Mille Bornes and previous races


 

One of my favorite basic card games as a kid was Mille Bornes, a simple car race simulation deck.  There are mileage cards (25, 50, 75, 100, 200), Stop and Go lights, Speed Limit cards, and then a fun combination of obstacles you can throw on your opponents to slow them down.  These are: Accident (negated by a Repair card), Out of Gas (cured by an Extra Gas card),  and a Flat Tire (fixed with a Spare Tire card).  There are also special immunity ("safety") cards, one for each obstacle.

It's a simple game of throwing down mileage and trying to screw up the other players.  I always just draw a little race track, it's easier than trying to keep stacks of numbers sorted out; it's essentially a graphic display of our progress, and it's more fun to look at than a stack of numbers.  In the official rules, you are supposed to need a Go card to get started or after removing any obstacle, but we always drop that rule.  Life is just too short to wait for Go cards.

Technically, there is a whole complex system of scoring and competing for points, but we just see who can get to 1000 miles ("Mille Bornes") first.  Okay, Bornes are not miles, they are road markers, so 1000 markers, and the miles must be kilometers, because 200 miles per hour would be crazy.


The cards are written in French, but as a former linguistics student and lifelong stamp collector, I enjoy languages, and it just adds flavor.

What I wanted to discuss here was how it is not the first of its kind.

I recently got a deck of Touring cards from the 1920s.  The Touring game goes all the way back to 1906.  Check out the history and all the fun editions of it on BoardGameGeek.  Back then, the old cars could move at 5, 15, or 30 mph, and I think you play to 150.  The obstacles are the same, except that  remedies are explained right on the cards: For Out of Gasoline. "A gasoline and Go card must be played on this to continue tour."  For Collision you need a Haul In card and a Go card.  For Puncture you just need a Go card.  This has a better flow than having to explain which French card goes with which, or having beginner players look it up on a reference card.

Comically, rather than having a speed limit, there is a Country card which lets you go wild at 45 mph.  So the City Limits card is the actual speed limit, 25 mph max.  Here are the obstacle cards and their solutions:

I also recently got a deck of Lindy cards from 1927, which are pretty much the same game, but with an airplane, boosted by Lindbergh's famous trips.  Check out BoardGameGeek again, but this time there is a story of how Parker Brothers came out with its own version within a year, got sued and changed the name, leading to some very rare decks for the serious collector to find.

So here is Lindy.  The cards are surprisingly low quality, pretty much just cardboard without even a pattern on the back.  They can't be riffle shuffled.  But the action on the cards is the same kind of fun:

Here, the Go card is called Hop Off, while the Head Wind card (default at start of game) limits you to playing 300 mile cards max, and a Favorable Wind lets you play those 500 mile cards.  Winner is the first to reach 3200 miles.  The obstacles and remedies are Descends in Parachute (New Plane and Hop Off), Delivers Mail (Hop Off), and Lands for Gasoline (Gasoline and Hop Off).

So, here are a few decades of previous history I did not know about when playing my old favorite Mille Bornes as a kid.





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