Orléans rules: how to play and how to score

Orléans quick rules

The goal

You recruit followers, travel to collect goods, build trading stations and gain citizens. After 18 rounds, you score your coins, your goods, and above all your trading stations and citizens, multiplied by your development status.

Your followers bag

Your bag starts with four followers of your color: a farmer, a boatman, a craftsman and a trader. Each round, you draw some onto the market of your board, four at the start, more with knights. An unused follower stays on the market and takes up space.

A round

Seven phases: the hour glass reveals the event; the census gives a coin to the player with the most farmers and makes the player with the fewest pay one (nobody pays with 2 players); everyone draws; everyone plans at the same time; then come the actions, the event, and the start player token passes left.

Activating a place

Each place needs a specific set of followers: the farm house, for example, needs a boatman and a craftsman. It is activated once all its spaces are filled, in one or several rounds. During actions, players take turns doing one action or passing; used followers go back to the bag. A monk replaces anyone, but nothing replaces a monk.

Recruiting

Most places recruit a neutral follower, who goes into your bag, and move you up that profession’s track. The farmer gives a good, the boatman coins, the craftsman a technology tile, the trader a place tile, the scholar development, the knight a bigger draw. The monk gives no bonus.

Traveling and building

The ship and the wagon move your merchant to a neighboring town, and you take a good on the way. The guildhall builds a trading station in your merchant’s town: one trading station per town, except Orléans, where everyone can build their own.

The town hall and beneficial deeds

The town hall sends one or two neutral followers to the beneficial deeds, for coins or development. You need the exact profession, no monk, and those followers stay until the end. Whoever fills the last space of a deed gains its citizen. Your colored followers never go there.

Technology

A technology tile replaces a follower on a place for the rest of the game. The first one replaces a farmer, later ones anyone but a monk; only one per place, never on a single-space place. A tile from the craftsman is placed only after you pass.

Development

The development track gives coins and citizens, and some spaces raise your development status, which starts at 1. At the end of the game, each trading station and each citizen is worth as many points as that status.

Events

Pilgrimage, always in the first round, forbids recruiting monks. Income and trading day give coins; harvest asks for food, or 5 coins per missing food item; taxes are paid according to your goods; plague makes you lose a follower drawn at random, unless it’s one of your color. Their strength depends on the tile’s letter, A, B or C.

Torture

If you cannot pay, each missing coin is replaced by a trading station, a random follower, a step back in development, a good, a place tile or a technology tile. Anything lost leaves the game.

Game end

The game ends after the 18th round. The player who built the most trading stations takes the last citizen, unless tied. Then you score.

Beginner traps

A full market blocks your draw: don’t draw more than you can place, or draw fewer to take back a follower from a place. Keep food and coins for harvest and taxes. And don’t neglect development: it multiplies your trading stations and citizens.

With Trade & Intrigue

The orders module shows five cards: a town and some goods. When your merchant is in that town after one of your actions, you may deliver and take the card, then you must pass. Its points are added at the end.

With The Plague

Corpse tokens enter the bags and clog the market. From the second round, your plague doctor replaces any follower, even a monk. Fulfilling an indulgence card clears the corpses from your market; at the end, it scores its points, and each corpse costs one point.

How to score Orléans

Coins

1 point per coin.

Goods

Brocade 5 points, wool 4, wine 3, cheese 2, grain 1.

Trading stations and citizens

Add up your trading stations built and your citizen tiles, then multiply by your development status. The last citizen goes to the player who built the most trading stations, nobody on a tie.

Ties

The player furthest ahead on the development track wins; if still tied, there are multiple winners.

Orders (Trade & Intrigue)

The points on your fulfilled order cards.

Indulgences and corpses (The Plague)

The points on your fulfilled indulgence cards, minus 1 point per corpse token, in your bag and on your market.

Structures (Invasion, Prosperity scenario)

The points of your completely manned structures.

Worked example

Emma ends with 12 coins, 1 brocade, 2 wool, 1 wine, 3 cheese and 2 grain: 12 + 5 + 8 + 3 + 6 + 2 = 36 points. She built 6 trading stations and gained 3 citizens, at development status 4: (6 + 3) × 4 = 36 points. Total: 72 points.

Common mistakes

• Multiplying by your space on the development track instead of your development status.
• Forgetting the last citizen, which goes to the player who built the most trading stations.
• Scoring all goods the same: brocade is worth 5, grain 1.
• Breaking ties by development status: it’s the position on the track that counts.

How to set up Orléans

Setup takes about ten minutes. Follow the board phase, then the removals for your player count, and each player prepares their components. Expansions come last.