Game: Breakaway Rider

Thread: Pedal, pedal pedal… peddle! And hope for luck. But it's quick [review]

Zimeon — 2008-06-01T12:48:01+00:00

Introduction
Breakaway Ride (or "Giro" as I know it) is one of those "hey… yeah, I had completely forgotten about this game… It's pretty good! Let's play" games. No one knows about it, no one talks about it. It just is.

First things first, this isn't a very good game, but it's pretty cool for what you get. It's a quick and luck-based hand-management game that's supposed to be played several times in a row for a short blast. It works as a filler, but also as an easy game for non-gamers, all the while not being completely unplayable for gamers who game for the fun.

Components
A deck of cards. Good cards, in my version. Crisp-eatable cards.

The deck of cards consists of speed cards (ranged from 39 to 50) and then some spurt cards (labeled "+2"), some "head wind" (labeled "-2") and them some "uphill" cards. That't it.

Brief game overview
All players draw 6 cards, if any of them are head wind, put them back in the deck, draw replacements and reshuffle.

First player gets the "I am leading" marker, draws a card and plays a speed card from his hand. This speed card represents how fast he is going. Like, maybe he played a 44. So he's biking at 44 km/h. This is the speed of the bunch of bikers.

Then turn goes to next player who draws a card and plays one. To keep in pace with the bunch, he needs to play a speed card that is no more than 2 km/h less than the leader. So, in my example, if he plays a 42, he's still in the bunch. If he plays a 45, he takes the lead, and gets the marker. Subsequently, players have to play at least 43 to stay in the bunch.

One catch is that if the card you drew was a head wind card, you must immediately play it and draw a replacement (and play that one too, if it was another tail wind), and the card you play will get the penalty of -2 in speed. So, in my example, if you drew a tail wind you'd have to play at least 45 to stay in the bunch. As the leader goes in 45 km/h, minimum speed to "keep up" is 43.

If you can't keep up, you lag behind. This is not good at all. If you lag behind, not only do you have to take lag markers, but there is no slipstream effect from the bunch. Say the leader has speed 45 and all you can play is 41. You get 4 lag markers (you're 4 minutes behind) and subsequently, you have to play a higher card than the leader in order to catch up. Your next turn, if the leader goes 42 km/h, you could play a 46 card to lose all the markers and once again be in the bunch.

If the turn goes around the table without changing leader (i.e. if you're the leader when it's your turn) you can play whatever card you like, and still be in the bunch. A frequent strategy is that when this happens, you play a 39 card, and all the others slack out and play their low cards aswell.

The spurt +2 cards can be played in combination with another speed card. If you do, draw a replacement card (and if it's a head wind, play immediately and draw a new)

The uphill cards can be played on anyone (even yourself) the moment they take the lead. In that case, there is no slipstream effect, players have to play the same speed as the leader or get lag markers.

And so on, until the draw pile is exhausted, in which case the game ends IMMEDIATELY. There is no playing the cards left in your hand. This is a very good rule, especially if it isn't ultra-obvious how many cards there are left. You have to time your cards pretty good, sit on the high cards until the end spurt, but don't hold on too long… the race is over before you know it.

Verdict
Obviously, this game relies on lucky draws. If you draw nothing but 39, 40, 42 all the time, you're dead. Well not really dead, but you lose. That's why this game is supposed to be played quickly and not very seriously. It's a bit like "go go go go go!". Draw card, play, draw card, play. Like that. Played like that, this is a pretty nice filler with a lot of laughs and "What!? Not 50 AGAIN you freaking monster!". It's a nice flow of the speed slowly increasing until the leader slacks off and there is a moment of rest.

And the timing at the end is rather cool. You know the race is over soon, but you don't know if it's 10 cards or 12 cards left. Spurt of no spurt?

Victory usually goes to the lucky drawer, but evenso the game's fun. Usually, you play in 3 stages, and the guy with the least amount of lag markers win. Between the stages, all bikers reunite into a bunch, of course.

The game could do with some more tweaks, but it works. It feels like a hectic bicycle race, and that's pretty good considering it's just a deck of cards. And the illustrations are cool.

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jsper — 2008-02-10T19:44:46+00:00

Side of the box

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Bethesda — 2007-09-14T15:41:51+00:00

Explain the rules

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Grimwold — 2007-08-28T17:50:59+00:00

Possibly the worst hand ever...

Thread: Onward to Victory

raolsson — 2007-07-18T17:16:56+00:00

The Working Lunch Gamers gathered at the food court for yet another round of Breakaway Rider. Sal, Stephen, VuduJoie, Malcolm, and I sat down for a one stage race as Sal needed to get back to the office. We drew cards to see who would go first and Sal led us off on a merry chase.

From my previous three stage race, I knew that the strategy that won the day was the press-all-the-riders-for-as-long-as-you-can strategy. My cards were a mixed bag, but of a good number with a hill climb, so I thought I would take a stab. I had a speed burst and a fifty, so when VuDuJoie slapped his 50 down in our second round to take the lead, I slapped down the 50 +2 and took the lead from him. Which, due to a series of three hill cards and a remarkable number of high numbered speed cards, I was able to hold onto for the rest of the game.

The strategy relies on the luck of the cards, of course, but if you can get enough tokens on your opponents (which I was able to do by about the fifth card I laid down) then even if they have a high number card, they cannot take the lead from you.

In the final round, Malcolm was two minutes behind and might have been able to take the lead (as I had a hand of 30s by that point) but the last card came up and our round was over.

Breakaway Rider was a good game for us today because the Tour de France is running this week and it hits the time requirement very nicely. Hopefully next time we will get out the boardgames!

Thread: Three Stages of Wind

raolsson — 2007-06-19T13:14:36+00:00

VuduJoie pulled out Breakaway Rider for our gaming lunch today. Stephen, Malloc, VuduJoie, and I sat down for a three stage game, dealt the six cards, and started off.

On the first stage, we were learning the game and very loose about the not being able to draw an extra card if you forget to draw rule. Stephen had all of the bad luck and drew all five of the wind cards, which set him back against the leader quite a bit. At the end of the stage, however, he had managed to pull back to the peloton and had no penalty markers. VuduJoie and I had caught up as well, but Malloc held the dominant position by finishing on a hill as the cards ran out for the first time.

Stage two was brutal. Stephen continued to pull his unfair share of the wind cards, but VuduJoie pulled nearly all of the 50 cards and drove a strong finish. I had 15 tokens at the end of the stage, Malloc only 13 because he was able to cash in his victory. Stephen was in the twenties.

Stage three had us all understanding the strategy we needed to play: take down VuduJoie. Malloc hopped out to an early lead, then I became leader for most of the rest of the stage. I tried to put down the big cards, but VuduJoie was able to match most of them. I took the stage, but like a gaming Lance Armstrong, VuduJoie took the race and remained with the yellow jersey.

Breakaway Rider is no Mag Blast, but it certainly has the race elements to keep our lunchers coming back for more. And as we draw closer to the Tour de France, I suspect the game will be out on the table quite a bit.

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henk.rolleman — 2007-05-10T22:21:58+00:00

Back of the old Dutch Edition

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henk.rolleman — 2007-05-10T22:07:16+00:00

Old Dutch Edition

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Altaira — 2007-04-04T16:56:52+00:00

Yellow Jersey [from Anki Toner - www.cyclingboardgames.tk ]

Thread: Re: Variants

DougOrleans — 2007-02-22T15:21:27+00:00

kenjohns wrote:
Am I mistaking this for something else or did the original have a board?

Maybe you're thinking of Breaking Away?

Thread: Re: Winning in the Mountains

dkuznick — 2007-02-22T15:18:33+00:00

DougOrleans wrote:
dkuznick wrote:
Moviebuffs wrote:
With this in mind, what other times of the race are the Hill Climb cards beneficial?

When you are the leader with a low card, you can play it with the hill to get the low card out of your hand safely. Of course it lets the others safely play their low cards too, but it could also force them to waste slightly higher cards for no benefit.

Conversely, when you're not the leader, play a hill on the leader's card when you have the same number in your hand (and no penalty chips). This will take away other players' ability to draft (or to raise the tempo before it gets to you).

Don't listen to him. He got totally pwned yesterday. ;-)

Kidding, that was actually a cool play.

Thread: Re: Winning in the Mountains

DougOrleans — 2007-02-22T15:11:18+00:00

dkuznick wrote:
Moviebuffs wrote:
With this in mind, what other times of the race are the Hill Climb cards beneficial?

When you are the leader with a low card, you can play it with the hill to get the low card out of your hand safely. Of course it lets the others safely play their low cards too, but it could also force them to waste slightly higher cards for no benefit.

Conversely, when you're not the leader, play a hill on the leader's card when you have the same number in your hand (and no penalty chips). This will take away other players' ability to draft (or to raise the tempo before it gets to you).

Thread: Re: Winning in the Mountains

dkuznick — 2007-02-21T20:33:54+00:00

Moviebuffs wrote:
With this in mind, what other times of the race are the Hill Climb cards beneficial?

When you are the leader with a low card, you can play it with the hill to get the low card out of your hand safely. Of course it lets the others safely play their low cards too, but it could also force them to waste slightly higher cards for no benefit.

Thread: Re: Winning in the Mountains

dkuznick — 2007-02-21T20:31:46+00:00

maxocchi16 wrote:
I got 2 copy of the game to expand the race and applied this rules:
every team/corridor have an equal deck of cards from which keep.
Max

We just discussed this exact thing at lunch. I think it would help the game a lot.

Thread: Re: Variants

dkuznick — 2007-02-21T20:29:58+00:00

kenjohns wrote:
Am I mistaking this for something else or did the original have a board?

Nope, no board.

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Ceryon — 2007-02-13T22:52:15+00:00

Better german box front

Thread: Re: Variants

Coffeebike — 2006-12-31T19:16:47+00:00

kenjohns wrote:
Am I mistaking this for something else or did the original have a board?

Sorry--I don't know the answer. I've only seen the original box front, not the contents. I wonder what the role of a board might have been?

Thread: Re: Winning in the Mountains

maxocchi16 — 2006-11-27T11:25:16+00:00

Hi everybody.

I like this simple game too!
What I wish is to adapt the game to a more board gaming fashion like using cycling miniatures, having team tactics and place not randomly mountains on the track.

Example: if the leader goes away the cyclist left behind get organized and collaborate to cancel the escape.

I got 2 copy of the game to expand the race and applied this rules:
every team/corridor have an equal deck of cards from which keep.
One player cannot take all the good cards and win the race on luck.
Sooner or later you will get your 50km/h cards.

Anyone had made variations?
Max

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William Hunt — 2006-10-19T22:55:25+00:00

Image created by Anki Toner (Spain) and posted with his kind permission

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Ternal2 — 2006-10-11T01:54:26+00:00

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Ternal2 — 2006-10-11T01:02:14+00:00

Thread: Re: Variants

kenjohns — 2006-07-11T13:05:26+00:00

Am I mistaking this for something else or did the original have a board?

Thread: Re: Winning in the Mountains

HamsterOfFury — 2006-03-25T14:19:48+00:00

The tactic is to get into the lead near the end so that you can play mountains and shoot off cunningly into the distance, leaving the other riders to eat your proverbial dust.

If you're aware (from card play) that a couple of people have some high cards in hand then playing mountains and therefore forcing them to use up the high cards to keep up can be a useful way of "wearing them down".

Also if you are playing a series of races in a tour and the person leading the tour has obviously got a poor hand near the staart, putting your head down and hammering up mounains can leave them trailing and unable to ever really get back up with the leaders again.

So many tactics, such a simple game.
Which I why I love it!

Thread: Re: Winning in the Mountains

CharlieWonka — 2006-01-14T22:38:40+00:00

I too would love to know the answer to that so I stop losing and you stop winning!

Thread: Winning in the Mountains

Moviebuffs — 2006-01-13T11:26:25+00:00

Admittedly we haven't played this one much, but ...

In every stage we've played, someone has won the race by keeping a Hill Stage card or two back for when the deck is runnning low, and then playing the card at a point where it would be impossible to be overtaken.

With this in mind, what other times of the race are the Hill Climb cards beneficial, and is there any way to counter this tactic ?

Should it be illegal to win a race on a hill ?

N.

Thread: Variants

Coffeebike — 2005-12-12T05:07:30+00:00

This fun game has been around a while (1963! same as me) in different versions. I guess you could say this current version is a variant.

I think this is one of those games where plausible variants easily come to mind, and people have similar ideas independently.

There are apparently a fair amount of variant suggestions on the Net, most not in English.

Here in the BGG, in the General section for this game, is a suggestion that players should be allowed to play the Headwinds card against other players, as a way to slow down Leaders.

The excellent "Cycling Board Games" website--
http://personales.ya.com/anki/cyclingboardgames/g_echappeemi... ...
details some of the history of this game. See also...
http://personales.ya.com/anki/cyclingboardgames/g_ausreisser...

The author of that website suggests altering the cards for a 3-stage race:

With my friend Jaime Munárriz (designer of "La Serpiente Multicolor") we have worked some stage variations:

a) Flat Stage: Remove the "Mountain Cards" (if you had two games, you could make a tougher mountain stage by adding some mountain cards)
b) Short stage: play with (roughly) half the cards. This stage gets surprisingly nervous!
c) Tough stage: Deal each player only 5 (or even 4!) cards instead of 6. You can lose many minutes if things go wrong in this one...

Thread: Such a shame !

o_cedar — 2005-07-03T15:15:52+00:00

Sprinter is one of the rare deceptions I've had to do with since purchasing games thanks to www.trictrac.net or BGG...

Widely acknoledged as a fun, intelligent, and charming little bycicle game, I really feel someone played a bad joke upon me.

The game principle is simple and well described in the summary, no need to pursue in that direction.

So let's start with the the good stuff (it will be over pretty quickly):
With such simple mechanisms, it is unbelievable how you can feel like you are in a bicycle race ! You really feel like you have to wait in the peloton, suck wheels staying clear of the wind, and attack at the right time! That is truly great ! The cards are pretty nice as well.

But then I have to say that it is all luck driven, the players who have the best cards will attack each other and all others will be dumped and will lose ground turn after turn with no hope of coming back, thus spending all the game's length just taking chips to indicate how far off they are.
Of course, you can guess how frustrating and boring this situation is...

That is really sad because with such a good base idea, a great game could probably have been made with some little arrangements, just so everyone could enjoy the game. When I bought this, I hoped we could make a whole Tour de France and use some variants for the High moutain races (www.trictrac.net for variants that help improve this game) but no, I feel as if I bought an unfinished project... Sad, so sad...

Thread: Variant

gamemark — 2004-05-27T16:19:57+00:00

Usually, when you draw one of the -2 Headwind cards (Gegenwind) the player who got it was slowed down by -2 points. Instead of doing that, players can agree on keeping the card, playing it on an opponent like the Hill (Steigung) cards in order to slow him down. I think this makes a much more strategic game, since there's a way to slow down the leader a bit.

This variant was originally published in the magazine Games International and was suggested by Emanuel "Manu" Soeding. Most recently, it was found on the Game Central Station website.

Thread: Session Report

EYE of NiGHT — 2003-10-21T13:05:00+00:00

I always like to play Ausreisser before I go to Essen, sort of a tradition. Richard hadn't seen this before & took the lead early, but with 3 players it was a long stage. Ian pootled along, I tried to drop them up a mountain halfway, but couldn't crack them. I didn't have the legs at the finish and Richard had the yellow jersey until a dramatic sprint finish. With the last cards, Ian played a final 50 +2 spurt and stole it on the line! Remarkable.

If you've not seen or played this, you should. Ausreisser does need some luck in the draw, but it is so close in style to a stage in the Tour de France, it's amazing. If you are a cyclist, you must get a copy, you'll love it.

Thread: Session Report

gamemark — 2001-01-01T06:00:00+00:00

We had a few minutes to kill, waiting for Dennis to show up, so we played this extraordinarily light card game of bicycle racing from FX Schmid. I'll be the first to admit it isn't exactly rocket science - heck, it's barely 7th grade biology. Play a card, trying to stay close to the leader... draw a card. And it goes on...

With 4-6 players, a hand is over in 5-10 minutes and you play 3 hands to see who has the most points - it's filler with a capital "F". (Don't play this with less than 4 under any circumstances... the timer for the game is the card deck and it's 99 cards, so when every player gets 6 cards to begin with + one card per turn... 10 rounds for 6 players, 14 rounds for 5 players, 19 rounds for 4 players, and 27 rounds for 3 players - get my drift!?)

On the positive side, it does manage to evoke the theme pretty well... and we use a variant (I've got it posted on my website) that makes the Headwind cards less random.

Andrew had an incredible hand, which meant the rest of us just tried to stay somewhere close. Jeff was manifestly unsuccessful. :-)

Andrew 1 point (yellow jersey at the end of the stage)
Dallas 3 minutes behind the leader
Mark 4 minutes behind the leader
Jeff 26 minutes behind the leader

Don't rush out and buy this game... but if someone asks you to play with 5-6 players, give it a shot. It's fun in a random sort of way.