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 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 teh 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.

Tracking Things In Atteint!

Sometimes I have shower-thoughts on things that weren't even on my radar when I got into the shower.

Probably too much information, but this post is the result of one. The other day I started thinking about my jousting game Atteint! in the shower, and was reminded that I hadn't really got a way to track the bits of in-game information that I liked. I've tried using a sheet for each player with counters that track various values, and I've tried simply doing it by writing on a piece of paper. The latter works best, but some statuses - the Marshal, Favours of the Ladies' Court and the knight's current Focus - change in a way that's awkward to track.

Anyway, my shower-thought was that I should go all Euro game on the problem, and use a ton of counters. I made a few counters for tracking some of the stuff and then switched to my coloured counters for the rest. A couple of days ago I tried it all out, and this is the setup:

White counters are Aim, blue are Balance and black are Force. Each knight starts a pass with one of each. As they add to the values they add counters to their pile. There are card counters marked 'Aim', 'Balance' and 'Force'. They are used to show the knight's current focus. The counter with the heart on it is the Favour From The Ladies' Court. You can only ever have one of these at a time. I also added a track for the Marshal; that starts at 0 and then slides one way or the other as knights gain points,

The above picture shows a pass at the start. This next picture shows a pass a couple of turns in. The White Knight already has a Force of 4, whilst the Purple Knight has 3, but has Aim and Balance of 2 as well.

This shot shows the first pass of a joust. White has nothing but Force to show for it, whilst Purple has 3 in each of Aim, Balance and Force, as well as a Favour.

That said, both knights missed and no points were scored.

The second pass. Both knights had good scored in their attributes, and Purple still has a Favour. You can also see that White has one point in his favour with the Marshal.

Purple has two yellow tokens. I use those to show points. In the second pass White missed again, but Purple scored a hit and managed to break his lance too.

The third pass. Purple piled on the speed hoping to force the pass as quickly as possible. With two points in hand he could afford to miss so long as White did as well. White didn't really get his act together. Both knights missed, so Purple won the joust 2-0.

On the whole this wasn't an exciting joust, but it did show off how the markers work. Yes, it's a lot of clutter but it was straightforward to use and a lot easier than moving stuff around on a chart or crossing things out on a piece of paper.

I ran a few more jousts afterwards, some using skills, and they did manage to be more exciting. And all ran smoothly thanks to the counters.

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.

The Tabletop Tour de France - Part 9

When last I wrote about our Tabletop Tour de France we had four stages left to run and Catherine's green team had a fairly solid 8 point lead. Last week we played two more stages.

Stage 18 runs from Gap to Barcelonnette. It's quite hilly, but there's no extreme climbs. The short climbs are interesting; if you position yourself right you can bump over them in a single move, and then use the descent or supply zone on the other side to burn off a low card. But time things incorrectly and you could get stuck on one and that can cost you position.

Here's the start. We had a tailwind early on, over the first ascent, but a later crosswind would slow things down towards the finish and the final straight was wet with the potential for crashes.

Early moves. Everyone was bunching together in teams except for me; I'd managed to split my riders up and, indeed, was running last.

Blue got out ahead and was looking strong, but would probably burn out before the finish.

And just over halfway through we caught up with blue. Both of my riders were pushing hard as I tried to stay ahead of Catherine. Somehow she had slipped quite badly and I wanted to exploit this.

I got my rouleur into the front pack. 

And good fortune for my sprinteur; I had a single sprint left but it wouldn't get me over the finish line. However on the penultimate turn the pack closed up several positions thanks to slipstreaming, putting me within reach of the finish-line. 

An epic final sprint saw my rouleur win and my sprinteur take second place. Blue picked up a third place and Catherine's highest finish was in fourth.

I picked up 23 points to her 14, eliminating her 8 point lead from the previous race and getting a 1 point lead of my own. I was back in the running!

Stage 19 runs from Embrun to Isola 2000. It has three quite horrible climbs, especially the one in the middle.

A tight pack on the run to the first climb.

After the first ascent was a crosswind, which would make catching up via slipstreaming impossible. And the biggest climb was into a headwind.

The first climb broke things up a little. Catherine had got ahead of me at this stage.

We closed up on the long ascent.

But heading towards the finish I got my rouleur out with the leader. With a climb to the finish line it was just a matter of holding position; there would be little in the way of epic sprint finishes.

And once again I got a win! I Increased my overall lead to 2 points as well.

Heading into the final two stages the team scores are:

Pink (Me) - 280
Green (Catherine ) - 278
White (Peloton) - 273
Blue (Bot) - 252
Red (Bot) - 225
Black (Gruppetto) - 96

Catherine and I have a good lead, but white could still surprise everyone.

Top individual riders:

Green Rouleur (Catherine) - 189
Pink Rouleur (Me) - 169
Blue Rouleur (Bot) - 156

I think Catherine's top rider position is assured; for me to catch her she'd had to finish almost dead last in both remaining races whilst I would have to win them. But the team scores are closer; Catherine's sprinteur tends to do quite badly whilst I manage mine better (indeed I have the highest ranked sprinteur). 

So there are two stages to go, and it's anyone's championship!