Translation by Bill O'Neill.
The attached is by no means a definitive set of rules, (two guys ten year old school french and a few dictionaries), but we follow the tour and have played some other cycle games and it makes some sort of sense. I am not too happy about the time classification scoring paragraphs. I may have to revise my interpretation of these as at the moment I am relying heavily on the example which is not clearly presented.
The game is played by 2,3,or4 players, (but may also be played solitaire).
Each player is the trainer of a team of 4,5 or 6 riders.
The object of the game is to win the stages, and (more importantly) to achieve the lowest total time for a single rider over all of the stages. This is the time classification competition, and the current leader is assigned the Yellow Jersey (Malliot Jaunne). Other competitions are the most consistent finishing competition (best in the order of arrival at the finish averaged over all the stages), and the Mountains competition.
The trainers may agree to play any number of one day classics instead of a full tour.
The trainers place their riders on the start line, that is to say in the first two or three spaces, alternately choosing one rider to place. They also place their trump cards in front of them.
On each turn a different player controls the movement cards. The player sitting on his right moves the rider affected forward one after another starting with the leader and working down through the placing in field, as a function of the card drawn.
The racers may be 4 3 2 or 1 abreast in any space, depending on the width of the road at that pont on the board. This is a function of the landscape and the layout of the towns.
The first riders to have arrived in a space in a turn takes the racing line. This is indicated by a thin black line. Riders nearer the line move before riders in the same space who are further away from it.
If there are no free places in the space to which a rider is supposed to move, according to the movement card then the rider is forced back to the following space, (unless the trainer uses a trump card which adds to the riders movement in that turn).
The trainers may use their trumps to advance the fastet of their riders, (the value of the trump being added tp that of the movement card), or to reduce the adverse effect of an event on one of their riders.
This is the strategic aspect of the game. Trainers have to use their trump cards to good effect at the right moment, and in order to gain the most advantage over their rivals and/or protect their best-placed riders.
This strategic aspect is complemented by the tactical factor of slipstreaming.
Slipstreaming works on two levels.
Trainers my not use a trump unless it is one one of their riders, and that rider is the one for whom a movement card has just been drawn.
When a trump is played it is put aside and may not be used again for the tage in progress.
The Great Escape allows an extra 5 spaces of movement on top of the card drawn, the rider on whom it is played may not also benefit from the breakaway card. The Great Escape card is worth 4 space rather than 5 in the Hills of Brittany stage, Cicada stage, and Royal stage.
When a rider is the victim of an event that rider is remains in the same space, except in the following cases:
To counter these ill-effects a trainer may use the following trumps:
If it is used the broom wagon leaves four turns after the riders and advances 2 spaces per turn. Any riders caught by the Broom Wagon are forced to abandon the stage and get in. This situation is classed as a huge blackout, abd the rider affected is given a time 5 minutes greater than that of the first rider to finish the stage.
There are 4 types of classification.
The riders who cross the finish line on the same turn (or draw) are classed with the same time.
On the flat stages (i.e. not the Alpes or the Pyrenees), riders who arrive on the following turn are classed equally with the same time
On the other hand if they arrive two or more turns after the leading rider then they are considered to have lost 40 seconds on the leader for each two turns they are late.
A rider arriving 4 turns after the leader would have 2*40 seconds see below.
The same principle applies to the mountain stages but riders arriving an odd number of turns after the leader draw a supplementary movement card (one card covers all of them) from which they read the number in the lower right hand corner as the number of seconds that the have conceded to the riders from the previous turn.
To make the time classification easier the riders having finished the stage are possitioned on the arrival board before the rsults are written on the classification sheet.
Numbers of Riders
at the Finish Turn | 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7
__________________________________________________________________________
| | | | 2 | | | 8 | 14
| 4 | | 7 | | | | |
| | | | 12 | | | 5 | 20
__________________________________________________________________________
Mountain Stage | | | +40 | | +40 | | +40 |
| 0 | | 40 | 42 | +40 | | 127 | 130
| | | +2 | +5 | | | +3 | +7
| | | 42 | 47 | | | 130 | 137
Flat Stage | | | | | | | |
| 0 | | 40 | 42 | | | 122 | 125
| | | | +2 | | | +3 |
| | | | | | +2 | 125 | 125
The riders score according to their arrival at the finish line:
| 1st | 10 points |
| 2nd | 8 points |
| 3rd | 6 points |
| 4th | 5 points |
| 5th | 4points |
| 6th | 3 points |
| 7th | 2 points |
| 8th | 1 point |
The riders score according to their arrival at the summit of a climb of 8 or more spaces:
| 1st | 10 points |
| 2nd | 8 points |
| 3rd | 6 points |
| 4th | 5 points |
| 5th | 4points |
| 6th | 3 points |
| 7th | 2 points |
| 8th | 1 point |
and according to their arrival at the top of a smaller climb
| 1st | 4 points |
| 2nd | 2 points |
| 3rd | 1 point |