Another Point of Singularity

The kids and I gave this a try over the weekend, in honor of Lance Armstrong's continuing success. The game is a bicycle race game called BREAKAWAY RIDER, sometimes known as PedaalriddersSprinter, Corridori in fuga, Giro - kampen om den gula tröjan, and der Ausreisser. I found it at an American game and hobby shop for about 20 bucks, in the Breakaway Rider incarnation imported by Pro Ludo. I like racing games in general, and especially bicycle racing games. There are more of them than you'd think.

The game is pretty simple. The race leader is an important position. He/she sets the tempo (speed) of the race in the first turn. Following bikes play speed cards to stay either within two of this tempo or to go above it (thus becoming the new race leader and the holder of the yellow jersey). The idea is to stay within two speed levels of the leader for as long as you can and then sprint ahead to make the finish. So save big speed cards for later. Headwind, hills and speed spurt cards change the mechanics somewhat and keep things from getting repetitive. If you go under 2 below the leader's speed, you start piling up little blue chips (for ones) and little red chips (for fives). You have to get rid of these "falling behind chips" to return to race leader position, which can be a bear late in the race if you had bad cards earlier.

In sum, good play, more strategy than is first obvious. It bored my kids after a while, though... note enough variations to make them appreciate or even see the strategy involved with this game. They'll get it eventually, I'm sure.