How to play Concordia

Concordia is a hand-management economic game by Mac Gerdts in which you grow a Roman trading dynasty across the Mediterranean world. Every turn you play one card from your hand to take its action — moving colonists, building houses, producing goods, trading at market, or acquiring new cards — and those same cards determine your final score through the gods they invoke.

There is no dice and no card luck. Every advantage you gain is a product of planning: which provinces you settle, which goods you stockpile, and above all which personality cards you collect. The card you buy today is both the action you gain and the points you are betting on, making every Senator purchase a consequential strategic commitment.

On your turn, play exactly one card from your hand face-up in front of you and carry out its action:

• Architect — move one or more of your colonists along roads or sea lanes, then optionally build a house in any city you reached (pay the city's cost in goods)
• Prefect — choose one region: either trigger production in every city there (all players with houses gain the matching goods) or take 5 sestertii and flip the region tile so it produces again later
• Mercator — gain 3 sestertii, then buy goods from the storehouse and/or sell goods from your hand to the storehouse for coins
• Senator — buy one or two personality cards from the display, paying their listed price; add them to your hand immediately
• Diplomat — copy the action of the card another player played most recently
• Concordia — playing this card immediately triggers the end of the game; all other players each take one final turn to equalize turn counts, then scoring begins. The Concordia card also earns end-game bonus points for the diversity of gods across your entire card collection
• Tribune — take your entire played-card pile back into your hand, receive 1 sestertius per card returned, and optionally gain a bonus colonist

After you play a card it stays in your played pile — your hand shrinks each turn until you spend a Tribune action to reclaim everything. The game ends the moment one player places their last house on the board, the card display cannot be fully refilled, or any player plays the Concordia card.

At game end, each personality card in your hand and played pile scores points based on the god it depicts, multiplied by what you have built or collected:

• Vesta — 1 point per sestertius you hold
• Jupiter — 1 point per house on the board
• Saturnus — 1 point per Roman province where you have at least one house
• Mercurius — 1 point per distinct type of goods you possess
• Minerva — points for specific goods named on the card

Every card in your deck contributes, so the mix of gods across all your personality cards is your scoring plan. Collect multiple Saturnus cards and you are rewarded handsomely for wide provincial reach; lean into Mercurius and you need a diverse goods engine to back it up. Strong players identify their scoring axis early and buy Senator cards that reinforce it — then build and trade accordingly.