CONCORDIA AND CAVERNA

2013 was a very good year for worker placement titles, as two veteran game designers released some of their finest works, with both titles not only selling well, but still holding a high rank in BGG’s Top 50 Titles.

Concordia by Mac Gerdts is an elegantly straightforward eurogame that sees players expanding the trade networks of the Roman Empire through an ingenious card-based action system. Each turn players play a card to either spread out across Europe, build trading posts, gather resources or sell them to buy new cards. Each card has different actions as well as a different patron god that rewards victory points on specific goals, encouraging specialisation to maximise on points. Concordia has been blessed with numerous maps, a standalone expansion that introduced team play and a solo mode expansion released in 2021, an ideal time for players wanting to enjoy this Classical Era classic.

From minimalist to maximalist, we have

Caverna, Uwe Rosenberg’s spiritual sequel to Agricola that decided more is more and by goodness could it provide more! Now players could clear away woodlands to expand their farms and dig deep into the mountains to build a network of craftsmen, miners and dwarven adventurers. The game showered players with cards, game titles and a rainbow of wooden resource tokens, revelling in its brain bursting, table straining excess. Many fans of the predecessor would go on to declare

Caverna their preferred way to play this style of almost “sandbox worker placement” gameplay Rosenberg has become synonymous with. Much like its predecessor, the game has seen several expansions, its most recent of which released last year, introducing hostile invaders that you now had to defend your dwarven hold from!