Heart of Crown - Six City Alliance: Review

Information:

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

Player Count: 2 - 4 Players

Time to Play: 30 Minutes
Game Designer: Ginkgo

Publisher: Japanime Games

Year Published: 2015
BGG Weight: 3.0
Disclaimer: A review copy for the game was provided by the publisher.

Objective:

It is time to explore the second expansion for Heart of Crown: ‘Fairy Garden'. This expansion brings in a lot of complex cards to be used in the random market, a new princess and a new card type called ‘misfortune’.

Misfortune Cards:

The misfortune cards are similar to curse cards from the base game and aim to clog your deck. However, unlike curses they are more easily removed as the act can be performed as a hand activation for anytime they are in your hand.

There are multiple cards in this expansion that use these misfortune cards. For example, if you were to use the card ‘The Magic Lamp’ generates a large amount of coins and the misfortune cards are added to your deck when this card is played to counterbalance the coin generation. Other cards can use misfortunes to delay your opponents potential victory, as you will use these cards to help clog their deck.

Rare Cards:

There is one rare location card added in this expansion; 'Oasis City Nefertilli'. This is a very beneficial territory to place into your domain when you back your princess as it has a cost of 9, which therefore allows you to bank more expensive actions on this territory for later use.

Princess:

The new princess will give you the card that was just discussed as well as contraband tokens. These tokens allow you to increase the cost of certain cards in the random market to deter your opponents from improving their deck with said cards.

Banish Cards:

This expansion adds two new banish cards that allows players to streamline their deck. One of which only works immediately after purchase, where the other banishes each time it is played.

Attack Cards:

There are three new attack cards that do not use misfortunes to further enhance the interactivity in the game. These cards will either discard cards from the opponent's hand or deck, or will add farming villages (the worst way to gain coins) in order to clog up their deck.

Stack Cards:

These cards are unique. When the game is first set up, rather than going into the random market deck, they will instead be placed in a complete stack during setup; taking one of the eight possible spots in the random market.

Complex Cards:

This expansion had more complex cards than the first expansion. Two of the most complex cards are ‘Fishing Village’ and ‘Secret Stash’. Fishing village will only allow you to draw one card (replacing fishing village once it is played) but the advantage of this card is that it will let you play two cards attached to this card to help you play more on your turn. Secret stash does the same thing as a city territory card but can only be used once. At first glance it appears useless, however it is very useful. As it is an action card, it can be used as a banked card in your domain and you can use it on another turns when you require the money.

Final Thoughts:

Pros:
- Interesting and complex cards to add to the game.
- Doesn't add many new mechanisms, but enhances the mechanisms of the base game.

Cons:
- The first expansion is easier to learn.
- Not many cards that use the misfortune mechanism.

If you have a good grasp on the original 'Heart of Crown - Fairy Garden', then this expansion is a welcome addition as it adds more intriguing and hard to master cards to the random market as well as a new princess and the new misfortune card. This expansion may be hard to learn when compared to the first expansion but it brings with it more complexity and more cards to help enhance the replayability of the base game. If you enjoyed the base game and wanted more cards with increased complexity then this expansion is recommended for you.

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