Concordia

Product Information

Some reward a specialist—if someone has focused on building trading houses in wine or cloth regions, that could lead to a big payday during final scoring. Concordia is a classic trading in the Mediterranean game that seems to have become something of a meme in board gaming. Concordia: Digital Edition is a faithful adaptation of a strategic board game ranked in the Top 20 board games of all time. But most beautifully of all, the entire complex web of decisions and incentives moves because of the choices of other players. Frankly, I was shocked during that recent five-player game at how everything you need is on a small double-sided card that serves as a player aid.

Concordia is an advertisement for the best that Euro games have to offer: simple rules, tense decisions, player interaction (without overt player conflict), and near limitless replayability. My concern is replayability, as at the base level there’s not much variation, but several games in it’s yet to be a factor.

Such favorites don’t need to be ones I’m always itching to play; in Concordia’s case, it’s more a delight to rediscover a handful of times per year. And while I didn’t trouble the leaders as much as I’d hoped, playing was a thoroughly satisfying experience and I actually found it pretty relaxing – despite being perplexing at times.

And while you’re at it, you may want to hire some more advisors, or recruit some more colonists in Rome. Be sure to watch your rivals to determine which goals they are pursuing and where you can outpace them!I will say the publicly open games are pretty limited and trying to find a random game to join isn’t particularly easy. Each player receives all the house and colonist pieces of one color, a matching deck of cards, and a matching warehouse. In fact, that’s what put me off trying this one in the first place, despite its being nominated for the Kennerspiel des Jahres in 2014. You are able to dig into the details of your score and see where you made your points (although I also wish that there was more of a description of what these categories were rather than just the icons representing them as even after 20+ games I still can’t remember what they mean) however a lot of the climax of the game is taken away from us by the decision not to include this cumulative scoring. The last time I was caught up in so much calculation and resource conversion and struggling to make long term plans was my first play of Terra Mystica, and I think Concordia may be more brutal than it.

My guess is, after one play, at least, that there are a few general strategies that may work, although I can’t be confident about that at all at this point. If you can’t tell already I’m a huge fan of this adaptation, it’s not often I’m so blown away by an app version of a game when I’ve not already played the physical game a tonne but this one has made me want to get the physical game to the table which is high praise indeed. This feels like a minor gripe in a board game adaptation that does nearly everything else right however not a game goes by where I don’t wish it wasn’t included. It is so simple game to teach “play a card and do what it says” but the scoring and deckbuilding make it very interesting.The mechanisms involved as well as the interesting and unique scoring make for a game packed with challenge and decision making while managing to stay light of rules and complexity. Salsa - This expansion contains two additional maps - Byzantium and Hispania - and a new trading good - Salt, and a new Forum mechanic. The only issue I’ve run into is occasionally having to manually refresh the game to see that it is now my turn. So even if it does go south a bit after the fifteenth play, I can confidently say right now that Concordia is fantastic. Salsa also comes with Forum cards, which are another way to utilize your resources, but to me they take the focus away from action on the board.