The setup and race maintenance for either team is incredibly easy and doesn’t interrupt the excitement of the race. If anything, I would say the addition of these AI riders greatly increases my enjoyment of this game. Final Thoughts We recommend using the breakaway variant when playing with more than 6 players. Use the 2 side of the Breakaway tile. Since each player only has one rider, that is the one they select in the Bidding Phase.

Flamme Rouge is a cycling game for 2-4 players, and is not to be confused with Flan Rogue, a game where an egg and cheese-filled pastry crawls through a dungeon fighting other evil pastries such as croissants, Gregg’s sausage rolls, and the 70s favourite hors d’ouvre, vol-au-vents. When designing a 5-6 player stage, add the Bonus tile (tile #9) (do not remove a straight tile when adding this tile) and use both Supply Zones. The Peloton team always places its riders in the yellow starting area before human players. Place the riders one in front of the other, as far forward as possible.The original game only included rules and components for 2 to 4 players which was a shame as whenever a race was in progress it would attract many people to the table all wanting a go. What’s In The Box Finally, any rider who has an empty square in front of them gets a bit tired and takes an exhaustion card, essentially a card with a value of 2. The only other rules are for climbing hills which limit your speed to 5, and descending hills where the card you play will at least be worth 5. This a good way to get rid of exhaustion cards: play one as you go down a hill, and the 2 is automatically turned into a 5. Is It Any Good You also start with 3 Exhaustion cards, distributed as you see fit between your two riders. If you want to raise the difficulty level, simply add more starting Exhaustion cards.

Each player chooses a colour and takes a pair of bike and rider miniatures, the player board, and the set of energy cards in that colour.Flamme Rouge was released in 2016, so it is a slightly older game. The question now is how well does it hold up to the designer’s most recent racing game, Heat: Pedal to the Metal. So in this review, I’ll tell you what I think of Flamme Rouge in its own right, and also, compare it to Heat. How To Play In a 2-4 player game, only the rider with the highest total of their two played energy cards goes into the breakaway. The best part of this expansion is the Dummy teams. With this addition, you can now play with one Peloton team and multiple Muscle teams in either multiplayer or on your own. I would recommend playing with just one of these teams for your first race and then trying the other one next time as it may surprise you how ruthless and fast the AI riders are.

Also, due to the cluttered start line using 5-6 players there are new "breakaway start" rules where players bid to be a part of the breakaway, and up to two riders start 5 spaces ahead of the bunch. Flamme Rouge is very thematic and definitely feels like a race. You want your rouleur to be out in front of your sprinteur to let them benefit from slipstreaming. Then you have to time your final sprint to crush your opponents. How Does It Compare To Heat Mountain Ascents– If you start on, enter, or move through and ascent square (marked in red) movement is capped at five. The game ends at the end of the round where at least one rider had crossed the finish line. The owner of the rider that is farthest over the line is the winner. If there was another rider behind these three riders, they stay put because there is still one rider in the square in front of them.

Terms and conditions

The strategy improvements of Peloton are just as subtle as the strategy found in the original release. I'll wager that if the timing, slip-streaming, and final burst mechanisms didn't entice you in the base game, the delicate additions found here well also fail to set the hook. They don't “fix” anything from the original release, but they do go far in enhancing it. And everything in this release is supported in the Flamme Rouge Companion App I mentioned in the original review. So, if you took my advice and are playing with it, your tour just got grander. The Muscle teams always place their riders in the yellow starting area before human players. Place the Sprinteur in front of the Rouleur, as far forward as possible. While the Cobblestones can funnel things to a crawl, Supply zones (a necessity if adding the fifth and sixth player), opens things up by giving a speed boost (every card played is counted as at least a four) and provides three lanes for possible move making. I love these areas for the savory decisions you have to make. The odds are that most players in the Supply Zone will be moving exactly four spaces, either burning exhaustion cards or playing lower cards and “drafting” on the boost. Knowing (or assuming) that, this could be the perfect opportunity to slip-stream or burn an exhaustion card of your own... or risk playing a card above four to breakaway and make your move. I have been told there is an expansion coming out soon and I would very much like to see what that adds to an already great game.