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 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. I haven't included the major and minor award spaces (for sprint and KOM points), but the rules in Grand Tour are clear about placement so it's easy to do once the track's set up.
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:
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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 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.
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