“Craftsmen, scholars & monks can help you reign supreme—but who will turn up to help?”
Link: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/164928/orleans
Playing Time: 90 minutes
Weight: Midweight
Genre: Bag Builder
Designer: Reiner Stockhausen
Players: 2-5
The progenitor of the genre of bag builders, it usually competes on my list with Altiplano, a fine game that’s a little better out of the box if for no other reason than it has Llamas. But this list tends to consider games including their expansions, and the expansion support for Orleans is very good.
In Orleans, you’ll start with a bag of workers, and every turn you’ll pull a handful of workers out of the bag, and these are the resources you have to play with Combinations of workers can be used to (among other things) acquire more workers, or alternatively wander the map and build trading posts. The former also tends to unlock additional powers, whereas the latter is more about chasing pure points.
Like most other novel mechanics in surprise hit games, bag building has since made its way into a LOT of games, but few have managed to capture the magic that Orleans did, perhaps by focusing on simplicity. But there is one bag builder that does it a little better, and we’ll get to it in a bit.
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