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.

Punta Malpelo

This action, fought on 31st August 1828, was part of a brief war between the new nations of Peru and Gran Colombia. Gran Colombia was an amalgamated state comprised of modern Ecuador, Colombia and Venezuela; it didn't last, but was the closest the world got to Simon Bolivar's vision of a united Spanish America. The war was fought over border disputes between Peru and that part of Gran Colombia that is now neighbouring Ecuador. It's worth noting that these disputes weren't resolved until the early years of this century; they lasted nearly 200 years and saw at least two more small wars being fought (one in the middle of World War II).

Anyway early in the war a Peruvian corvette, the Libertad, was sent to blockade the mouth of the strategically important Guayaquil River close to the border of the two counties. Two Colombian ships, the Guayaquilena and the Pichincha attempted to dislodge the blockader.

I tried a brief refight of this action last night using Galleys & Galleons and some of my Napoleonic vessels. It  was adapted from a scenario in GMT Games' 'Beneath The Southern Cross'. The east edge of the board was land. The Peruvian corvette arrived at a random point along the southern edge and the Guayaquilena at a random point along the north. The wind was from the north-west, giving the Colombians the weather gage. In the actual action the Pichincha showed reluctance to close with the enemy, so it doesn't appear initially. At the end of each Colombian turn roll a D6, and the Pichincha appears on a 6. Add one to the roll if the Libertad has taken any damage - the Pichincha is more inclined to share in the glory of the fight if their side is already winning.

Stats were as follows:

Libertad (24) - Q3 C3 - Square Rig, Carronades

Guayaquilena (14) - Q2 C2 - Lateen Rig, Yare

Pichincha (20) - Q4 C3 - Square Rig

(The scenario lists Pichincha as a 20-gun corvette in the notes but a 12-gun ship on the counter. I treated it as the former. I gave the Libertad the carronades trait to reflect it being heavier than either of the opposing vessels. The Guayaquilena is listed as a schooner so I gave it a lateen rig, and made it more manueverable than the Libertad to make things interesting, since it would be fighting alone for some of the action.)

Here's the Libertad. It sailed at top speed to take on the Guayaquilena.

The Guayaquilena hung back, hoping the Pichincha would turn up to assist. If I ran this again I would limit when you start rolling for the Pichincha to appear to after the action shows some sign of starting; maybe until the Guayaquilena and Libertad are within a certain distance of each other. This would force the Guayaquilena to show some aggression.

The opposing ships approach.

The Guayaquilena fired a wild long-range broadside, hoping to inflict damage and inspire the Pichincha to turn up.

The Libertad responded by crossing the Guayaquilena's bow. It didn't get a rake (despite appearances) but rolled well enough to smash the Colombian schooner and damage its tiller.

At that point the Pichincha turned up, but at some distance from the main action.

It sailed as fast as it could to the aid of the Guyaquilena. However the schooner, unable to turn, had run aboard the larger Libertad. Its captain organised a ferocious boarding attempt that saw damage inflicted on both sides, but the Libertad soon forced the Colombian vessel to strike.

Libertad disenagaged and turned to take on the Pichincha. But the Pichincha had the advantage of the wind and had Libertad trapped against the shore.

With poor activation rolls the two ships sailed alongside each other at medium range, firing the occasional ragged broadside.

A error in steering saw Libertad move even closer inshore, risking the shallows.

At that point both ships reached the edge of the table. Since it was late in the evening and I had things to do, I called a halt to the action there and declared it a draw. Libertad was in trouble against the land, but would almost certainly sort things out, but I decided that Pichincha wasn't enthusiastic enough to push things and would return to the aid of Guyaquilena. 

So a fun little action which I'll try again sometime making use of the tweaks I think it needs. Historically Pichincha took no significant part in the action, whilst Libertad and Guayaquiena caused serious damage to each other. The Gran Colombians withdrew, however, leaving the Peruvians with their first naval victory.

The Tabletop Tour de France 2024 - Part 2

Catherine and I got in three more stages of the 2024 Tour de France this weekend. 

We added a couple of small changes to the Tour setup rules. Firstly if a bot rider gets first or second place then in the next race they have two or one exhaustion cards added to their deck respectively. In the case of the peloton team only the highest-placed rider triggers this (so if the Peloton comes first and second they still only get two cards). Any unused exhaustion cards are discarded at the end of the race - unlike a player team exhaustion is not retained.

Secondly we changed how the breakaway is calculated for bots. Originally it was only the rouleur that is considered. Now it will be whichever of the two riders in the team finished the highest in the previous  race. In addition the mechanism for the draw is changed slightly. Instead of drawing one card for the bot you draw two and total the scores. If the total is odd then use the lowest of the two cards. If the total is even then use the highest. Obviously if the cards are the same you just use one of them. Put the unused card to one side until after the breakaway is decided, then shuffle it back into the deck. It's a minor change, but lowers the total the bot gets a little, creating an illusion that it bids low sometimes.

On to the races.

Stage 3 is a nice flat run from Plaisance to Turin. There are a few cobblestone sections to keep things interesting, but that's it.

Catherine went wild and pushed her sprinteur into the breakaway. My rubbish position in the rankings put me at the front of the main group.

Catherine's sprinteur got off to a dreadful start, whilst blue's rocketed ahead and was soon at the front. You can see the cobblestones breaking up the riders a little here.

Catherine and I both ended up with our sprinteurs running with the gruppetto at the back. I couldn't get my rouleur forward, but Catherine's ran well. Blue took a commanding lead with both riders and no attack either of us made was going to easily catch them.

Red and blue took the top three places. Catherine did manage to come fourth and I scraped fifth. Catherine's sprinteur came last though, so I made up a few points against her in the team scores. We still finished this stage in fourth and fifth places, though. And that's basically bottom since no-one expects the sixth place gruppetto to do any better than that.

Stage 4 is a mountainous run from Pinerolo to Valloire. There's lots of ascents (including a huge one towards the end) so it's one for careful hand management. There are descents and supply zones after each climb, offering a chance to burn off exhaustion, but not a run for epic sprints.

Red and blue took the breakaway, whilst Catherine and I had the best starting positions in the main group. The only weather effect was a tailwind in the second supply zone, which would be useful for all riders.

This time it was me who messed up with my sprinteur, and who ended up at the back. Catherine kept both of her riders together at the start. However I decided to go for it and threw my rouleur to the front.

This is the position later in the race. As you can see the riders have really split up. My sprinteur was still last (and having to burn useful cards to even stay up with the gruppetto), whilst Catherine had now closed up into the leader group.

Catherine and I both went for a sprint finish, and she just beat me into first place. Her sprinteur shook off the horrors of the previous race and finished third, whilst mine came last. This really boosted Catherine's score and left me well behind her in the team results. Although in fourth place Catherine was closing the gap between her team and the bot teams.

Stage 5, from St Jean de Maurienne to St. Vulbus, is another sprint but there's a small ascent early on followed by a useful exhaustion-burning descent.

Once again red and blue took the breakaway. There was a headwind early on (in a supply zone, which would help offset it) and a useful tailwind later on.

Everyone stuck together in this race; there was a lot of slipstreaming. Catherine had both of her riders to the fore.

There was some epic sprinting at the end where Catherine and I got to test who had managed their had the best. Once again she just beat me into second place with her rouleur, but my sprinteur finished ahead of hers. The peloton did really well, getting fourth and fifth places. Red and blue did poorly in this race, with both of their sprinteurs finishing behind the gruppetto and neither of their rouleurs doing well either.

This fifth stage shook up the rankings a little. The peloton team (white) went into first place, with Catherine's green team in second. Then comes blue and red, and then my pink team. However even I have closed to within striking distance of fourth place, so long as I can beat red in the next stage. In terms of individual rider, Catherine's rouleur is in first place, the blue rouleur in second and, surprisingly, my rouleur in third. It's the sprinteur who is letting my team down. 

The next stage is another flat sprint, and I'm better off in terms of exhaustion than Catherine, so we'll see how things pan out.

Nimitz

We had a game of Nimitz on Thursday evening. Darren was expecting a horde of players (six of us, anyway), so just threw together a pile of Italian and British ships to use. We had loads of ships on a small table, but Nimitz copes with that OK.

The Italian fleet - there was everything on show from destroyers up to battleships. Red markers show groups moving at fast speed.

Most people had played before, but the level of experience varied. I'd made an effort to read the rules that afternoon - I had had a doctor's appointment and brushed up on them in the waiting room. This meant I was fairly up on the firing process, which kept things moving smoothly on our side.

This was our first success of the evening - a shell from one of our battleships sunk a British cruiser in an explosive critical.

Lots of action here; the destroyers of both sides were passing through each other on their way to deliver torpedoes onto the enemy big ships

Lots of torpedo action; the British (whits dice) actually decided to try and sink the Italian destroyers with torpedoes, but with everything moving at high speed the odds of even hitting were pretty slim. The British wasted their torpedoes with little to show for it. The Italians had a pop at a British cruiser, but otherwise held their fire; there were juicy British battleships to go after.

The two battleship lines converge; Italians are on the left and British on the right. Between them is a line of Italian destroyers. The battleship gunnery duel cam out mostly in the British fleet's favour, but the destroyers scored some hits on the British battleships, damaging at least one of them.

The one big British success of the night; an Italian light cruiser was hit by a torpedo and went straight to the bottom thanks to an excellent damage roll.

After a couple of hours some people had to leave and the rest of us felt that we'd had an exciting enough time to call it an evening. Whilst technically a draw the Italians were currently winning in terms of enemy vessels sunk, and were probably in the better position. The only cloud on the horizon was if the British could get a second lot of excellent firing against the Italian battleships, but there was still a reasonable chance of the Italians doing a pile of hits back on them.

Nimitz has a lot of abstractions, and we did find that it's easy to get confused with the difference between big guns and small guns as opposed to primary armament and secondary armament. But we rattled through a game with a lot of ships at a speed we were happy with.

Thanks to Darren for setting everything up and Daniel for putting up with my pronunciation of Italian ship names.

The Tabletop Tour de France 2024 - Part 1

The Flamme Rouge community loves to design courses, and quite often someone will put together something for the big cycling events. Naturally the Tour de France always gets done, and this year was no exception. The other day I downloaded the tracks for the 2024 Tour from Boardgame Geek, and suggested to Catherine that maybe we work our way through the 20 or so stages. She was up for it.

I'm not sure what timescale we'll have for this; we'll just play when we feel like and give up when we get bored.

We will play one team each, but add in four other teams as bot players, using the full 5-6 player boards for each stage. We normally play with one peloton bot and three muscle bots, but I thought that this we'd replace one of the muscle bots with one of the fan-variants from BGG, the Gruppetto. This 'player' represents the main group of cyclists. It's not likely to win races, but will hang about at the rear of the pack giving slipstream opportunities for those lagging behind and sometimes blocking the way.

The rules for the Gruppetto as as follows:

They are represented by two cyclists side by side. They fill two lanes in the square. They cannot end their move in a square with only one free lane (so are blocked by a single cyclist). Obviously they block the square they are in as well. Exception: If the square only has a single lane (cobblestone sections) then they can be positioned.

They always start on the backmost space on the starting grid. 

They use a single deck (either type) with two obvious cards added in. For our Tour we are using the sprinteur deck with two spare muscle cards added in (the extra '5' cards). On its turn the Gruppetto draws one card.

If one of the special cards is drawn then roll a D6+1; this is the value of the card for movement purposes. All movement rules apply (ascents, descents, supply zones and so forth)

If any other card is drawn then regardless of its value it counts as the following:

If the Gruppetto is on a flat square or Supply Zone square: 5

If the Gruppetto is on an ascent: 3

If the Gruppetto is on a descent: 6

The Gruppetto can give and receive slipstreaming (subject to normal rules for this).

In addition to the Gruppetto we decided to use the Meteo rules for weather. These don't address the effect on bots, so again I searched BGG and came up with the following:

If the bot rider is starting on a Headwind space then the value of their card is reduced by 1 (minimum 2)
If the bot rider is starting on a Tailwind space then the value of their card is increased by 1 (maximum 9)

In both cases you then apply the effect of ascents, descents and Supply Zones.

Last night we did the first two stages. I won't do detailed write-ups because I suspect that no-one reads them. Here's Stage 1 - Florence to Rimini:

There's lots of topography in this one, although each ascent does have either a descent or supply zone after it to help burn off any exhaustion.

Here's everyone on the starting grid before we determined the breakaway pair (another advanced rule we're trying for this tour, since it helps break up the pack a little from the start).

The standees next to some of the straights show the weather. The one that end on was a headwind, the next some rain and the final one a tailwind which, being on the final straight, would give a fast finish.

Catherine is running the green team and I am running the pink. Red and blue are the regular bot teams (we run one each), white is the peloton and black the gruppetto.

You can see how the breakaway has split up the pack here. Red and blue had originally pushed ahead, but red's rider was now in the second group. Blue maintained their lead. I had a terrible start with my sprinteur, and was bringing up the rear with the gruppetto.

The leader a third of the way into the race. Blue's rouleur was still in front, and the peloton was running strongly as well. You can see my rouleur leading the second group.

Not photographed was the disaster on the rainy stretch, where my sprinteur had crashed, followed by the gruppetto (which crashed twice). They got back into the race but lost a lot of ground.

One of the peloton riders actually won the race, pipping the blue rouleur at the post. The peloton picked up third place as well. Catherine's rouleur finished fifth and her sprinter seventh. I picked up sixth place for my rouleur but my sprinteur came in tenth, just ahead of the gruppetto. This left us both towards the bottom of the team rankings.

Stage 2 is from Cesenatico to Bologne. It had fewer hills than the previous race and mostly small ones that, with planning, you can 'bounce' over in one turn.

Red and blue won the breakaway again (we'll be looking at adjusting the rules here I think). You can see them out in front at the start. We had a crosswind on the first straight, which would prevent slipstreaming, but a tailwind further on would give everyone a boost.

(You'll note that Catherine's assistant has abandoned her and is scowling just outside the room)

Once again we split up nicely. In this race it was the red sprinteur that actually pushed out in front, and maintained a good lead. Not something you see very often. Once again my sprinteur found himself at the back of the pack.

Some action from the middle of the race. I had got my sprinteur back into the running, and my rouleur was actually in the lead group and running strongly. But you can see Catherine's rouleur in the lead!

I actually failed a positional move towards the end that cost me a possible win (couldn't draw the right cards when I needed them), and made a poor decision with my sprinteur on the finish that cost him a decent place. As it was my riders finished fourth and  tenth. Catherine's finished first and eleventh; a good run by one racer was offset by a disaster for the other. Red's sprinteur took an unexpected second place, whilst third place went to blue's rouleur.

So after two races red and white have commanding leads in the team scores Catherine is in joint third place with blue and I am in fifth place. Catherine's rouleur is in joint second place in the individual rider scores.