Designed by: Asger Harding Granerud
In Flamme Rouge each player controls a pair of cyclists, and the objective is to get at least one of them over the finish line before anyone else!
The ‘board’ is actually a track that can be set up in a variety of ways, but the game comes with some recommendations to get you started, based on famous routes from the Tour De France. Once the track is set up, each player takes a deck of cards for each of their cyclists, showing a certain amount of moves forward your cyclist will make on the track this turn (minimum 2, maximum 9). On every round, you deal yourself four cards per cyclist, and choose one to play, with the rest going face-up at the bottom of your deck. Everyone reveals their cards at the same time, the movements are resolved from front to back on the track, moving all cyclists forwards.
What stops Flamme Rouge from being a total luck-fest is a number of things. One is that every card you play has gone for the rest of the game, so spending those valuable 9 cards early on may come back to haunt you. Two is that any riders at the front of the pack (or packs) are taking the headwind for the peloton behind, and have to shuffle an exhaustion card (value 2) into their deck. Crucially, any riders a single space behind a rider in front of them (after all movement has been resolved) move forward a space, utilising the slipstream. And finally your two riders are actually distinct: one is a sprinter, and one a rouler. The sprinter has those nifty 9 cards in the deck, whereas the rouler is more of a steady performer: moving a maximum of only 7, but with less low cards as well. Ideally, you want this pair to work as a team with the rouler protecting the sprinter from wind and timing a breakaway for your sprinter at the optimum moment!
Add to the mix the are mountains to ascend (maximum movement 5) and descend (minimum movement 5, even if you play a card with a lower value) and Flamme Rouge becomes a tense mixture of luck-pushing and tactics. More than one player may cross the line at the end (you play to the end of the round whenever at least one player does so) so the player furthest past the line is pronounced winner. The game can be played as a one-off or a campaign, where both finishing positions for your riders dictate your score.
So minimal as to be near-absent. Blocking can happen (when you can't move as far as you'd like as other riders are in your way) but it's most often inadvertent.
Very low. Everyone plays at the same time, and you only have one card to choose from.
Low, but don't think it's purely luck. The final stretch may be when you desperately need that 9 you saved to come out and deal yourself four exhaustion cards instead... so there is good and ill fortune present, but not to the point where the game feels random.
The boards can be set up for different races/routes, and cards can't be predicted... there's some variability here.
2-4
Players
8+
Years
30-60
Mins
Sam says
There is luck in Flamme Rouge, but it's very unlikely that someone playing randomly will win, and even less so that someone playing all their high cards as soon as they can will do so. Those exhaustion cards can really peg you back, and the tiny increments made by slipstreaming can be the difference between winning and losing: my plan is usually to try and sit in second place for most of the game before tearing ahead somewhere near the finish - not that it always works for me. It's a fun game for almost any age, and one we've played and enjoyed a lot.