Orleans: Stories – This narrative-driven expansion adds a campaign mode, where players can progress through a series of scenarios with evolving objectives, rules, and components. Please note: Some of the tiles contained in the game may come with ONLY German names printed. This does not impact gameplay and the names are translated in the rulebook.

The Duel scenario didn’t ignite my passions in quite the same way, partially becauseOrléansis already a sound two-player experience, but it probably does just about define itself as my preferred way to play two-playerOrléans. OverallOrléans Invasionis a very solid expansion that I strongly recommend to anyone who enjoyed the base game. Fiona’s Final Thoughts The game takes place in the Loire region in medieval France, with Orleans being at the heart. You’ll aim to move around the area from town to town, whether that’s by canal or by road. Can you build trade houses along the way? (If so, you’ll get rewarded in the form of ye olde victory points!) Orleans is a Euro-style strategy game, so whoever has the most points at the end of 18 rounds wins. Monks; Monks can be anything. Get as many of them, as early and with as little else in your bag. This is the way to be flexible. this is the way to always maximise your actions. Don’t end up with more monks than you need, but in reality this is almost impossible as everyone will rush for the monks. Knights;A key worker in the late early game / early mid game, this is the worker that allows you to gain more tokens per turn. Again the earlier the better, but not too early as you may not actually be able to do anything with the extra pieces!Taking place over 18 rounds, during which players may have anywhere from one to four or five turns, Orleans has a strong solitary element, with two to four players each beginning the game with four worker (“follower”) tokens, using them to gain more followers, earn money or goods or development points, or move around the game’s map to build trading posts. There are more things to do on the board than any player will be able to do in a single turn, and early in the game a player will only get one turn in a round—usually just adding a single follower to his/her supply. Such choices have long-lasting effects on what that player might be able to do later in the game; some moves open up more possible moves for later, while others are aimed primarily at increasing the player’s game-end points total. The expansion includes a new scenario for 2-5 players, a co-operative scenario, a two-player only duel scenario and a number of solo scenarios. We never play any solo games, so the focus of this expansion for us was the duel scenario and the co-operative scenario. We didn’t really feel likeOrléansneeded any expansion content, given that it plays extremely well with two players and is the style of competitive game that doesn’t get very in-your-face, but let’s see ifOrléans: Invasionis a must have for us. Orléans Invasion Gameplay – Invasion

In the city of Orléans, you can take trade trips to other cities to acquire coveted goods and build trading posts. You need followers and their abilities to expand your dominance by putting them to work as traders, builders, and scientists. Knights expand your scope of action and secure your mercantile expeditions. Craftsmen build trading stations and tools to facilitate work. Scholars make progress in science, and last but not least it cannot hurt to get active in monasteries since with monks on your side you are much less likely to fall prey to fate. The Trade and Intrigue expansion offers a new Beneficial Deeds board that quite frankly, should have been THE board all along. The one in the base game offers up money and is pretty stale. It’s not useless, but unless you have some townsfolk to dump...you probably won’t look to it as a viable strategy. There’s also two new Beneficial Deeds boards. It’s a double-sided board, each providing cool new rewards and bonuses. You send Followers here to go on permanent ‘placement’. (Thinking of Orléans as having worker placement traits to it; you place the Followers here, to gain the stated reward.) The game isn’t necessarily a, “real time” game but drawing from your bag and assigning townsfolk can be done simultaneously to speed up play. New Beneficial Deeds : a new Beneficial Deeds board providing completely new rewards for sending away your Followers

New Events : a completely new set of 34 Hour Glass Tiles from which 18 are semi-randomly chosen for each game For me, the co-operative Invasion scenario is the stand-out in the expansion box. The duel was also great, but I did win it on the first play-through, which gives us less motivation to play it again. It seemed like we were both going to lose it, and if you did, I think you’d be desperate to play again to try and win. We also need to try the additional 1-5 player competitive scenario.

So what about the follow-on, Altiplano? Should you skip Orleans and just get that? This is a difficult choice. Altiplano plays very similarly but feels very different. Part of this is the addition of movement. You have to be on the correct 'island' to perform an action as well as assigning the correct resources (followers in Orleans). Players must strategically allocate their drawn followers to various actions on their player board. Each action requires a specific combination of follower types to be completed. The available actions include: There’s new place tiles, where you can send your Followers to partake in new actions. Last of all, there’s some new Event tiles. (34 of them, to be precise.) This differs from the base game. Now you cannot guarantee that a certain quota of Event types will occur during the game. These Events keep you on your toes!Farmers Adds; Like the roads, the farmers should not be forgotten – they give you food which might avoid the misfortune of losing 5 coins in some turns. The items also score points and going far on this path can be worthwhile. Especially if you can bury the farmers on the board waiting for other tokens to circle round. Cull; The late game is all about thinning the bag. It’s time to take out everything you don’t need as you go, and putting it into the central board that scores points. You will make it more efficient to draw for the final rounds and ensure you get the right pieces at the right time. Before receiving theInvasionexpansion, we hadn’t played a whole lot of Orléans, but the games we did play were really enjoyable two -player experiences.Orléans Invasionis a big box expansion forOrléans which contains lots of scenarios designed by both the original designer and by Inka and Markus Brand who are also really well renowned designers.

Orleans can be a little overwhelming at first as you try to get to grip with the options.The gameplay is straightforward though, and everything on your player board makes sense. It’s especially important to have everything out and set-up as you explain how to play. Set-up is going to take a while too. I’ve upgraded my copy with the fan kit which lets you use meeples instead of the cardboard chits for characters, and technology, plus a fifth player. Prosperity : An extensive scenario introducing new Events and a Carpenter that all players may use to build Structures for victory points, designed by Inka and Markus Brand.Central to the gameplay of Orleans is its innovative bag-building mechanic. Players begin the game with a set of basic followers, represented by tokens that are placed in a draw bag. Each round, players draw a specific number of follower tokens from their bag and place them on their player board. These tokens represent various professions such as farmers journalists, knights, and craftsmen, which are essential for performing different actions throughout the game. In Orléans, you will always want to take more actions than possible, and there are many paths to victory. The challenge is to combine all elements as best as possible with regard to your strategy.