Concilium Urbis

• Designer: Jorge Barroso and Chuz
• Publisher: Perro Loko
• Players: 1-6
• Age: 14+
• Time: 60 minutes
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

In the future the engine that drives the economy is the operation of mines and it is Crystalon Celestia which is the most valuable mineral, thanks to its immense potential energy. The six great kingdoms of Infiniton have colonised Celestia Quasaris, an uninhabited planet where large quantities of this precious resource have been detected. Each kingdom erects its own mining city to extract and exploit the mineral. The rulers of each kingdom meet annually in the Concilium to define the rules that govern the new planet.

Concilium is a city building game in which there are scoring cards called Law cards. All tiles in your city will get points at the end of the game as shown by the law cards. During the game you can change this score using the voting procedure.

Within the Laws deck, for each Law, there is a card which increases the score ratio for the card and another that decreases the score ratio. Despite two cards being removed from the deck at the beginning of the game, it is important you manage this information to make your votes count.

The most phases of the game are simultaneous, which gives it dynamism and agility.

To set up the game, placed the six Basic law cards on the table and use the rest of the level 1 cards to make the Law Deck.  Randomly choose three Civilization cards and also place those on the table.  Put the city tiles in the bag and mix.  Put the markers for the Approval votes and the Cancellation votes on different sides of the table. Each player gets a player screen, three discs in their color and a Concilium tile.

Concilium Urbis is played over a total of 7 rounds. Each round contains 4 phases.

1 REVEAL TWO LAW CARDS – draw two cards from the deck and place them face up on the table (don’t do this in Round 1)

2 CONSTRUCTION – Each player draws four tiles from the bag and each divides them into two groups of two tiles and passes them to the player on your left or right, according to what the card on top of the Laws deck indicates.  Players now simultaneously choose one of the groups of two tiles you have received and build them in your city along with the two tiles returned to you.  Tiles can only be placed adjacent to a previously placed tile. If you build a Mine, add Mineral counters to it. Finally, if you build a Tower, you can choose to stack this on top of other Tower tiles.

3 PRODUCTION – Each of your Factories convert a Mineral from your Mines to Energy, if available – to a max of energy as stated on the Factory tile. If you have 6 Energy total, you can spend them to put one of your discs on a Civilization card of your choice.  You can only have one disc on each of the three Civilization cards

4 VOTING – Collect one vote counter for each Tower tile and two for your Concilium tile. Hide these behind your screen.   Carry out the voting for each Law card, one by one. In the event of a tie, the Law is rejected.  If the Law is approved, place this new card on top of the basic card as the new Law will change how it is scored.  After voting, all used Vote tokens are discarded.  (Note there is no Vote in round 1 as no cards were revealed)  If it is a Bonus card, players put votes in their hand, and when revealed, the player with the most Votes gains the bonus card.  If there is a tie, no one wins the Bonus. .

Repeat this seven times, and at the end of the 7th round, you score the game

• Score the 6 Law cards based on the rules determined for each through the voting
• Score the Civilization cards – 1 or 2 points for each tile as indicated on the card
• Bonus Cards – 4 pts each
• Resources – 1pt per 4 Minerals and 1pt per 2 Energy counters.

The player with the most points wins. Ties broken in favor of the player with the most points from Civilization cards.

My thoughts on the game

I’ve never been quite sure how I feel about games with secret and simultaneous voting – in part because I seem to be quite bad at reading what other people are going to vote for.   I knew that his mechanism was at the heart of Concilium Urbis, but the prospect of finding a game that could handle up to six players with a short playing time was very appealing to me.  I actually loved the concept of the game – it’s a neat puzzle to try to build your city up while also trying to mold the laws to help you score the best.  

The I cut/you choose mechanism here has its moments, though I’ve had a few rounds where I drew a tile set that made for simple decisions (i.e. AAAB can only be split up one way…)  You can try to examine the city of the player that you are passing to – trying to figure out how to get the tiles back that you want; however, you can’t deny him any tile that you draw – that player is going to see all the tiles you drew.  So, if you draw what that player wants, there is nothing to be done about preventing him from taking that tile.  Of course, as I’ll mention below, sometimes it’s impossible to see what your opponent is building…

Though the Voting is quite interesting, the mechanism is a bit clunky – it’s hard to reach the right area depending on where you are sitting. Might have been nice to have a green bit and a red bit to add to your vote to signify yes/no instead of having the rest of the table try to figure out which card you’re trying to thrust your hand over from seven feet away.

Players have to try to read the table to decide when it is best to vote, as well as which direction to vote in.  You can try to save your votes to use on something more important to you; or for the auctions on the bonus cards.  The fact that there are two separate rules depending on the type of card can be confusing, and I’ve had to remind players each time a bonus card has come up to make sure that players understand the voting.  What I’ve seen happen in most of my games is that players will gravitate to one or two strategies, and then save all their votes to vote for the max card for that tile or against the min card for that tile.  

The components are a bit disappointing.  In my EN version – a number of the cards and player aids are still in Spanish.  It isn’t an issue for me as I studied Spanish in high school and college, but it has been an issue for other gamers I’ve played with.  The rules about the scoring cards have some awkward translations, and we’ve had to stop the game for a bit to decipher and/or vote on the meaning of a particular card.    But, for me, the biggest issue I had with the components is the tile artwork – some of the patterns are visually jarring; to the point where it becomes hard to see the needed game information on the tile itself.  

Concilium Urbis is a new game which easily plays the full complement of six players; and there aren’t many games these days that can do that.   This player count flexibility is certainly a vote for staying in the game collection.  That being said, though the game wants you to feel like you have control, you really don’t have as much agency as you think – especially at the higher player counts.  If the rules and components were better, this might make the cut, but for now, this is one that I would not nominate for game night.

Until your next appointment

The Gaming Doctor