Why I love Flamme Rouge
In Flamme Rouge, it pays to be part of the crowd.
Everyone’s talking about Heat: Pedal to the Metal these days, and for good reason. (I think. I still haven’t played it, although I fully intend to play it soon.) It’s a game built on a solid foundation, has a compelling theme, and features tiny little cars to move around. It’s a perfect recipe for success. But I think it’s worth reflecting on that foundation upon which Heat is built, because it’s one of my favorite games about racing bicycles in Europe: Flamme Rouge.
That’s a long way of saying, “Hi! We’re talking about Flamme Rouge today.” I recognize that. But now that we’re here, let’s talk about it. While it might now be first recognized as the predecessor to Heat, this is designed by one of Heat’s co-designers, Asger Harding Granerud, and it stands really well on its own.
Flamme Rouge’s primary mechanic is a simple one: If you’re at the lead of a pack (what I’ve been told is a peloton, if you’re really into cycling) or if you’re cycling all on your lonesome, you’ll become exhausted. On your turn, you pick from one of four cards you’ve drawn for each of your racers, and those cards indicate the speed at which you’re traveling. Once you use that card, it’s removed from your deck. If you become exhausted, you have to take an exhaustion card — they all have a value of two, the lowest possible value — and it’s set at the bottom of your deck, destined to come back again.
The way Flamme Rouge manages exhaustion is at the heart of its charm. It rewards players staying in the peloton, never dropping behind, never sprinting forward. There’s a certain amount of consideration you must apply each turn, judging if you think other racers are likely to start sprinting forward and trying to stay just behind them. There are two key mechanics I’ve yet to mention, though, and they’re key to understanding the how the game moves beyond that single idea.
The first is that you control two racers, and they’re each a different type. One’s a rouleur, a type of cyclist that excels at long distances. The rouleur has cards in equal distribution between 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7. The other cyclist is a sprinteur, a type of cyclists that excels at, well, sprinting. Their cards range are equally distribution among 2, 3, 4, 5 and 9. That all means that you’ll find yourself wanting to conserve your very best cards for key moments, but if somebody starts sprinting before you, you might have to expend them early — or you might instead want to play it even safer, staying with the rest of the peloton. The uneven distribution between the two will come into even further play with my next point, but I think it’s clear that your sprinter is actually a little underpowered in some key ways. The expected value for a randomly selected rouleur card is 5, while the expected value for a sprinteur card is 4.6, meaning your sprinteur simply won’t be moving as far as your rouleur on average.
The second key mechanic is slipstreaming. This is the mechanic that makes the game more than simply the sum of its parts. When a cyclist has just one square between them and another cyclist, they get to move a square forward, starting at the back. It represents an actual racing idea, where staying in the peloton has a distinctly beneficial quality. (I get that it’s an actual, physical force, but my brain has trouble wrapping around the mechanics of it. Physics is neat.) Timing your movement between your two racers can see your rouleur remaining slightly ahead of your sprinteur, keeping just enough pace ahead to keep from gaining exhausted. But if you time it so that your rouleur keeps just a bit more pace ahead — leaving that extra square between the cyclists — you can conserve your energy even more, leaving you an even bigger opportunity to break away into a leading position.
Striking an optimal balance might seem relatively easy to suss out mathematically, and you’ll find yourself asking a key question: At what point on the track will it be more beneficial to stop focusing on slipstreaming, instead breaking away? But the answer is contingent on questions about what everyone’s doing around you, too. Is somebody breaking away, but you think you can keep pace and gain that little advantage being just behind them? Or are you content to let someone sprint ahead, keeping a steady pace in the middle of the pack? What if you’re in the pack, but everyone’s insisting on moving as slowly as possible, and you end up leading the pack? Is it better, if leading the pack, to start breaking away, forcing even more cyclists to take exhaustion? Figuring this all out makes the game tick.
Flamme Rouge is a game that seems simple from the outset, and the decision space is generally reasonably small on any given turn, as you have just four cards to choose from for each cyclist. It’s a game that is strategic but feels almost social in how you shape that strategy.
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