Flamme Rouge
Review

Flamme Rouge (2016) is a quick and tactical bike racing game. You control a team of two riders around the puzzle piece track to get to the finish first. The trick is using your endurance and sprinter rider cards to tactically use slipstream efficiently.

It's a game about jostling for position and managing your movement deck to finish strong. Each go, you draw four Movement cards for each rider and choose one. How you used this movement and the resulting position is really tactical. You are aiming to stay in a group to preserve energy, while also leaving opponent riders on their own or blocking them at the back. But you can also use slipstreaming to your advantage and catch up if there's a one-space gap.

Alongside the jostling for position, you need to manage your energy in your Movement deck. You have a limited number of the best movement cards in your deck. Once they are played they are gone. This means you need to carefully decide when to use your best cards and when to put them back in your deck for later. But also, any rider out in front at the end of the round adds an Exhaustion card to the deck that has low movement.

The result is a tactical race that's approachable and balances luck and skill. Using the position of your two riders while also eeking out your best cards creates knife-edge finishes. We've not even talked about the hills that cap movement on the way up and add movement on the way down. There is quite a bit of chance, even when you've carefully crafted your deck. For experts, this can dampen things down but does work as a good way to keep an even playing field for youngsters or novice players.

Our examiner, Andy Robertson, first checked Flamme Rouge 9 months ago. It was re-examined by Jo Robertson and updated 7 months ago.