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Selling printable Orléans endgame logs as downloads: the log your buyer trusts when a citizen is worth four, not one

A printable Orléans log lives or dies on the one record nobody keeps: what each player's endgame actually added, and why, because Orléans does not end with a single pile of points but with three lines scored in order, coins first, then goods at five different values, then trading stations and citizens multiplied by development status, and the multiplier is where the game is won or lost. Nobody at the table argues about the game they played; they argue about whether a brocade was worth five or one, whether a citizen paid one point or four, and whether the player with the most trading stations got the last citizen before scoring began. The only evidence is the log: a line for each of the three scores, with the goods broken out by type and the multiplier written beside the station-and-citizen count, or a single victory-point total that was written at the end and can be defended by nobody.

Goods are the first trap, because five goods share a bag and a table but not a value. Grain pays one, cheese two, wine three, wool four, and brocade five, so two players holding the same number of goods can be points apart, and a player holding one brocade holds more endgame value than a player holding four grain. Score every good flat at one and the player whose goods ran expensive loses points they earned, quietly, with no line on the sheet showing where they went. A log that writes each good on its own line, with its count and its value beside it, makes the goods line checkable; a bare goods total does not, because the total alone cannot tell you whether a brocade was paid at five or mistakenly at one.

The multiplier is the second trap, and it is the one that decides games. Trading stations and citizens multiply by the player's development level, with one twist that decides games: for each level of development, a station is worth one more point: 0, 1, 2, 3, 4 — and the total is then the station-and-citizen count, not the count, multiplied. A player with ten trading stations and citizens and a development level of four therefore scores forty points from this line, not ten, and a player with the same ten and a development level of one scores only ten. In a typical game, this line is worth 10, 20, 30, or 40, and only the one player who reaches level four earns the full forty, so the same board can produce a forty-point swing between two players who look identical on coins and goods. That is why a log that records only how many stations a player has, without also recording the development level, is not a log at all: it leaves the largest line in the game uncheckable and lets a single missed level change the result by ten points.

The last citizen is the third trap, because it is awarded before scoring and it feeds the multiplier. The player who has the most trading stations, with ties broken in the direction of the first player, receives an extra citizen, and that citizen adds one to the station-and-citizen count before the development level multiplies it. A player who reaches development level four and gains the last citizen therefore gains four points from that one citizen, not one, and a player who loses the last citizen on a tie loses four points at level four, not one. A log that leaves the last citizen off, or that records it after the multiplier, will therefore disagree with the official score by exactly the development level, and the disagreement will look like a mistake in the multiplier rather than a missing citizen. Record the citizen, record the count, and record the level, in that order, and the line checks itself.

Take a game that ends with A and B close on the first two lines: A holds nine coins and goods worth 22, while B holds ten coins and goods worth 23. On the first two lines alone, B leads by two. Then add the multiplier: A has six trading stations and citizens at development level three, for 18 points, while B has four at development level one, for four. A wins 49-37, and the first two lines never decided the game. Without the multiplier line, with the citizen count and development level beside it, the 49-37 result looks wrong, and the buyer who paid for the log is the one left arguing. With the line, and the two numbers beside it, the argument never starts.

An Orléans endgame log that a buyer prints, fills in, and trusts is not a sheet of blank lines but a checklist of three decisions: coins at face value, goods broken out by type with the 1-2-3-4-5 values written beside them, and a multiplier line that records both the station-and-citizen count and the development level before it is multiplied. A buyer who gets those three lines gets a log that settles the game at the table, not a log that starts a second game after it. That is what makes the difference between a download that gets printed once and a download that gets printed for every game night, and it is the difference a seller can charge for.

Disclaimer: This log is a player aid for Orléans and is not affiliated with dlp games or Reiner Stockhausen. Orléans is a trademark of its respective owner; this log is an independent, unofficial aid and does not reproduce any copyrighted game art, rules text, or components.

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