three apprentice cards for each player.

- Assemble the basic market by creating unique piles for the farming village, city, large city, royal maid, senator and the duke cards.
- Create the supply pile by selecting 10 common cards (this can be done by using randomizer cards). Then shuffle the rare cards with the elected common cards.
- From the supply pile deal eight card face up in the middle of the table to create a random market for the players. If any card appears more than once place the same cards on top of each other to create a pile and continue doing this until there are eight unique piles.
- Select the first player and each player will draw five cards from their starting deck.

How to Play:

All players will take turns until one player  has reached 20 succession points or more in their domain to elect their already backed princess. Each turn has five phases; main, second, cleanup, draw and refresh phase.

Main Phase:

This is where you will play action and territory cards to draw more cards, gain coins and give yourself benefits while trying to slow the progress of other players. Each card will be played one at a time and as long as there is an open link on one of the played cards, you can continue to play cards. Some cards will be played from your hand instead of being played on the field (any of the cards that say hand activation).

Keep and recall a card:
When you back a princess three territory cards will create a domain with the princess. If you had previously backed a princess  you can keep an action card that can be recalled and added to a future  hand. This is done by playing an action card on one of the three territories in your domain (this domain will be explained more in the next phase). The only rules are that each territory can only hold one card and the card cost can not be greater than the territory cost.

Second Phase:

In this phase you can only do one of three actions; buy cards, back a princess, and set succession cards into your domain.

Buy Cards:
With the newly established coins you gained through playing cards in the first phase you can buy any amount of cards from the basic market or the random market.

Back Your Princess:
Time to pick a princess to support with succession cards and who will aide you with winning the game. To do this, spend 6 coins and choose one princess. Each princess has different abilities that will activate or succession points that will be gained now. With the backing of your princess, take three of your highest cost territory cards which were played this turn and place them face up in front of you. This is known as your domain and will not be played or go into your deck for the rest of the game. These three cards are the territories that will hold action cards for later use.

Set succession cards into your domain:
Now that you have a princess you can discard any succession cards in your hand to your domain (next to the territory cards and princess card). These will be removed from your deck but will help you score points towards winning the game. These are the people supporting your princess in gaining the throne.

Cleanup Phase:

Discard all leftover cards in your hand and cards you played during the turn to the discard pile, and loose any coins gained but not spent this turn.

Draw Phase:

Redraw a hand of five cards. If your draw deck is empty, like a typical deck builder, shuffle your discard pile and draw from your newly refreshed deck.

Market Refresh Phase:

If there is less than eight unique piles in the random market area, redraw cards from the supply pile until the random market has been refreshed to contain eight unique piles.

Determining the Winner:

During your turn if you have a total of 20 or more succession points in your domain (don't forget to include the negative points that some cards will give you), a coronation ceremony has begun. Each player will have an opportunity of one turn to attempt to reach 20 or more points to tie. If this happens the game goes into overtime and only the players that tied will continue playing. The game will continue until one player reaches 30 or more points. When they do they will be declared the winner and their princess will be placed on the throne.

Final Thoughts:

Pros:
- There are two paces to the game; before and after the princess is elected which keeps the game engaging.
- Plenty of variability in the base game that is continued throughout the expansions.
- The stack rule will always keep eight unique cards available to buy.
- Saving action cards through domains help elevate the strategy.

Cons:
- The setup and teardown time can be long.

'Heart of Crown - Fairy Garden' is a great deckbuilder that engages the players through two phases of deckbuilding. The first phase occurs before you back we a princess where you are growing your deck to have strong actions and a steady inflow of income. Once you elect a princess the game turns into a race of who can effectively optimise their deck the fastest while purchasing succession cards and trying to maintain a strong hand each round. Each princess feels unique and there will often be a strategy that you gravitate towards, whether it is succession points straight away or giving yourself ongoing/activated abilities that can help you on your path to victory. With the unique theme and engaging game play  'Heart of Crown - Fairy Garden' will be added to the collection and receiving many more plays.

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Heart of Crown - Fairy Garden on BGG
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