Concordia

Product Information

It’s probably what we’d consider an “open framework,” to use a design term, which promotes depth and emergent gameplay, but without requiring a lot of complexity. I don’t think I can understate how much the game feels different simply due to shifting maps and player counts. Stay in touch by subscribing, joining our BoardGameGeek Guild, or by following The Thoughtful Gamer on facebook or twitter.

My thematic-game-loving friends aren’t excited about another game of trading in the Mediterranean, and even though the map looks great on the table and the wooden goods pieces are shaped and not cubes, there’s something that still strikes them as boring about Concordia. As I’ve mentioned the physical version of the game culminates in an exciting incremental tally of scores as each God is scored and players move their markers across the score track. My head says that this is exactly the kind of game that can probably be figured out with a moderate amount of play, and that avoiding that fate is so difficult to design. It’s a Euro game and follows a lot of Euro game staples with its mechanics, and its theme – trading in the Mediterranean. Hard, as in, you’re going to know that you’re playing poorly throughout the game because you just didn’t have enough knowledge or enough foresight to plan as precisely or as deeply as you should have.

A tight worker placement game with some interesting deck-building mechanics and no dice, this game rewards replays. Sure, occasionally something will happen just before your turn that changes your plans, but I’ve had multiple rounds go by in under a minute with players who know how to play. More often than not, hand management games, deck builders, and deck shedders make players begin a game with some terrible cards; not so in Concordia. Each player starts with an identical hand of eight action cards, six colonists (two on the map), six goods, 15 Monopoly houses (AKA settlements) plus some cash.

The digital implementation pops up a helpful summary of the map-specific rule changes when you launch a game on a new map. All of us had played recently enough that we remembered the rules, so save for a few refreshers on the scoring mechanics, everyone knew what they were doing.

This creates a sense of urgency when someone plays something good as you can’t be certain when you’ll see it again. There’s never enough time to complete everything, and the player who is most efficient will end up as the winner. 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.