Image taken from https://boardgamegeek.com/image/6910522/joan-of-arc-orleans-draw-and-write

Designers: Ryan Hendrickson, Reiner Stockhausen
Publisher: DLP Games
Artist: Klemens Franz

Disclaimer: I have never played the original Orleans (I feel like I really need to, though, right?), so I cannot make any comparisons.

I’m going to keep this review short. I won’t provide much information on the game play itself, I’ll just share some thoughts. Essentially, each round a certain number of “followers” are drawn out of the bag. Each player takes turns choosing one of those followers to use for a wide range of actions from building routes, to filling your warehouse, to advancing on the development track. Each action is important and can affect consequent turns, so the strategy for selecting a follower can be interesting.

Pros:

• This game creates a great decision-making space without being too complex. Each token provides different actions, and some tokens have more than one action option itself, so there is a lot to consider. The game is essentially optimization, but there’s quite a bit of strategy that goes into that puzzle.
• The tokens, actions, and spaces on the player sheet provide satisfying combo wombo opportunities. There’s a small amount of engine building to assist with this, but the actions and items on the player sheet are the main driving force.
• There is a set number of rounds so the game play length is perfect. You feel pressed for time to achieve what you want to, but you still have time to get the sense of progression.
• Joan of Arc, the automa, is pretty easy to manage but challenging to beat. I think it’s a solid implementation of a bot for a solo game that keeps it interesting, but nothing she does feels exceptionally devastating.
• The action economy aspect is also very well done. Since the tokens selected are random, it’s fun to figure out which token to use when/which you may not want Joan to steal from you. The limited time adds to the importance of when to select which action and in what order. There is also quite a variety in followers and actions, so that facilitates exciting and variable game play.
• The player count is 1-5, so it can easily fit into many settings, and I can see the teach being quite easy, minus the need to often refer back to the rules for the information on each follower.
• The inherent variability of the game helps with the replayability factor.

Cons:

• Again, I can’t directly compare to the original, but the “bag building” aspect of this game is non-existent. Yes, you draw tokens from a bag, but there’s no way to influence what tokens are in the bag. What’s inside and what you draw are only based on luck.
• Why are the solo sheets on the back of the multiplayer sheets?! With each solo play, I have to tear out a sheet to access the back, and then the sheet just sits in the box until it can be utilized in a multiplayer game.
• The table space for a solo game seems a little unnecessarily big.
• Besides the aforementioned design variability, there isn’t much else helping the game in terms of replayability, personally, except for the potential desire to beat your own score and/or try to defeat Joan.

Overall, it’s a fun game with a unique puzzle! It’s not perfect, but if you’re a fan of blank and writes, I’d definitely suggest giving it a try. Especially if you like solo gaming and/or need an easy but strategic five-player game, this could be a good one for the collection!