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breaking away track

Breaking Away

Breaking Away is a luck-free racing game for 3-6 players, based on bicycle racing.  Each player controls a team of 4 riders.    Riders gain advantage by following other riders as they move around the track.
Each rider has a small number of movement choices available to him. Each turn, he uses one of these choices to move around the track, and receives a replacement based on his new position relative to the other riders.  Points are scored three times during the race, which is 2 1/2 times round the track.  

Breaking away gives a surprisingly realistic race behavior, as packs of riders form and string out, and tired riders are dropped off the back, and formerly leading riders move to the back of the pack to rest.

Rules:  Briefly; players start by adjusting their player's initial distance factors.  After that, when a cyclist moves he uses one of the available distances, which will be replaced by a new distance when all riders have moved.  The replacement is determined by the rider's position relative to other riders, so there is no chance at all in the outcome, only chaos.  The complete rules are here.

Robots:  Pretty weak.  Robots not so good at teamwork!

Links
Breaking Away rankings at Boardspace
Breaking Away at BoardGameGeek
Breaking Away win/loss database Fiendish Games Breaking Away page
Breaking Away game archives

The back story:
In real life I'm a dedicated cyclist.  This game imitates some of the tactics of real bicycle races, and does it without dice.  Breaking away is one example of a board game that is improved by playing it through a computer.  With a real board, the bookkeeping is a little tedious and error prone - things an online implementation does superbly.



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