Concordia: Salsa Expansion

Makes a nearly perfect game even more amazing. Just adds that little extra something.

I love Concordia and play it regularly, so this expansion felt like a must for me. While I don't use the forum cards, the expansion still felt worth it to me because the Salt adds a lot, and the two new maps are great. Hispania is my favorite 3-player map. Highly recommend if you play a lot of Concordia. If you don't, I wouldn't bother with the expansion. Maybe a cheaper map if you want the variety for better play at lower counts, but even then, the base maps are fine for 3-5 players.

Great expansion - adds so much to an amazing game!

Concordia: Salsa is a must buy, always incorporate, kind of expansion. It doesn’t really up the overall complexity of the game, but it adds some interesting decisions/resources, and makes taking certain actions more interesting than they otherwise are. Do yourself a favor and add this to your cart! Like right now! Did you do it? Okay good :)

Base Game Concordia is perhaps the smoothest game I own. Once you're comfortable with the system, every turn flows seamlessly as your empire expands one colony and card at a time. So the risk with Salsa is it could step on the toes of that beautiful rhythm. Fortunately, Salsa doesn't try to do too much. It adds a new resource, Salt, which actually makes the game even smoother and newcomer-friendly because it takes some of the pressure off the planning involved in the Mercator action. The Forum tiles do add some setup and consideration, but it's an appropriate step up for people who've played a bunch of Concordia and want to add a wrinkle. The new maps provide variety if not innovation. Ultimately, it's not a necessary expansion but it can extend the legs of an already great game.

Adding Salsa to your base Concordia experience adds a lot of depth to an already deep game. The new maps are interesting, though I always go back to the base one. Salt as a wild resource adds a lot of flexibility, as do the forum cards. It may feel a little...clunkier at first, and though I haven't felt the game speed up as I've gotten more familiar with the new components, I have no doubt that it will.

Concordia is a top 5 game in my collection. Salsa adds a fun element that doesn't change the game dramatically, but adds more options to game play.

Concordia is in my top 3 Eurogames of all time, and Salsa (salt) adds even more depth and fun to the experience. The addition of the wild salt resource opens up the game's economy considerably, making the race to build cities, buying cards, and generate colonists substantially easier for those who don't play perfectly. Forum tiles, which are basically one-time or permanent player powers, encourage players to strategize a bit more about their card play without making the game harder - now, rather than playing out a perfect hand players may choose to use their Tribune early to grab a crucial Forum tile, changing the tempo of the game. Like everything in Concordia, Salsa fits smoothly and integrally into the whole. I have yet to play with the Salsa map, but even if I never do, Salt and Forum tiles make this more than worth the money for any fan of Concordia.

The addition of Salt and Salt-Cities is wonderful as it makes it much easier to build in cities that produce resources that you do not have. The fact that Salt Cities count towards Minerva cards transforms them from mediocre Personality Cards that clog the Senate to in-demand items for key strategies. I will ALWAYS play Concordia with the Salt resource. The Forum, however, has me less convinced. Some of the cards are leagues better than others, and if a player has two mediocre cards to choose from at the beginning, that feels pretty bad. Here is my recommendation: 1. Use the alternate Auction rules to determine starting tiles, or 2. Deal all players two BLUE forum tiles to start with, and then shuffle them all together. If you're looking to expand Concordia, I whole-heartedly recommend this expansion. I think that the Venus expansion is slightly more important, though, as the Venus personality cards fill a void left in the base game--there is no reward for building twice in a province. And, while the Venus cards are powerful, they aren't enough to carry a game which I appreciate.