Concordia: Building in the Roman provinces

A friend of mine recently let me borrow a few games since he’s been fairly busy recently. One game I now have in my possession is Concordia.  I love this game — and it’s been on my wishlist forever — but I have never got around to buying it. Maybe a new gift card to my friendly local game store will soon remedy that?

Anyway, Concordia has a great mix of board-game mechanics: resource management, deck building, set collecting and point-to-point movement along a colorful map. The artwork on the box isn’t too exciting (and doesn’t really convey what the game exactly does), but, believe me, the game is solid. And, the rule book is 2 front-to-back pages, and one setup sheet. That’s seriously just 5 pages for a medium-heavy board game. Mind blown!

Concordia plays 2-5 players, and, according to the box, plays about 90 minutes. I’ve never actually played a game of this that lasted less than 2 hours. Our 4-player game recently lasted about 2.5 hours. It’s a meaty game, which can run into some serious AP near the last third of the game. The goal of the game is to move your colonists through Italy or the Roman provinces, build homes in cities, gain resources and score victory points based on which cards you purchase from the display area. Note: I played a 4-player game of this, and the photos show Italian provinces, which is the correct map for that many players. When it’s a 5-player game, you play the side with the Roman provinces.

Each player starts out with the same deck of 7 cards, and a storehouse that contains 2 land colonists, 2 sea colonists, 2 food, and one each of cloth, wine, brick and tool resources. You can only hold resources you have space for in your storehouse. As you put more colonists out on the board, another space opens up for resources. To take an action in the game, you play one of the 7 cards in your starting deck and leave it in a discard pile in front of you.

The first card is the Architect. When you play this, you can more your colonists on the board as many spaces as you have colonists out there. Everybody starts with 2 in Roma at the beginning, so you can only more two times on a route, either one guy moving twice or each guy moving once. After moving, you can build a house in a city adjacent to any of your colonists, if you have the required resources. It’s cheaper to build a house in a brick city vs. the cloth city, which is the most expensive.

The next card is the Prefect. When you Prefect, you choose a province to produce a resource for you, which is depicted by bonus markers at the top of the map. For every house that’s also in that province, that player receives the good its house is sitting on. The bonus tile is then flipped over to show coins. Alternatively, if you choose the Prefect card, you can collect all the coins that are showing and reset the bonus tiles to their resource side. You begin with two Prefect cards in your starting hand. Lastly, there is a Praefectus Magnus card (which doubles your bonus) that’s passed clockwise to the next player.

Another card is the Mercator card. This allows you to gain 3 sestertii (dollars) and to trade 2 types of goods to the bank either by selling or buying. The dollar amount of each good is marked on top of the storehouse. The player can sell or buy as many goods as he wants, as long as the transaction only involves two types.

The next card is the Senator. This allows you to buy two cards from the display as long as you have the required resources. On each card, there’s a red banner that shows the card’s cost, and depending on where it is sitting on the display, may require extra goods as well. After you do the Senator action, the cards are moved down and new cards are flipped over.

The next card is the Diplomat, which allows you to copy any other player’s last action card. This comes in handy when you’ve already played a card from your hand but want to do the action again. You hope another player will play that card during that round.

Lastly, the Tribune card allows you to pick up your discarded cards and put them back into your hand. You also gain 1 dollar for each card you pick up after 3 cards. It also gives you an option to place a colonist on Roma if you pay a food and a tool.

The cards in the display area are phased in and get more powerful as the game continues, such as another Mercator card that gives you 5 dollars instead of 3. Three more types of cards are also introduced from here. A Colonist card allows you to place new colonists (for a food and a tool) inside any other city you have a house on, or you can get 5 dollars plus 1 dollar for each of your colonists on the board.

Another new card is the Consul, which allows you to buy one card from the display without paying the extra costs based on its location in the display. Lastly, Specialists cards allow a certain resource to be produced from all the houses you own of that specific resource.

In addition to a card’s costs, there is another label at the bottom of the card that represents a Roman God. This is important for end-game VPs. When you buy cards from the display, you’re collecting sets of cards to maximize victory points. The different sets are:

• Vesta: The value of all your goods converted to cash, plus your cash. For every 10 dollars, it’s 1 VP.
• Jupiter: For every house inside a non-brick city, it’s 1 VP.
• Saturnus: For every province with at least one player’s house, it’s 1 VP.
• Mercurius: For each type of good the player produces with his or her house, it’s 2 VP.
• Mars: For each colonist on the board, it’s 2 VP.
• Minerva: For each city with a house related to the card, it’s the number of VP shown on the card.

And therein lies the brilliance of the game. You gain the VPs shown on a card, and it multiplies by how many cards you have of that type. If you happen to have a house in each province, start buying up those Saturnus cards, because your scores per card will be of high value.

The game ends when somebody places all their houses on the board or the cards in the display are all purchased. The person who triggers the end of the game gains the Concordia card, which is 7 points, and then everybody else has one last turn.

I love how each game is different because the tiles are placed semi-randomly. Each city has an A, B, C or D, and you place those matching tiles there and flip them over for the resource. The game scales well, too, and uses a double-sided map depending on how many people are playing the game. And a fun fact: Concordia was a 2014 nominee for the Kennerspiel des jahres, which is an board-game award for the “expert game of the year.”