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 are 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.

Never played a hand-driven engine game? Think of your hand of cards as a menu of actions: each turn you spend one, and it stays spent — face up in your personal pile — until you play your Tribune to sweep everything back into your hand. The whole game is a rhythm of spending your best actions, deciding when to pause and recover them, and buying new cards that are simultaneously stronger actions and the multipliers your final score will be built on.

What's in the box, and what each piece does at the table:

• 1 double-sided game board — the Imperium map (3–5 players) on one side, Italia (2–4) on the other: cities linked by brown land routes and blue sea routes, grouped into 12 provinces (11 on Italia), ringed by the score track, with the 7-card display along the top edge.
• 5 storehouses (1 per player) — your personal 12-space warehouse. Every space holds one colonist or one unit of goods, so space itself is a resource: a full storehouse means production goes to waste. The fixed market prices are printed on the roof.
• 110 wooden pieces (per player: 3 land colonists, 3 sea colonists, 15 houses, 1 scoring marker — in red, green, yellow, blue, and black) — colonists travel the routes and open cities for building; houses sit in cities and are what actually produce goods when a province fires.
• 80 goods units (brick, food, tools, wine, cloth) — the economy, in rising value: brick 3, food 4, tools 5, wine 6, cloth 7 sestertii. You build with them, trade them, and bank them for Vesta points at the end.
• 65 personality cards (35 starting cards — an identical 7 per player — plus 30 for sale in decks I–V) — the heart of the game: the front is the action you take, and the god named on the card is the score it earns when the game ends.
• 1 Concordia card (worth 7 VP) — the prize for ending the game: it goes to whoever builds their 15th house or buys the last card from the display.
• 1 Praefectus Magnus card — a circulating perk: when its holder plays a Prefect to produce, the province bonus is doubled; afterwards the card passes to the player on the right.
• 30 city tokens — shuffled and dealt onto the cities at setup, then flipped to reveal what each city produces — a different economic map every game.
• 24 bonus markers — one sits in each province showing its most valuable good; they flip from goods to coins as provinces produce, feeding the Prefect's take-the-cash option.
• Coins (1, 2, 5, and 10 sestertii) — money for building fees, market trades, and card purchases; leftover cash counts toward Vesta at the end.
• 5 player aids — the full list of purchasable cards on one side and the gods' scoring values, in scoring order, on the other.
• 1 rulebook, 1 quick-start setup guide, 1 historical booklet — the setup guide gets you playing; the historical booklet is for after the game.

On your turn, play exactly one card from your hand and carry out its action. The played card lands face up on your personal discard pile — your hand shrinks turn after turn until a Tribune calls everything home. The starting hand:

• Tribune — take all your played cards back into your hand, earning 1 sestertius per card recovered beyond the third; then you may pay 1 food + 1 tool to move a colonist from your storehouse into Roma.
• Architect — you get one movement step per colonist you have on the board, split freely among them: land colonists walk the brown routes, sea colonists sail the blue. Then build houses in cities adjacent to any of your colonists. Each house costs the city's goods (1 food in a brick city; 1 brick plus the city's own good everywhere else) plus coins — 1/2/3/4/5 sestertii in brick/food/tool/wine/cloth cities, multiplied by the total number of houses in that city after yours. One house per city, and never in Roma.
• Prefect — pick a province and either produce — you pocket the good on its bonus marker and flip the marker to its coin side, and every house in the province, whoever owns it, produces its city's good — or take the cash: collect 1 sestertius per coin showing across all bonus markers, then flip them all back to their goods sides.
• Mercator — gain 3 sestertii (purchased Mercator cards give 5), then buy and/or sell up to two types of goods with the bank at the fixed prices printed on your storehouse roof.
• Senator — buy up to two cards from the display into your hand, each costing its printed goods plus the goods under its display slot (a ? means any good you choose); afterwards the display slides left and refills to 7.
• Diplomat — copy the action of the card on top of another player's discard pile.

The 30 cards on sale add three more actions: Colonist (place new colonists for 1 food + 1 tool each into Roma or any city where you own a house — or take 5 sestertii plus 1 per colonist you have on the board), Consul (buy one card ignoring the display-slot surcharge), and the Specialists — Mason, Farmer, Smith, Vintner, Weaver — each of which makes all your houses of one goods type produce. And whoever holds Praefectus Magnus doubles the bonus good when playing a Prefect to produce, then passes the card to the right.

A round in practice. Ana plays a Prefect on Hispania: she takes the wine shown on its bonus marker, flips the marker to its coin side, and every house there produces — including Beto's, which earns him a cloth on Ana's turn. Beto plays his Architect: four colonists on the board give him four steps, so he walks a land colonist two steps to a tool city and builds, paying 1 brick, 1 tool, and 3 sestertii. Carla plays a Senator and buys a Vintner and a Colonist from the display, paying each card's printed goods plus the surcharge under its slot. Diego, down to his last card, plays the Tribune: seven cards return to his hand (the Tribune counts too), he collects 4 sestertii for the four beyond the third, and pays 1 food + 1 tool to land a fresh colonist in Roma.

The end triggers the moment a player builds their 15th house or buys the last personality card, emptying the display: that player takes the Concordia card, worth 7 VP, every other player takes exactly one final turn, and scoring begins.

Every personality card you own — in hand and discard pile alike — scores through its god, multiplied by what you built:

• Vesta — scored once by every player: add your cash to the market value of all stored goods, then take 1 VP per full 10 sestertii.
• Jupiter — per card: 1 VP for each of your houses in non-brick cities (max 15).
• Saturnus — per card: 1 VP for each province holding at least one of your houses (max 12 on Imperium, 11 on Italia).
• Mercurius — per card: 2 VP for each type of goods your houses produce (max 10).
• Mars — per card: 2 VP for each of your colonists on the board (max 12).
• Minerva — carried by the Specialists: each scores VP for every house you own in cities of its goods type, at the rate printed on the card.

Most VP wins; a tie goes to the holder of Praefectus Magnus, or to the tied player who would receive him next. Strategically, pick a scoring axis early — a wide Saturnus spread, a colonist-heavy Mars game, a Minerva specialty — and buy the Senator cards that multiply what you were already building. And watch the clock: whoever triggers the end banks 7 VP and denies everyone else the tempo to finish their plans.