Concordia, the serene Roman trading game that plenty of gamers will tell you is the cleanest euro ever designed, is getting the deluxe treatment, and the campaign comes with a story attached. Awaken Realms' Concordia: Special Edition is now live and funded on Gamefound, teaming the deluxification specialists with original publisher PD-Verlag. If you love a tight, low-luck economic game, this is pitched as the definitive version, art controversy and all.
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See how it worksFirst, the game. Mac Gerdts designed Concordia in 2013 and it has aged beautifully. It is a card-driven euro for two to five players where every card you play also scores points at the end, so there is no dead wood and almost no luck. It sits on an 8.1 average on BoardGameGeek from more than 45,000 ratings and ranks inside the site's top 30, per BoardGameWire. The Special Edition swaps the wooden bits for detailed ship miniatures and character statues and wraps the whole thing in new illustrations.
The campaign also revealed two fresh expansions: Mare Nostrum from the PD-Verlag team, and Barbarica, a meatier one credited to Gerdts himself.
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Set up your group for freeNow the spicy bit. When the project was unveiled in late February, it was review-bombed on BoardGameGeek down to a 4.7 average after Awaken Realms admitted using generative AI tools like Midjourney in development. The studio has since pledged that "in this project, in the final game, there will be no AI art. Human artists will be involved in everything," while noting AI may still feature in early mock-ups and concept work.
The campaign is running now. If Concordia is missing from your shelf, or you just want an excuse to teach it, rally your group and see whether the deluxe edition earns its place.
Sources: Gamefound | BoardGameWire
