Board design for cycling game

Hi!

I'm a fan of pro cycling and would love to see a good game on the subject!

I have been thinking of designing a cycling game myself, but have found it a too daunting task.

Of course, you can choose the level of abstraction and complexity, but I wanted to go for the epic "Tour the France"-simulation type of game...
I think that the type of track depends on what type of game you are making. Does each player control one rider, or does he/she control a team of riders with different characteristics?

Personally, I think it is the team aspect that makes pro cycling so fascinating. Therefore, I picture a game with player-controlled teams with, let's say four riders. The teams compete in a race with a number of stages.

Regarding your problem; here are some ideas:

The "race track" board should have two different parts.

Part one is simply a straight line of boxes. Every box represents a game turn. Box one is the start. You place a marker in box one and move it one step every turn. Beside every box is a space where you can place "terrain" markers:

flat, downhill, rolling, uphill climb

maybe by climb category, HC(hors category),1,2,3 or 4;

or: easy, normal, difficult climb

to depict the stage profile. Even better might be an actual course profile like in the graphics on TV. This can be done if you have preconstructed course profiles.

You can have a goal line marker on the space where the race ends.

Part two:

The major part of the board is a space where you place markers/pieces representing the individual riders. This part is like a zoom in on the space where the turn marker is placed on track 1.

I imagine this part to look something like the graphics they use on TV when displaying the positions of the racers.

Something like:

...............20 sec................40 sec..........1 min 20 sec.......

Group 4: ----------Group 3:---------Group 2:---------Group 1:

8,12 ................... 1,2,3,6,4,5,7 ... 9 .....................10,11

In this example we have a breakaway group with riders 10 and 11. Rider 9 is alone in group 2, 1 minute and 20 seconds behind the leaders. The main pack is in group 3, 2 minutes behind(1 min 20 sec + 40 sec) the leaders. Finally we have two riders, 8 and 12, struggling in the rear...

I think that this layout could create some nice gaming moments. I imagine the excitement when trying to create an organised chase in the pack to try to catch the leaders before the turn marker reaches the goal line. You could simulate some real cycling tactics with this layout. On the other hand this might be a bit too complicated to fit the gameplay.

Thats all I have for now, I will drop in later with some more ideas when I'm not at work...

I hope these ideas can be of some help. I also hope you can decipher something meaningful out of these comments , since I'm not a native english speaker...

Regards,

Fredrik

Hi Fredrik and DavemanUK

Fredrik: I agree completely that team tactics are central to pro cycling and especially a pro cycling game. I am aiming for a quite simple game, so of course it will be an abstraction of the real thing but riders helping each other and choosing whether to send someone up the road and similar tactical decisions will be important in the game.

Your thoughts on the board are also very much the same as mine - however I've found that the TV graphics style makes the game quite abstract and calculations harder (as you cannot actually count spaces between riders). I might have to surrender to the standard racing map with a start and finish but will definetely keep the turn marker and probably make board a "do it yourself" version where each stage is comprised of a number of small boards that are placed one after the other.

DavemanUK: I think it must have been Breaking Away that you played.

Thank you all for your input.

/Max

Hi again

We have now playtested an "ordinary" from a-b type board and I would appreciate some more feedback.

In a lot of ways it worked very well - the board certainly worked for seeing the positions of the riders, determined the sequence of actions and helped calculations.

The problem: we need to record not just who wins the race but the time the rider finishes ahead of the other riders. Turns as a time unit is not accurate enough as the best riders will finish the race in the same turn.

This leaves us with a couple of choices which all involve measuring the distance on the board when the rider(s) cross the finish line. This represents a change in what the board represents - the finish line is no longer the end of the race and the board is no longer distance but time.

Do you think this gets too confusing or am I not being pragmatic enough about it?

And do you have any other ideas? I am seriously reconsidering the concrete distance based board and returning to an abstract time based board with the race length determined by number of turns. This keeps the board representation stable throughout the game - stable, but abstract.

Thanks for your feedback!