Not all board games are created equal. Something as simple as a deck of cards can have various different levels of card stock and finishing, so that those cards could be flimsy and wear out quickly, or be a lot more solid and wear resistant. Tokens can be cardboard, wood, or plastic. Meeples can be cardboard standees, wooden, or plastic miniatures, with or without sundrop or paint. Chip Theory Games is famous for making games that are completely waterproof: Game boards are neoprene, not cardboard, and printed poker chips are used as both meeples and tokens. The quality of the components has an obvious effect on price.

With many games, you don't get a choice: The game is the price it is with the components it has. I happened to me that I bought a game at a low price, but then was disappointed at the quality of the components. Great Western Trail: El Paso is a game I like the gameplay of, but dislike the shoddy material. Parts of that game I replaced with my own materials, like cubes and discs; but I can't do anything about the cards and the game board. On crowdfunding board games, the trend is more towards the other direction, I pledged for some games where I ended up with lots of plastic miniatures I didn't really felt necessary.

In the end that is a business decision by the game company: While a prettier game with better table presence can attract some people, others might then be turned off by the high price. So increasingly crowdfunding projects have several options, like a base version with cardboard standees and a more expensive version with miniatures. And of course there is usually a completely over the top "all in" pledge with all the expansions, and all the deluxified materials you can possibly think of.

Normally I am more of a base pledge guy. I actually prefer standees over miniatures. I also prefer wooden tokens over plastic tokens. But I also do like wooden tokens over cardboard tokens, and I especially like metal coins over cardboard coins. That is how I ended up with the "Glory of Rome" pledge level for Concordia, because it has wooden meeples and acrylic tokens instead of cardboard, as well as metal coins.

Concordia is the third "Special Edition" of a classic board game that Awaken Realms produces. They made special editions for Puerto Rico and Castles of Burgundy before. With the deluxification being a more recent trend, the original games were all cardboard. And for some games that is enough. I bought a copy of the old Castles of Burgundy for €19, while the special edition costs €90 plus shipping plus VAT, so around €130 for just the most basic version of the special edition. I didn't buy any edition of Puerto Rico.

Not only did I like the game Concordia more than I liked Puerto Rico or Castles of Burgundy. Concordia is also a game that already has a lot of expansions, and if you have everything you'll sit on quite a lot of boxes. The special edition has all the expansions already existing, plus adds a couple of new ones. And they all come in one large box, making storage easier. What I ordered is a luxury item and thereby by definition unnecessary, but I do get a lot of nice stuff for my money.

Ultimately this moves away from a game that one buys to play it, and enters the territory of a collector's item. It is slightly more useful than a Labubu doll, but the gameplay value doesn't really justify all of the purchase price. In my previous post I talked about Arydia, which did cost something similar, but that game we played for 66 hours, so a bit over $3 per hour, which isn't half bad for a board game. I would have to play Concordia a lot to get down to that price per hour. There is some satisfaction to have a game complete with everything (even if I didn't take the €330+ "Opus Magnum" pledge, as I didn't want the plastic miniatures), with deluxified materials making it look good. Not a reasonable purchase, but sometimes one wants to spoil oneself.