Updated Solo Rules For 'Flamme Rouge - BMX'

 Last year I posted some rules for adding bot players to the excellent little children's game 'Flamme Rouge - BMX' (which is an excellent quick game for adults as well). 

We had the game out the other day and I took the opportunity to tweak the rules a little, as well as adding in a new track feature. It's a gem hat I feel could be improved by new features and even (possibly) new track sections.

Anyway, the updated bot rules are as follows:

You Will Need: A single D6

Any players select their speed tokens as normal, and then reveal them. Move the bikes in the usual order. When you come to move a bot bike, roll a D6. If the score is 1-5 then the bike moves that many spaces. If the score is 6 then the bike moves 3 (but see below).

Resolve exhaustion as normal. If a bot gets one or more exhaustion tokens then put them next to the bike on the board. When a bike with an exhaustion token moves and rolls a 6 it move 1 instead of 3. 

eg A bot bike has two exhaustion tokens. It rolls a 6. It discards one token and moves 1spaces. On the next turn it has one token left. It rolls a 4, so moves 4 spaces and discards the remaining token.

On the Downhill board a bot rolls the D6 twice and adds the score together, but rolls of 6 still count as a 3. Expend up to two exhaustion tokens if a bot has any. For each token expended a roll of 6 will count as 1.

eg A bot is on the downhill board. They roll a double 6. They have one exhaustion token which is expended. The first roll of 6 counts as a 1. The second roll of 6 counts as a 3. The bot moves 4 spaces. 

eg A bot is on the downhill board. They roll a 6 and a 4. They have no exhaustion tokens. The bot moves 7 spaces. 

An additional rule I've been trying out is for puddles. I've made a couple of markers for them, which you can see above.

If a bike starts their move in a space with a puddle, then regardless of what token they draw their maximum move is 3. If they play a 4 or 5 token, they only move 3 spaces. 

Tour De France 1903 - Part 4

This is the final part of this short Flamme Rouge tour based around the stages of the 1903 Tour De France. 

The final two stages are mostly sprints, although there are a few small terrain challenges to keep the riders on their toes.

Catherine's Blue team is looking very strong in terms of current tour points, but if things get close then the overall winning team could go down to the bonus points for the sprint and mountain challenges, as well as fastest riders and teams. But, at the end of the day, winning races and winning them well will always put a team on top. My Blue team needs to press Catherine hard.

The fifth stage runs from Bordeaux to Nantes. There's a moderate ascent near the start but after that it should just be a sprint to the finish. Not a race where you want to get left behind.

Riders ready for the off. White and Pink are up front whilst the better-scoring Blue and Black teams sit behind them. 

Everyone stays close together as the riders deal with the ascent.

However the White team made a break for it and my Pink sprinteur followed. A gap opened up.

The White rouleur and Pink sprinteur led the way, chased by the pack.

My sprinteur slipped back and Catherine pushed her Blue team forward to try and catch the White rouleur.

The Blue sprinteur put in a burst and ran for the line, neck and neck with White.

But Blue had shot their bolt and exhaustion got the better of them. My Pink sprinteur put in an epic run to the line and finished first!

This increased my tour standings and gave me some much-needed sprint points. However my rouleur didn't finish so well and lost his yellow jersey to the Black rouleur. White picked up mountain points off the first ascent.

Going into the final race, these were the positions:

Tour Points

Blue - 11
Pink - 9
Black - 7

White - 6

Individual Times (m:ss)

Black Rouleur - 3:50
White Rouleur - 4:00
Pink Rouleur - 4:20
Blue Rouleur - 4:20
Pink Sprinteur - 4:40
Blue Sprinteur - 11:50

White Sprinteur - 13:20
Black Sprinteur - 15:00

Team Times (m:ss)

Pink - 9:00
Blue - 16:10

White - 17:20
Black - 18:50

Sprint Points

Blue Rouleur - 13
Pink Rouleur - 11

White Rouleur - 7

Pink Sprinteur - 5
Black Rouleur - 4

White Sprinter - 2

Mountain Points

White Rouleur - 8

Black Rouleur - 7
Blue Rouleur - 5
Black Sprinteur - 2
Pink Rouleur - 2

Stage 6. The final run from Nantes to Ville d'Auray, near Paris. A small ascent halfway through was the main challenge, but two small sections of cobbles early on could cause problems too.

I needed to finish well to stand a chance of pushing up towards Catherine's score. 

The current leader makes their first selections. It's a serious business. 

As predicted the cobbles did cause a small break. Both bot teams were in the front pack, whilst Catherine and I, who are more cautious, were at the back.

I got the drop on Catherine, pushing both my riders forward  and leaving her trying to catch up at the rear.

Things got more mixed before the second ascent. But I was still feeling confident.

Catherine's sprinteur made a break for it. A couple of good cards would see him win. Could I catch him?

The Blue sprinteur started to struggle on the final run to the finish, and we caught up.

Both of Catherine's rider now looked to be struggling, whilst I still had fast cards left in my deck.

A shame then that on the critical turn BOTH of my riders drew a hand of '2' value cards! I dropped right back and, whilst White won, Catherine's rouleur wasn't far behind. I failed to place.

One bad draw had cost me dear. The near-final points were:

Tour Points

Blue - 13

White - 9

Pink - 9

Black - 8

Individual Times (m:ss)

White Rouleur - 4:10

Black Rouleur - 4:50

Blue Rouleur - 5:00

Pink Rouleur - 5:20

Pink Sprinteur - 5:40

Blue Sprinteur - 12:50

White Sprinteur - 16:20

Black Sprinteur - 17:20

Team Times (m:ss)

Pink - 11:00

Blue - 17:50

White - 20:30

Black - 22:10

Sprint Points

Blue Rouleur - 16

White Rouleur - 12

Pink Rouleur - 11

Black Rouleur - 5

Pink Sprinteur - 5

White Sprinteur - 2

Mountain Points

White Rouleur - 9

Black Rouleur - 7

Blue Rouleur - 5

Black Sprinteur - 2

Pink Rouleur - 2

White Sprinteur - 2

Bonus Tour Points are awarded for the fastest rider, fastest team, sprint champion and King of the Mountain

Catherine's Blue rouleur won the sprint challenge, with the White rouleur second. 

The White rouleur won the King of the Mountain with the Black rouleur second

The General Classification (fastest riders) was won by the  White rouleur, followed by the Black rouleur and then Catherine's Blue rouleur. That final draw cost me points here.

However I'd done a good job at keeping my riders together in each race. So my team had the fastest total time, to pick up the team award.

Adding in the bonus points for the various classifications gave these final scores:

Blue (Catherine) - 16
White (Bot) - 15
Black (Bot) - 11
Pink (Me) - 10

The results were close enough that the final race decided it; a couple of changes in final position would have seen White with a win, and even Black in with a chance. So it was closer than it looked.

The tour sheets in the game are a little fiddly to use, but not too hard. And they make each race an interesting challenge beyond just Win The Race.

Catherine's keen to do another tour, and I have one all ready. I might not bore you all with it here though.

Tour De France 1903 - Part 2

The 1903 Tour De France for  'Flamme Rouge' continues. The second stage runs from Lyon to Marseilles and, like the first, includes a horrible great climb. This time it's near the stary of the race, and it's even bigger than the climb in the first. Fear not; this is the last big climb of the tour; the ascents for the 1903 riders were fairly modest after this one.

As per the rules the riders were arranged in ascending order of team times. This left White in pole position, followed by Blue, then Black and then my Pink team. The new expansion includes little card bases to go around the cyclists and show who is currently wearing the yellow (fastest time), green (sprinter) and polka-dot (king of the mountain) jerseys. In races this has no effect but come the rest days a team gets a Tour Point (the VPs of the game) for each riders that is wearing a jersey. The downside to this is that because they spend all day doing interviews with the press they don't get to halve their exhaustion cards like other riders. Being the best has its price.

Anyway, here's the course so you can admire that magnificent climb. I also threw in a cobbled section before the final small climb just to make life harder.

And here's the riders ready for the off. The White rouleur wears the polka-dot jersey, the Black rouleur the yellow jersey and my Pink sprinteur somehow wears the green jersey.

The riders hit the big ascent. This immediately split them into two packs. At the rear is the Black sprinteur. He somehow got totally detached from the peloton and cycled the entire race alone, finishing a long time after the other riders. We won't see him again.

The big ascent really broke up the pack. Catherine's Blue rouleur was running second and doing well. My riders struggled up the mountain.

We all got back together in the middle section, ready for the small  ascent before the final sprint. The Black and White rouleurs had run a strong race up to this point, but their decks were running out of steam. A good push by Catherine and myself could see a win for one of us here.

All four rouleurs ended up in the race to the finish.

Mine didn't quite have the puff for that final sprint and finished third. The White rouleur finished second and Catherine's Blue rouleur finished first. 

A win gives you three TPs, second-place gives you two and third-place 1. TPs are actual final victory points so are key. Riders are also awarded mountain points and/or sprinter points are two points in the race. These are accumulated and then TPs are awarded at the end of the tour for the team with the best rider in each category. There's also TP awards at the end for fastest individual rider and fastest team. 

These are the standings after two races:

Tour Points

White - 4
Blue - 3
Black - 3
Pink - 2

Individual Times (m:ss)

Black Rouleur - 0:50
White Rouleur - 1:20
Pink Rouleur - 1:20
Pink Sprinteur - 1:20
Blue Rouleur - 2:20
White Sprinteur - 4:40
Blue Sprinteur - 5:10
Black Sprinteur - 8:40

Team Times (m:ss)

Pink - 2:40
White - 6:00
Blue - 7:30
Black - 9:30

Sprint Points

Blue Rouleur - 2
Black Rouleur - 2
White Rouleur - 2

Mountain Points

Black Rouleur - 6
White Rouleur - 6
Blue Rouleur - 5
Pink Rouleur - 1

Catherine (Blue) is doing OK, with a stash of Sprint and Mountain points as well as a second-place TP total. My Pink team is doing less well, although my propensity for bringing in my rouleur and sprinteur together (rather than leaving the sprinteur behind) has given me the best total team time. I need to try and win at least one race to stay in the running though.

Tour De France 1903 - Part 1

The new Grand Tour expansion for Flamme Rouge is very much about running tours (campaigns), despite there being other new stuff in it as well. So I was keen to give one a go. I ran a solo one last week just to get a feel for the spreadsheet-like tracking sheets, but last night my wife an I started a four team tour, with each of us taking a team each and running a bot team each as well.

I wanted something fairly short - the whole Tour De France would be fun, but it's big and there'd be a lot to track. Trawling through old posts on BGG I found a file in which someone had created courses for the first ever Tour De France in 1903. This was only six stages, so I thought would make a manageable tour with a variety of courses.

To be fair the 1903 Tour was very different from the modern version, or indeed the 1930s version that appears in the game art-work. There were no teams for a start; riders competed as individuals. Riders didn't necessarily have to compete in all of the stages. And the stages were huge. The modern Tour De France has stages that average around 170km in length. In 1903 the six stages averaged 400km each! To offset this there were one to three rest days between each stage. Because of this the author of the tracks on BGG designed each one to be a long course (something that's covered in the expansion).  Here's a map of the original tour:

I wanted to keep my tour simple. So I decided to redesign each course based on the profile, but scaling it to a regular length - there are course design guidelines in the rules and I intended to follow those. Essentially each course should generally have all twelve curved sections and nine straights (or equivalents), including the start and finish tiles. They also recommend that a course only have 2-3 sections that have ascents and/or cobbles. I tried to stick to that, which meant a few design compromises. I also designed each course for 2-4 riders and, obviously, we'd use the regular teams.

I made a few decisions. I slightly over-emphasised the ascents to keep things challenging, and where there were minor areas of undulating terrain I used cobblestone sections. The latter help break up the riders unless managed properly, which makes for a nice challenge. On two stages I added tiles from the new expansion simply because I wanted to try them out. For purists I did versions of those courses without them. 

You can download the complete set of stages HERE. You need the Peloton expansion for them, but I'd say that expansion is a must anyway. I used tile 'u' as the finish. If you're playing with Grand Tour then you should substitute it with the new 'v' tile. I included the breakaway tile on each course. I don't plan on using the breakaway rules in this tour, but it's there for anyone who does. 

Anyway, I'll freely admit that the courses are inspired by the original rather than slavish reproductions. The key thing is that there are a range of challenges over the six races.

Last night Catherine and I had a go at the first one. It runs from Montgeon near Paris to Lyon. This is the profile:

The first two-thirds is a nice flat course, but with a big cobblestone area to cover some rougher terrain about halfway. The latter third of the race sees a minor then major ascent before the rune to the finish-line.

This was the start. Catherine is Blue and had 'pole position'. I am the Pink team next to her. The Black and White teams are regular bots.

The opening was cautious as neither Catherine nor I wanted to push ourselves forward and start accumulating exhaustion too early. The Black and White rouleurs made a run for it though and had a commanding lead. In theory this would see their decks devoid of decent cards by the end of the race, so I hoped we could catch them then.

The cobblestones worked as expected, breaking the teams up. They actually ended up in colour order. Black and White raced ahead and I was a turn ahead of Catherine in anticipating this and piled on speed to leave her behind. Cobblestones prevent slipstreaming so whilst I would end up with exhaustion, so would she and she'd be detached from the main race as well.

This set the pattern for the rest of the race. Black and White's rouleurs stayed out in front, but their sprinteurs were slowed down by the large ascent at the end. I kept up the pressure, and Catherine got left behind.

The Black rouleur crossed the line a turn ahead of the other riders. This affects how the tour times are calculated, so is a good thing. Both of my riders crossed on the next turn, with my sprinteur picking up third place (which gives him a Tour Point - the VPs of the game)

I won't post the various scores at this stage, but thanks to my riders crossing together I actually have the fastest combined team time. Black is doing well in terms of the sprint and mountain competition though.

We're not running long rest periods between each race. There will be a single rest day after Stage 3. So the next race will see our heroic riders travel from Lyon to Marseilles.

Happy Christmas!

OK, it's a day late but yesterday I was busy with a mix of having fun, relaxing and cooking. No time for blogging.

I hope you all had, or are having, a great Christmas and that Santa (or whatever functional equivalent thereof) brought you plenty of gaming goodies.

My haul this year was small, but that's OK. I got a dice-tray (something I've needed for ages, but never got around to getting), as well as 'Grand Tour, the most recent expansion for Flamme Rouge covering new specialist rider types, some weird new track pieces and full rules for running multi-stage tours.

I also realise that I'd missed posting about the Wollongong Wargamers Christmas Get-Together, which was a week ago now. As ever we went to a local RSL for a meal and a chat. But we also did the annual trivia, competing for the coveted Golden KV2. Last year's winner, Peter, set the questions, and in a tight competition Dave emerged victorious. Once again I ended up in second-place. Story of my life.

Bot Players For 'Flamme Rouge: BMX'

Flamme Rouge has a number of rules for bot players/teams, hat allow you to play the game solo, or with higher team counts than the number of players. I thought that Flamme Rouge BMX could do with the same; it means that my wife and I can play with all four riders on the board even when there's just the two of us.

We did try with the bot riders drawing tokens. On the first two track sections they would always pick the second highest one they drew and then the highest on the final two sections. They add exhaustion tokens as normal. This worked, but it was a fiddle having the two extra bags in play and it slowed things down. I decided that something more in keeping with the fast nature of the game was in order.

You Will Need: A single D6

Any players select their speed tokens as normal, and then reveal them. Move the bikes in the usual order. When you come to move a bot bike, roll a D6. If the score is 1-5 then the bike moves that many spaces. If the score is 6 then the bike moves at the speed of the highest token played by any live player.

eg I play a 4 and my wife plays a 2. The bot rolls a 6, so gets to move 4 spaces.

Resolve exhaustion as normal. If a bot gets one or more exhaustion tokens then put them next to the bike on the board. When a bike with an exhaustion token moves it discards one of them and moves one space less than the roll dictates (to a minimum of 1)

eg A bot bike has two exhaustion tokens. It rolls a 4. It discards one token and moves 3 spaces.

eg A bot bike has an exhaustion token. It rolls a 6 and the highest player token is a 3. The bot moves 2 spaces as its normal speed from the roll counts as 3.

On the Downhill board a bot simply gets a +3 to its roll, and then subtracts one if they have exhaustion. If they roll a 6 then they copy the highest player token played and add 3.

eg A bot is on the downhill board. They roll a 6. The highest player token is a 2. The bot moves 5 spaces.

eg A bot is on the downhill board. They roll a 6. A player is also on the downhill board and has played a 3 and a 2. Their 3 is the highest player speed token placed that turn. So the bot moves 3 + 3 = 6 spaces.

I have played multiple solo games with this system against three bot bikes. I consistently come second; one of the bikes always pulls off an epic finish and just pips me at the post.

The Tabletop Tour de France - Part 10 - THE END

And so here we are - the final part of our epic Tour de France replay using Flamme Rouge. Over the past few weeks we've travelled far and wide, all without leaving our dining room. But last night we played the two final stages of the Tour, and we have a winner.

Stage 20 is from Nice to Col de Couillole. There's four significant climbs in it. It's nasty.

I accidentally ended up with my rouleur in the breakaway but, given that there's a slope almost immediately, this was no bad thing. I'd possibly be at the front getting exhaustion, but at least I'd not get caught in the bottleneck that happens at the start of each ascent.

Not getting caught in the bottleneck was key in this race, as the track section before the ascent started was wet, so cyclists unable to use their full movement would crash. And that's what happened; three cyclists crashed, including Catherine's sprinteur.

Meanwhile I was stacking up piles of exhaustion at the front.

The slow plod continued. I let my rouleur drop back so someone else could run at the front. I also pushed my sprinteur forward; I wanted to make sure he finished well before Catherine's so I could maintain my lead in the team scores.

The ascents really break things up because there's so little slipstreaming possible. I had both of my cyclists in the lead group of five, whilst Catherine only had her rouleur there. Her sprinteur was right at the back and in terrible trouble.

The run to the finish was uphill, into a headwind, and was hard work. But my rouleur had just enough decent cards left to win the race. Catherine's got third place. But my sprinteur also finished fifth whilst Catherine's finished last.

So I had now increased my lead in the team event to 11 points! However my rouleur was starting the next race with a massive five exhaustion cards; he'd shot his bolt in that stage and would really suffer in the next.

So onto the 21st and final stage. This one runs from Monaco to Nice. It's set up as a short time-trial course but, as with the previous one, I added in some extra pieces to make it a full course. The core of it is two simple ascent/descent combinations. My additions were some simple flat track so we could have an epic sprint finish.

My course was:

1 2 C K t p H 9 e g M q S B r 4 j 0 f i d u

This time Catherine ended up in the breakaway, and would be able to lead from the beginning. With no future races to consider she had less to worry about in terms of accumulated exhaustion (although obviously accumulating it affects you in the race as well).

The only significant weather effect was a headwind on the finish - again.

Catherine got a good lead off the back of hitting the first ascent well before the rest of the pack. I was struggling in the middle; my rouleur had already had at least one bad hand stacked with exhaustion.

We dealt with the ascents and were now into the flat section that ran to the finish. Catherine had slipped back a little and I even had my sprinteur close to the front. But getting there had cost me a lot of my good cards.

Catherine had cards left to play. She broke away with both of her riders in a pair of fast sprints. If she could finish well and ensure I finished a long way back she could eliminate my lead and maybe win the tour.

The headwind reduces card options for players and slows bot teams. With cards running out everyone struggled. Catherine maintained her lead ...

... but her sprinteur lost momentum just before the finish. Sadly so did both of my riders.

The final positions. Catherine's riders were first and sixth. I finished near the back, having pulled a pile of exhaustion cards on the final turn. 

So it was time to tot up the final score. Catherine's team picked up 19pts for the final stage. I got a mere 9pts. But my lead was 11pts at the start, so ... I'd won by a single point!

It was the tightest possible win, and an amazing result given that we'd run twenty-one races. 

The final team scores were:

Pink (Me) - 309

Green (Catherine) - 308

White (Peloton) - 306

Blue (Bot) - 276

Red (Bot) - 251

Black (Gruppetto) - 110

Note that white had closed up on the leaders as well.

Individual Rider scores were:

Green Rouleur - 199

Pink Rouleur - 181

Blue Rouleur - 163

Red Rouleur -152

White 1 - 147

White 2 - 141

Pink Sprinteur - 119

Blue Sprinteur - 98

Green Sprinteur 90

Red Sprinteur - 87

So Catherine got the best individual rider (which always tends to be a rouleur), whilst I had the top sprinteur.

We both really enjoyed playing this; on the days we played we'd trash-talk and plan our strategies in advance having checked the courses we were to run. The whole thing took us ten sessions over about six weeks. The finish was so tight that we can both point to key moments throughout the tour that would have made a difference. Catherine's crash in the 19th stage cost her dear, for example, but so did mine in an earlier stage. If I did it again I'd make a few tweaks to my bot rules; I'd only have a winning bot rider take a single exhaustion (instead of 2) and possibly rework the breakaway test so that the rider draws two cards and always takes the lowest, so bots will tend to bid low. This can lead to players accidentally winning the breakaway. I'd also possibly consider dropping either the gruppetto or the peloton team, so there's a third conventional bot team in play.

I hope the few of you that have read this far have enjoyed the ride.