Orléans

You reach into a felt bag and pull out 4-7 wooden Character tiles (Farmers, Boatmen, Craftsmen, Traders, Knights, Scholars, Monks), then drag those tiles onto labelled recipe slots on action Places (Farm House, Castle, University, Monastery, Ship, Wagon, Town Hall, etc.) on your player board. The peak tactile beat is rummaging the bag and tumbling tiles into your personal Market — the single dopamine moment most reviewers cite. Once recipes are filled, you fire the action; tiles return to the bag for the next round, except permanent Technology tiles which stay slotted forever as half-cost discounts.

Round begins with the Hour Glass tile flipping to reveal one of six event types (Plague, Taxes, Trading Day, Pilgrimage, Income, Harvest) and the Census phase rewarding the leader on the Farmer Track. Players then simultaneously draw tiles from their bags equal to current Knights Track value and lay them face-up. In the Planning phase everyone places tiles onto Place recipes in parallel; in the Action phase, in turn order, each player executes one activated Place per turn until all pass. Used Character tiles return to the bag; new tiles earned drop in. Finally the round event resolves (Plague forces every player to permanently exile a tile; Taxes drains coins; Trading Day pays trading-station owners), then start player passes. After 18 Hour Glass rounds the game ends and Beneficial Deeds + coin + Citizen tiles convert to VP.

Each round you balance which Place recipe to commit your scarce tiles to (the recipe waits across rounds, so you can place a Boatman on the University this round and the Scholar three rounds later — patience is a real option), versus what tile-type to add to your bag next, versus what to permanently exile to the Beneficial Deeds board for VP and tempo. The combinatorial demand — recipes need the *right mix* of types, not the right count — produces a constant Bayesian update against partially blind bag composition: you bought a Knight last round and now must decide whether to wait for it to surface or pivot. The option space at a typical decision is wide (6-8 Places, 4-7 tiles in hand, multiple Beneficial Deeds rows), but disciplined by which tracks you have already invested in.

The dominant skill is *bag composition planning under stochastic draw* — which tile-types to add when, which to exile to the Beneficial Deeds, when to push the Knights Track for more draws. A close second is multi-clock management: 18-round game timer, the event sequence (when does Plague hit?), and the Beneficial Deeds row depletion that opponents are racing you to. Pattern recognition matters (which Place chains feed which tracks), as does soft probability sense (how likely is my Knight to surface in the next 5 draws). Memory and arithmetic are light; the heavy lift is forward-planning under uncertainty plus opponent-pressure reading on the shared Beneficial Deeds.

You are a medieval French merchant in the Loire valley. Hire farmers, knights, monks, and scholars; assemble crews to build trade routes, score in cathedrals, and survive plague years.

Klemens Franz earthen-medieval illustration in the agrarian Eurogame mode (warm browns and ochres, woodcut-inspired tile icons, Lookout/dlp house style). Cartoony illustrated tiles with strong silhouettes; the bag itself is a tactile prop in the experience.