Orléans
Orléans explained: recruit followers, draw from your bag, activate action spaces, trade, build and score medieval France.
Recruit different followers into your personal bag, then draw a subset each round and assign them to action spaces on your player board.
Followers enable trade, travel, building, development and other actions, while the map and development track provide competing routes to points.
Why We Love It
Orléans makes deck-building tactile through a bag of followers. Recruitment improves future draws, but every new follower also changes the probability of drawing the roles you need.
About Orléans
Recruit different followers into your personal bag, then draw a subset each round and assign them to action spaces on your player board.
Followers enable trade, travel, building, development and other actions, while the map and development track provide competing routes to points.
Game at a Glance
Draw Followers
Your bag determines the workers available this round.
Fill Action Spaces
Different actions require specific combinations of follower types.
Travel and Trade
Move through the Loire region, collect goods and build trading stations.
Develop the Engine
Recruitment, technology and beneficial deeds shape long-term efficiency.
Who Orléans suits
Players who enjoy engine building and worker placement but want probability management through a personal bag instead of a fixed worker pool.
Rules overview
At the start of a round, draw followers from your bag to your market. Assign them to action spaces on your player board, then activate completed spaces to recruit, travel, build, trade, advance development or take other actions. Used followers normally return to the bag unless a rule removes them.
Key decisions
Editorial analysis: Recruitment improves capability but can dilute the bag. Add follower types because they support a specific action plan, not simply because they are available. Technology can reduce worker requirements and make later draws more reliable.
Common questions
Is Orléans a deck-building game?
It uses a related idea with followers drawn from a bag rather than cards drawn from a deck.
How many players does the current base game support?
dlp games lists 2–5 players for the current base game.
Do followers stay assigned forever?
No. Most used followers cycle back into your bag after actions resolve, with specific exceptions.
Related games
Learn Orléans in depth
Sources and edition notes
Facts checked September 16, 2026. Strategy sections are editorial analysis based on the identified rules rather than measured win-rate claims.