Lautapelit | Flamme Rouge | Board Game | Ages 8+ | 2-4 Players | 30-45 Minute Playing Time

Product Information

The sprinter has lots of long and short distance cards, the rouleur as lots of medium distance cards. Starting with the first player, everyone takes it in turns to put their riders on the squares behind the starting line. When you reach your face-up cards, flip them over, shuffle them and continue to draw the cards you need. You know you’ve still got three 5s in your sprinteur’s deck so you’ve got a good chance of getting one. If you are leading the pack or not close enough to be slip-streaming, each turn that player receives a fatigue card to that team member.

But the addition of the cards you draft, weather and road conditions, plus the ability to play in a championship, mean that Heat has a fair few more rules to get your head around than Flamme Rouge.Each rider has a term (Rouleur and Sprinter) but I quickly adopted ‘sitting down’ and ‘standing up’ as the terms meant nothing to me.

The quick setup and easy to follow rules make you understand the theme and how the riders need to work together as a team. This means that the rider(s) on the front row of the lead pack, or any following pack that was too far behind to slipstream will receive an exhaustion card. Races can be over pretty quickly if only 2-3 people are playing, but the way you’re able to redesign the track between races means it’s easy to get sucked in to playing longer sessions, ramping up the difficulty with each new course.Spending too long out in the lead or being left behind will tire your rider out, so selecting when to play each card is vital to a successful race. If you primarily play at 4 players, and you’re looking for a light racing game that’s easy to learn but still has some good tactics and strategy, then Flamme Rouge is a game to consider. While unable to actually use the words, since it doesn’t have the license, Flamme Rouge—a “Red Flag”, waved when a race is one kilometre from the finish—is based on early Tour De France contests, and while playing out as a very simple board game, actually manages to replicate many of the key factors and strategies of such a race. Each team has used cunning and skill to position their sprinter for this moment, but only one has done enough to pull off the win!