Concordia: Salsa (Board Game) Trivia Quiz

Answer: Salt is a wildcard resource

Salt is a wild resource. Technically, it becomes a different, appropriate resource when it is used. In the base game, players started with one of each resource, plus an additional food. This allowed them to build one brick city, and one city of any type if they played an Architect as their first card (a common first play).

When playing with salt, players start with one of each of the now six resources (no second food), so players can use that salt to be a second brick, allowing them to build in two non-brick cities on their first turn.

Answer: Tools and wine

Wine and tools were not used for much in the base "Concordia" game. Tools were used to create new colonists and buy a few new cards, and wine was used mostly to buy new cards. When playing with salt, both wine and tools become more important, being the only way to build salt cities.

Answer: Salt takes up space in the storehouse

Salt can only be acquired two ways: by having a house in a salt city and using a Prefect to produce in the corresponding province, or by using certain forum tiles. There are no salt resource tiles to flip when using a Prefect, so you must have a house. And while salt can be sold using the Mercator action (by turning it into something else that is being sold), it cannot be purchased. Lastly, there is no specialist card added to the game when salt is included.

Answer: No

Mercurius scores points for having houses in different kinds of cities. Salt does not count as a new resource for scoring, meaning at most, Mercurius cards can still only score ten points.

Answer: When recovering cards with the Tribune

Four forum tiles are placed on the forum tableau. Each of the spots has a number of cards displayed under it indicating how many cards are needed to acquire it. When players play their Tribune card to recover their played cards back into their hand, they count the number of cards they're taking back.

They can then pick up one new forum tile that has an equal or lower number of cards displayed by it. This means that when players delay playing their Tribune card, they will have more options when picking up a new forum tile.

When a tile is taken, the remaining tiles are shifted down to fill the empty spot, and a new tile is drawn and placed in the most expensive slot (similar to the card display).

Answer: No

Forum tiles are larger than resources, and are kept by a player, but not in the storehouse. This can be really convenient sometimes because some forum tiles can grant players more resources, and can be used anytime. This means players can kind of hold on to extra resources without them taking up storehouse space until needed.

Answer: Roman people

The blue tiles are called the patrician tiles, and have full names like "Cornelius Scipio" or "Titus Valerius." The green tiles, called citizens, just have first names like "Julius" and "Marcus." There does not seem to be much of a thematic pairing between a forum tile's namesake and its function.

Answer: Blue tiles are permanent; green tiles are one-time use

The blue patrician tiles are permanent fixtures that offer slight improvements, while the green citizen tiles are stronger, but can only be used once. Almost all the blue tiles and some of the green tiles upgrade specific personality cards, while the others are generic effects that can be used with any card.

For example, the blue Aulus Arcadius grants the permanent upgrade that all houses for that player cost one less sestertius. The green Laurentius lets a player take one brick and one food from the supply (which could be used to build houses, buy colonists, or to sell), and then the tile is discarded.

Answer: Each city group has more cities

Concordia has four city groups: A, B, C, and D, with different numbers of cities in each group. Salsa added one salt city tile to each group. When playing on one of the base game maps, this means an existing city tile has to be removed from each group to make room for the new salt city tile.

But Hispania and Byzantium have one extra city in each of their groups, meaning no substitutions are needed when playing with salt. The salt city can just be added.

Answer: It has a province with four cities

Almost every province on every map in "Concordia" (base game, expansions, and map packs) has two or three cities in it. Byzantium is the only map (as of 2021) to have a province with four cities (Achaea). The only other pre-2021 exception to the two/three count is the Creta map (from the 2017 "Aegyptus/Creta" map pack expansion), which has a province with only one city.