The Tabletop Tour de France 2024 - Part 3

Catherine and I continued our Flamme Rouge Tour de France last night, and got in two more stages, so we're a third of the way through it. We didn't make any rules changes this time, so you are spared a length Flamme Rouge rules update in this post.

Stage 5 is another flat run, from Macon to Dijon. In fact there's very little to trouble the riders aside from an area of cobblestones near the start. Conversely there's only one supply zone where riders can get rid of exhaustion cards and still get a good move. So it was going to be a fast sprint but possibly exhausting for the front riders.

Red and blue took the breakaway.

Both of red and blue's riders zoomed into a commanding lead. The other riders chose to move slowly at first, with Catherine and I obviously saving ourselves for an attack later in the race. Annoyingly, although I held back the slow pace of the other riders meant that I kept being at the front of my pack, so whilst I was moving forward I wasn't picking up any slip-streaming and I was accumulating fatigue.

The key moment of the race. Both Catherine and I had judged this point to be the place to make our move. We'd both saved up our best cards, and would start spending them from here. having shot their bolt early, read and blue were slowing and could be caught.

Catherine got the better of things, with her green rider catching the leaders. I fell foul of a hand full of fatigue cards at the point I wanted to make my break, plus losing out on a slip-stream chance because of a cross-wind. I actually had a higher hand of cards than Catherine, but ended up a move behind her and unable to catch her before the finish.

So I finished in the middle, with my only consolation in terms of my relative position to Catherine's team being that her sprinteur had a terrible race and finished near the back, whereas mine managed to finish with my rouleur. So our amalgamated team scores were relatively close. Catherine's rouleur was the winner (again) whilst red finished second and a white peloton rider finished third. The relative team scores remained unchanged.

Stage 7 is from Nuit St. Georges to Geury-Chambertin. It's actually a time-trial, which is a type of race not covered by the game, but for which there are house-rules on BGG. 

We decided to keep things simple and run it as a standard race, but time-trial courses are shorter than standard ones, so I extended it. I used the following profile:

1 2 c d R O K f H 9 t S q j l I p e G 3 m u

Basically it extends the track but adds in one small incline and a supply zone towards the end.

(The final stage is also a time trial and I have created an extended course for that.)

The key feature of the course is a decent climb in the middle. Coming off the climb the riders would hit a headwind.

Coming into the climb the pack was extended, but everyone was together.

This was not the case afterwards, with Catherine and one of the peloton riders out in front, followed by the other rouleurs (including me) and then a spread of sprinteurs at the rear. 

I timed this race better, though, and on the run to the finish had good cards in my hand and a good position.

Once again Catherine's rouleur won the race (four in a row!), whilst I came third. 

Current team scores are:

Peloton (White) - 114

Catherine (Green) - 104

Muscle Bot (Blue) - 96

Me (Pink) - 93

Muscle Bot (Red) - 91

Gruppetto (Black) - 41

So I have moved up into fourth place whilst the peloton leads the field. It's a tough bot to beat since whilst you can usually finish ahead of it with one rider in a race, both of its riders tend to finish well.

In terms of individual riders the top three are:

Green Rouleur (Catherine) - 75

Blue Rouleur (Bot) - 64

Pink Rouleur (Me) - 62

The next stage is more challenging, with a couple of climbs and some cobblestones to contend with.