Review: Concordia

Introduction & Overview

Two thousand years ago, the Roman Empire ruled the lands around the Mediterranean Sea. With peace on the borders, harmony within the provinces, a uniform law, and a single currency, the economy thrived and gave rise to powerful Roman dynasties that expanded into numerous cities. Lead one of these dynasties; colonize the most remote realms of the Empire; expand your trade network and please the ancient gods to gain their favor. If you plan your strategy properly, you will be able to grow your dynasty and make it the most powerful in the Roman Empire.

This is the premise of Concordia, a game designed by Mac Gerdts, author of other well-known titles such as Imperial, Navegador, or Antike. The game was first published in 2013 by PD-Verlag (in English/German), becoming one of the nominees for that year’s Kennerspiel des Jahres alongside Istanbul (winner) and Rokoko. The illustrations are handled by Marina Fahrenbach, the publisher’s usual artist (Navegador, Antike II, Antike Duellum).

In Spain, the game is published by Ediciones MasQueOca, although it is relatively language-independent (the cards have some text, but with a small quick-reference sheet and the iconography, reading is not necessary). It supports plays for 2 to 5 players, with a minimum suggested age of 13 and an approximate duration of 100 minutes. The MSRP is €44.99. For this review, a review copy of the English/German edition by PD Verlag was used.

Important: if you already know the game and/or are only interested in my opinion about it, you can go directly to the Opinion section. The Content and Mechanics sections are especially intended for those who do not know the game and prefer to get a general idea of how it works.

Go to Personal Opinion

Components

Inside a two-piece cardboard box (lid and bottom) measuring 37.1×27.2×5.6 cm (a large rectangular box similar to Navegador or Imperial 2030), we find the following components:

• Double-Sided Game Board (cardboard)
• 75 Houses (15 in each of the colors: green, yellow, red, blue, and black) (wooden)
• 15 Ships (3 in each of the colors: green, yellow, red, blue, and black) (wooden)
• 15 Colonists (3 in each of the colors: green, yellow, red, blue, and black) (wooden)
• 5 Score Markers (1 in each of the colors: green, yellow, red, blue, and black) (wooden)
• 12 Burgundy Wine Tokens (wooden)
• 20 Red Brick Tokens (wooden)
• 18 Yellow Food Tokens (wooden)
• 15 Grey Tool Tokens (wooden)
• 18 Blue Cloth Tokens (wooden)
• 5 Storehouse Player Boards (cardboard)
• 30 City Tiles (cardboard)
• 24 Bonus Markers (cardboard)
• 48 Coins (cardboard):
  • 16 of Value 1
  • 12 of Value 2
  • 11 of Value 5
  • 9 of Value 10
• 72 Cards (59×91 mm):
  • 65 Personality Cards
  • 5 Reference Cards
  • 1 Concordia Card
  • 1 Praefectus Magnus Card
• Rulebook
• Quick Reference Sheet
• Historical Booklet

How to Play

In Concordia, players represent Roman dynasties striving to expand the Empire. Through a hand-management system that replaces the designer’s classic rondel, players will establish houses in various locations to gain different elements (resources, new cards, coins, or new colonists/ships) that will allow them to acquire new assets to prosper.

Key Concepts

As always, we will start with the double-sided Game Board:

• One side shows a map of the Roman Empire featuring regions bordering the Mediterranean, suitable for 3 to 5 player games.
• The other side shows a map of Italia, suitable for 2 to 4 player games.
• On both maps, we find the typical score track around the border, with spaces numbered from 0 to 99.
• On the map, we find several regions highlighted with specific colors. Within each of these regions, there are 2 or 3 cities. Each region shows its name and a display banner with its identification number.
• Cities are connected via land routes (dashed grey lines) or sea routes (dashed blue lines).
• In the upper left corner, there is a grid of rectangular spaces representing the different regions mentioned earlier (with the banner, identification number, and region name).
• Finally, in the upper right corner, there is a row of spaces for the display of available cards. At the bottom of each space, a symbol may appear representing resources that the player must pay in addition to the base card cost to purchase it.

The central axis of the game is a virtual rondel defined by a deck of cards (which can be expanded). On their turn, the active player will resolve the effects of a card, and it will remain in their discard pile until a card that recovers the entire pile is played. These cards allow various actions, as we will see later. Additionally, each card grants points toward the end-game scoring. Each player starts with an initial hand of 7 cards that can be expanded during the game. A brief description of them:

• On the top banner, we have the character’s name, along with an icon representing their role.
• In the center of the card, there is text and/or symbols defining the action it can perform.
• For cards that players can purchase (not the starting ones for each player), a banner shows the base purchasing cost.
• Finally, the bottom banner indicates the deity associated with the card (which scores points at the end of the game).

Another important element is the cities. On the board, city tiles are placed over them, showing a specific resource (which we will discuss below). These tiles have a letter on their back, making their distribution on the board slightly structured.

The players’ goal is to prosper by establishing houses in the different cities on the map. Each player will have 15 houses, though they can only place one house per city, regardless of the presence of other players—although the lower the presence in a city, the lower the cost of building there.

To establish presence in these cities, players will use their land colonists and sea colonists. They must move along the established routes, keeping in mind that sea colonists can only travel by sea routes and land colonists only by land routes. When entering the board, both units start from a specific city, but once they leave it, they will only move along the routes—that is, they will never re-enter a city space.

Having a presence in a city provides resources whenever its region is harvested. All players with a house in a harvested city will receive one unit of the corresponding resource, regardless of which player performed the action. The regions then become locked, flipping over bonus markers (which provide an extra good to the player executing the action) on the region matrix in the upper left corner. These flipped tiles show coins that will be awarded to the player who resets the regions.

Each player has a storehouse board that holds resources, as well as colonists and ships not yet introduced to the main board. These boards feature 10 spaces, and players cannot exceed this storage limit (excess resources are discarded). The top section of this board displays the exchange rate for each resource in coins.

Coins are crucial for purchasing goods in the market as well as constructing new houses. They can only be acquired in a few ways: selling goods, playing certain cards, resetting regions so they can be harvested again, or resetting your hand of cards.

Finally, resources are necessary to build new houses and buy new cards, in addition to being sellable for cash. There are five types: brick, food, tools, wine, and cloth.

That is enough to get started.

1. Set up the main board on the desired side (in 2-player games, the Italia map must be used; in 5-player games, the Imperium map must be used).
2. Shuffle the city tiles separated by the letter on their back. Place one on each city on the board matching the letter indicated (tiles with the letter D are not used on the Italia map).
3. Based on the tiles placed in each region, place a bonus marker on the matrix in the upper left corner corresponding to the most valuable good produced among all cities in that region.
4. Each player chooses a color and receives a storehouse board, 3 land colonists, 3 sea colonists, 7 personality cards, and a scoring marker.
5. All players place their scoring marker on space 0.
6. They also place one land colonist and one sea colonist in Roma. The other two land and sea colonists are placed on the first two spaces of the top two rows of their storehouse board.
7. Prepare the card display deck. Separate the cards according to the Roman numeral on their back. Take the stacks corresponding to the player count (e.g., if there are 3 players, take stacks I, II, and III). Afterwards, stack each small deck in descending order (stack III at the bottom, stack I at the top). Then, reveal and place the top 7 cards into the card display spaces on the board.
8. Place the resources and coins to form a general supply.
9. Each player receives 2 food, 1 brick, 1 cloth, 1 tools, and 1 wine from the supply.
10. Randomly choose a starting player, who receives 5 coins. Moving clockwise, each subsequent player receives one more coin than the player to their right.
11. The last player also receives the Praefectus Magnus card.

We are ready to begin!

Game Flow

A game of Concordia is played over a series of turns until one of the end-game conditions is met. Players take alternating turns, starting with the first player.

On their turn, a player simply chooses one card from their hand and plays it face up onto their discard pile (so that only the last played card is visible). They execute the card’s effect, and the turn passes to the next player.

The personalities available to players during the game are:

• Architect: First, the player gains movement points equal to the number of colonists (land and sea) they have on the board. These points can be distributed among their colonists as desired. A colonist moves to an empty route connected to the city it currently occupies for one movement point; it cannot end its movement on an occupied route (though it can spend points to move through occupied routes). Afterwards, the player may build houses in cities connected to a route occupied by one of their colonists, paying the construction cost based on what the city produces:
  • Brick City: 1 food and 1 coin
  • Food City: 1 brick, 1 food, and 2 coins
  • Tool City: 1 brick, 1 tools, and 3 coins
  • Wine City: 1 brick, 1 wine, and 4 coins
  • Cloth City: 1 brick, 1 cloth, and 5 coins
  • Additionally, the coin cost is multiplied by the total number of existing houses in that city plus one (for example, if building the fourth house in a city, the monetary cost is multiplied by four).
• Prefect: Allows the player to gain resources or money:
  • To gain resources, the player selects a province whose marker on the top-left matrix shows a good. Flip that tile, receiving the indicated good. If that player also holds the Praefectus Magnus card, they gain a second unit of that bonus good (then pass the card to the next player as indicated by the arrow). Additionally, each city in that province produces its generated good for every player who owns a house there.
  • To gain money, the player simply collects all coins shown on the bonus markers in the top-left matrix. Afterward, flip all marker tiles showing coins back to showing goods.
• Colonist: The player can place new colonists onto the board or gain money. For each new colonist placed, the player must pay 1 food and 1 tools. The colonist can be placed in Roma or in any city where the player owns a house. If choosing income instead, the player receives 5 coins plus 1 additional coin per colonist on the board.
• Mercator: The player receives the amount of coins specified on the card (3 or 5) and can perform two trade transactions of good types—buying or selling a specific good type (regardless of quantity)—up to 2 times.
• Diplomat: Allows the player to copy the action of the last card played by any opponent, though copying the Tribune or another Diplomat is not allowed.
• Senator: The player can purchase up to 2 cards from the display card row. To do so, they must pay the goods indicated on the card plus any additional goods shown below the display slot (a question mark symbol allows payment with any good). Afterwards, shift the remaining display cards to the left and refill the display with new cards from the right.
• Consul: The player can buy one personality card from the display by paying only the resources printed on the card itself, ignoring any additional costs from the slot position. Then, shift and refill the display from the right, just like with the Senator.
• Specialists: Each house in a city producing the specialist’s corresponding good produces one unit of that good (other players receive nothing).
• Tribune: The player takes all cards from their discard pile back into their hand. If there were more than 3 cards in the pile (including the Tribune), the player gains 1 coin per card in the pile beyond 3. Additionally, they may place one land or sea colonist in Roma by returning 1 food and 1 tools to the supply.

Once the card’s effect is resolved, the turn passes to the player on the left.

Game End

The end of the game is triggered during the turn in which the last display card is purchased or a player builds their final house on the board. After this turn, every player receives one final turn, except the player who triggered the game end. That player immediately takes the Concordia card, which awards 7 points straight away.

Final scoring then takes place. Each player sorts their cards according to the deity shown on them. Then, each deity is evaluated by multiplying the evaluated criteria by the number of cards the player owns for that deity:

• Vesta: Each card of this deity grants 1 point for every 10 coins held (all remaining resources are first sold according to the rates on the storehouse board).
• Jupiter: Each card of this deity grants 1 point for each house in a city with a temple (all cities except brick cities) (maximum 15 points per card).
• Saturn: Each card of this deity grants 1 point for each province where the player has at least one house (maximum 12 points per card).
• Mercury: Each card of this deity grants 2 points for each type of resource the player can produce with their houses (maximum 10 points per card).
• Mars: Each card of this deity grants 2 points for each colonist (land or sea) on the board (maximum 12 points per card).
• Minerva: Each card of this deity grants the points specified on the card for each city producing the designated resource.

The player with the most victory points wins. In case of a tie, victory goes to the player in possession of the Praefectus Magnus card, or whichever tied player would receive it next in turn order.

Personal Opinion

Today we review the third nominee for the 2013 Kennerspiel des Jahres, after having previously reviewed Istanbul (read its tocho-review here) and Rokoko (read its tocho-review here). A game by one of board gaming’s ultimate single-handed creators, Mac Gerdts—a designer with a soft spot for rondels and massive boxes. Let’s see how Concordia turned out.

A few reviews ago, specifically in Madeira (read its tocho-review here), I mentioned what elegance in game design means to me. To sum it up, I consider a game more elegant the higher its ratio of depth to rule complexity is. Madeira was a prime example of an inelegant design, featuring clunky mechanics packed with edge cases that led to an overly rigid gameplay flow.

Yet, as I wrote those lines, another title kept popping into my mind as the exact antithesis to the game I was writing a tocho-review on. And that game is none other than today’s subject. If Concordia excels at anything, it is elegance. With a rulebook barely over 3 pages long (setup page aside), we are met with a Eurogame brimming with options that keeps players on edge until the very last moment.

Mechanically, it boils down to this: on your turn, play a card from your hand and apply its effect. Next player! Sure, each card has its nuances, but they are ultimately just eight character types with atomic, easy-to-digest actions: the prefect harvests a region, the mercator trades two good types, the senator buys new cards, and so on. Remarkably simple.

However, as mentioned, elegance is not just about accessible rules and a lack of exception-heavy design. Depth is required. And of that, my friends, Concordia has plenty.

Let’s talk about card timing. Many of you might not be familiar with Gerdts’ other designs. What you need to know is that he is an outspoken champion of the rondel mechanism for action selection. A wheel divided into sectors representing actions, paired with limited movement allowance for a player’s pawn. On their turn, the active player only has access to a subset of actions; once passed, those actions won’t be reachable again until several turns later. Navegador, Hamburgum, and Imperial are well-known examples of this design philosophy.

Yet looking at the components, you’ll notice there isn’t a rondel anywhere on the board, right? You might think Gerdts grew tired of repeating himself. Far from it—the card play acts as a virtual rondel. Players hold a set of actions that, once used, cannot be accessed again for a number of turns. While we lose the spatial spatial restriction of a physical rondel, Concordia still retains his favorite design trope at heart.

Personally, I prefer this hand-management approach because it puts action sequencing firmly in the player’s hands while granting far greater flexibility. The devious nature of a rondel lies in how action layouts often clash with logical turn flows, placing the action you desperately need right behind your pawn’s current spot. That forces tight planning, but it heavily restricts choices.

Here, each cycle starts with every option open. You decide when each card triggers, knowing that holding off on resetting your hand yields greater rewards the longer you wait.

This sequencing is not just about resource management or position tracking; it requires watching opponents’ setups and exercising memory. For instance, if an opponent is about to trigger a Prefect in a region, the best time to do so is when competitors with a presence there have full storehouses, causing them to miss out on production. Or when playing a market-bought card that gives you a unique action, it is wise to wait until opponents have played their Diplomat, denying them the chance to copy it and neutralize your edge.

This timing dynamic adds subtle, clever indirect interaction. A more direct form of interaction comes through blockades. On the map, each land or sea route can only host a single colonist. As more pawns hit the board, routes clog up, making target cities harder to reach. Worse still are rising construction costs: in high player counts, arriving late to a city is an absolute drain on your finances. Luckily, cash can be acquired in multiple ways.

Yet all this expansion only counts for half of your final score. The real key lies in buying personality cards. These act as scoring multipliers for various end-game conditions. This triggers a fierce race for the card market—not just to extend hand cycles before retrieving discards, but to bump up multipliers for specific scoring conditions.

This is where memory comes into play. After a few rounds, few players will remember which deities opponents have accumulated, making it tricky to deduce how they will attempt to maximize scores on the board.

Unless playing with someone who has a photographic memory, tracking opponent totals mid-game is nearly impossible. Barring an obvious collapse in board presence or colonist counts, victory hinges on card collections. That mystery remains intact until final scoring. This is undoubtedly the design’s greatest strength. Even if your card strategy falters, as long as you maintain solid house placement, you always feel in contention. It also prevents kingmaking: evaluating who is actually leading is extremely tough. Occasionally, a player might end the game expecting to win, only to take a harsh reality check during scoring.

After this breakdown, it should be clear why Concordia stands as one of the most elegant designs in recent years. Few rules and few moving parts, yet seamlessly assembled to create immense strategic depth. That said, turn paralysis and analysis-paralysis can happen, so I would hesitate to pull it out with AP-prone players.

Perfection is elusive, and unfortunately, what I consider one of Mac Gerdts’ finest designs (I have yet to try Imperial, which comes highly praised) falls just short of masterpiece status due to minor flaws. The first is player-count scalability. The experience shifts dramatically based on player count. At 2 players, interaction drops to a minimum—city placement costs rarely scale up, route blocking is rare early on, and the game devolves into a pure race to expand and hoard cards. At 5 players, the opposite happens: massive traffic jams on Roman roads from turn one, forcing ultra-cautious play to avoid wasted turns. If you are slow to join a critical city, you’ll feel like you have to mortgage your house just to build there. The sweet spot is 3 to 4 players, balancing interaction and board friction smoothly. That isn’t to say it fails at 2 or 5, but other titles suit those counts better.

Replayability is another minor weak point. The design holds up across multiple plays, but a sense of repetition can set in. Without a clear view of opponent standings, you can’t easily adjust play to block a leader or spare a struggling player. Many turns end up played on autopilot, focused purely on optimizing your own engine, which can lead to a slightly monotonous routine. It shares a similar feel with Lewis & Clark (read its tocho-review here)—a fantastic, tense experience that can nevertheless feel repetitive in execution.

The theme isn’t groundbreaking either. Trading resources in an ancient setting (Rome, this time) alongside network building is a well-trodden path.

Regarding production, the cardboard elements are hit-and-miss. The game board is slightly thinner than modern standards, which stands out given its large physical footprint. Had the board used 6 folds instead of 4, it might be less noticeable. Thankfully, the remaining punchboard components (storehouse boards, coins, tiles, and bonus markers) are appropriately sturdy. The wooden components shine: classic Gerdts ship tokens return alongside land colonists, while resource tokens feature custom shapes—most notably anvil shapes for tools and amphorae for wine. The standard euro-sized cards have good stock, smooth finishing, and solid snap. A nice touch: because this is a dual-language edition, two separate decks (English and German) are included, though language-independent iconography could have streamlined this. My main gripe is box size. While consistent with the publisher’s long-standing line, it is unnecessarily oversized for the contents. Everything could comfortably fit into a standard rectangular box like Agricola. Lastly, the rulebook is well structured and leaves virtually no ambiguities after a first read.

Art-wise, this is easily Gerdts’ best-looking title on the market. That isn’t to say Concordia is a visual masterpiece, but it clearly received more artistic care than titles like Navegador, Imperial, or Hamburgum. Mosaic patterns shape elements like the score track, city tiles, and trade routes, fitting the Roman theme nicely. It is far more pleasing to the eye than its predecessors.

And let’s wrap this up. Concordia is a fantastic game. I would place it at the top spot among the three Kennerspiel des Jahres nominees from that year. It is one of the most elegant designs published in recent times, featuring rules that are easy to teach yet hide immense strategic depth. The hidden-multiplier scoring system keeps everyone invested until the end, as evaluating the leader mid-game is genuinely difficult. It is kept from total perfection only by scaling that isn’t universally stellar and gameplay that can occasionally feel repetitive. For all these reasons, I give it a…