Orléans

About this board game

Orléans is a riveting and engaging board game that takes you on a thrilling journey through the medieval era in the French city of Orléans. As the leader of a guild, you are tasked with gathering followers and resources to accumulate wealth, build structures, and expand your influence across the city and surrounding towns.

The beauty of Orléans lies in its rich thematic setting and depth of strategy. The game board is a well-crafted representation of the city, filled with various buildings, resources, and detailed artwork that truly brings the medieval period to life. Each player’s board represents their own guild, where they manage their bag of followers and plan their strategy.

The core mechanics of the game revolve around the innovative ‘bag-building’ concept, which is an interesting twist on the popular ‘deck-building’ mechanic seen in many other games. In Orléans, instead of a deck of cards, you have a bag of tokens, each representing different types of followers like knights, farmers, monks, or craftsmen. Each round, you draw followers from your bag and assign them to various actions on your personal guild board.

These actions can help you gather resources, recruit more followers, build structures, or advance on the development track. The clever part is that each action requires a specific set of followers, forcing you to think strategically about who to recruit and where to assign your followers.

Moreover, the game offers a unique blend of worker placement and resource management mechanics. You need to balance your resources wisely to construct buildings, which grant you special abilities and additional actions, and to progress on the beneficial deeds board, which can provide significant end-game scoring opportunities.

What sets Orléans apart from other board games, aside from its bag-building mechanic, is its multiple paths to victory. Whether you choose to focus on trading, building, farming, or scholarly pursuits, a well-planned strategy can lead you to victory. The game encourages flexibility and adaptability, as the random drawing of followers from your bag can sometimes disrupt your plans, requiring you to adjust your strategy accordingly.

Orléans is a complex and rewarding game, filled with strategic depth and replayability. Its immersive theme, innovative mechanics, and multiple strategies will keep you coming back for more, offering a new and exciting experience every time you play.