[HN Gopher] Mille Bornes
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       Mille Bornes
        
       Author : ptrkcsk
       Score  : 69 points
       Date   : 2022-09-05 16:23 UTC (6 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.codex99.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.codex99.com)
        
       | nraynaud wrote:
       | nothing screams "professional" like putting quotes around French
       | spelling mistakes.
       | 
       | What's the point here? That a French editor doesn't know the
       | gender of the word "edition"? Highly unlikely.
       | 
       | I'm very grumpy today.
        
         | tripa wrote:
         | The French editor didn't brand it as an <<edition>>, no
         | spelling error on its side.
        
       | karaterobot wrote:
       | We played this a lot with my babysitter growing up. It's fun for
       | kids, and the graphic design on the older editions is so slick
       | and jet set era. But I'm a little weirded out by this, because
       | I've heard about Mille Bornes twice in the last week, and not a
       | single time in the 30 years prior to it.
        
         | HideousKojima wrote:
         | I'm weirded out because I thought about the game for the first
         | time in about 15 years just a few days ago (after seeing a
         | speed limit sign and a severe tire damage sign in close
         | proximity to each other) only to have it pop up on HN.
        
       | frizlab wrote:
       | French here, I recently read the original description of the game
       | from an original edition of the game when I went to a friend's
       | old place, and I was laughing out loud for real. The description
       | is brilliant! Just the right amount of self-derogatory arrogance
       | needed to make me laugh :)
       | 
       | I had played it before, but it was the first time I read the
       | original rules book.
        
       | DavidPeiffer wrote:
       | I played many hours of this game with my brothers on a 1990's
       | Shareware CD. Great memories, and we always had a great time
       | playing!
        
       | ane wrote:
       | I remember playing this as a kid! Must have been more than 25
       | years ago...
        
       | loulouxiv wrote:
       | I used to play a lot of this with my grandmother and cousins when
       | I was a child. Later I happened to work in the factory mentionned
       | in the article, which was at the time rented as warehouse and
       | office for an E-commerce company. There was a huge Dujardin logo
       | painted on the outer wall, which was preserved when they
       | repainted the building [0]
       | 
       | [0] https://maps.app.goo.gl/2HMq4m4qkCH6FtYa6
        
       | twic wrote:
       | Never played it, but as a child i played a lot of a very similar
       | (i believe) game called Nautic Miles, in which you try to get
       | your convoys across the ocean in the face of various attacks from
       | your enemy. The moves (that i can remember) are to play a convoy
       | card of some value from your hand, face down; to add a miles card
       | to a convoy (scoring it if it reaches 4000 miles); to expose one
       | of your opponent's convoys using a radar card; to stop one of
       | your opponents' convoys using a storm card; to release one of
       | your storm-bound convoys using a fair weather card; to sink one
       | of your opponent's convoys using a mine card (unless they can
       | counter with a minesweeper card); to attack one of your
       | opponent's convoys with a warship card (which they can counter
       | with a stronger warship card, which you can counter with a yet
       | stronger warship card, etc); and some form of air attack, which
       | could be foiled if your opponent had an aircraft shot down card.
       | There was also something about alerts; maybe you had to lay an
       | alert card on a convoy before you could attack it (except with a
       | mine!).
       | 
       | How many times did i successfully press an attack, at the expense
       | of multiple cards, only to discover that i had sunk the worthless
       | _chalutier_?
       | 
       | It dates from the '80s, but has rather elegant art deco card
       | designs:
       | 
       | https://boardgamegeek.com/image/540087/nautic-miles
       | 
       | https://paille-editions.com/V2/produit/nautic-miles/
        
       | User23 wrote:
       | There was a version of this for the 68k Macintosh that I played
       | the heck out of.
        
       | mobilene wrote:
       | We had a set when I was a kid in the 70s in the US. I might still
       | have it. We played it a lot. It wasn't a hard game, and it was a
       | simple way to pass some hours. Lots of good family memories
       | there.
        
       | myself248 wrote:
       | I played this a ton as a kid, and to this day, I sometimes shout
       | Coup-fourre! when I have an instant rebuttal to something...
       | 
       | I knew there were a few different editions, but had no idea there
       | were so many! My family's set is the 1960 design.
        
         | zhoujianfu wrote:
         | Us/me too! The besssst feeling in the world!
         | 
         | In the summer of 1997 I actually made my own Mille Bornes card
         | set by hand (after finding the card distribution on the (new)
         | web) to pass the time while studying in Taiwan.
        
           | nateburke wrote:
           | There is no feeling better than seeing that green diagonal
           | stripe of a safety flash in your hand when you pick a
           | card...it's electric!
        
         | moomin wrote:
         | Same. Played it so much in the 80s with a bilingual variant of
         | the Callennec design. The cards were beautiful.
        
         | prmoustache wrote:
         | My 8 and 11y old daughters love playing it. They really don't
         | mind the old card design. We also built a "circuit" with
         | cardboard where we use my old micro machines cars to visualize
         | our trip.
         | 
         | We also play with our own rules where there is no need to find
         | a greenlight after reparing/changing wheel/refueling the car.
         | Otherwise it is always the player getting the 'vehicule
         | prioritaire' (aka firefighters card) who win and it spoils the
         | fun.
        
           | grokx wrote:
           | My kids have the Cars movie version of the Mille bornes. In
           | my mind, the Cars design ruins the whole game, it's no longer
           | special to me. Plus it's really hard to tell the card types
           | without looking carefully at the small logos in the corners.
           | All the cards have cars on it! It just feel like any random
           | cheap Disney board game.
           | 
           | I'm feeling old. :D
        
       | Waterluvian wrote:
       | When I was in 7th grade I used ResEdit to do a total conversion
       | of the Macintosh version of Mille Bornes for a French class
       | project. The provided theme was "La Vie Est (Et?) Belle."
       | 
       | My French teacher really had no clue how to receive it. He didn't
       | really understand how I made an entire computer card game. My
       | more tech aware home room teacher went to bat for me and
       | eventually I won a school award and got to eat lunch with the
       | principal.
       | 
       | This was definitely a formative moment in my computer programming
       | career.
        
         | 082349872349872 wrote:
         | There are even games which are basically ResEdit'ed Mille
         | Bornes. One is Grass[0]; what are others?
         | 
         | [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grass_(card_game)
         | 
         | ... which leads to:
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Touring_(card_game)
        
           | adrianmonk wrote:
           | I've played Touring many times!
           | 
           | My grandparents had it, and we used to play all the time in
           | the 1970s and 1980s. The deck they had was a real antique
           | even back then.
           | 
           | I think they actually had two decks. Based on photos from
           | BoardGameGeek[1], one deck was probably from the 1940s and
           | the other from the 1920s or 1930s.
           | 
           | It was a fun game, and even as a kid I enjoyed the cool retro
           | art.
           | 
           | ---
           | 
           | [1] https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/2253/touring/versions
        
           | egypturnash wrote:
           | Mille Bornes is a clone of Touring plus a few things:
           | 
           |  _Dujardin described 1000 Bornes,1 as "la Canasta de la
           | Route," but the game is not based on canasta but rather on
           | William Janson Roche 's 1906 classic Touring, with the
           | addition of safety cards and the novel Coup fourre play._ -
           | the article at hand
        
         | tripa wrote:
         | <<Est.>>
         | 
         | Note that French typically does not capitalize individual words
         | in a title as English does.
        
           | Waterluvian wrote:
           | Thank you for both notes!
        
       | cafard wrote:
       | I played it about 50 years ago. Did one occasionally have a
       | chance to exclaim "au secours"?
        
       | Zachsa999 wrote:
       | The part that kept me coming back as a child was feeling of
       | completely stonewalling my little brother and getting a "shut
       | out"
        
       | latchkey wrote:
       | Loved that game. I played those 1982 cards as a kid with my mom
       | when we'd go on skiing trips.
        
       | xbar wrote:
       | Weird. We started building a Mille Bornes clone game at work last
       | week based on a particular data problem we are facing.
       | 
       | This game is great. Practice yelling in French.
        
         | robotmlg wrote:
         | COUP FOURRE!
        
       | balls187 wrote:
       | One of the teens who baby sat my sister and I had this game. It's
       | great reading comment of others who enjoyed this game as much as
       | I did.
        
       | dragontamer wrote:
       | Simple game but was part of my childhood as well.
       | 
       | I tried to introduce it to my board game group, alas it's too
       | simple for them to appreciate. Ah well.
        
       | JKCalhoun wrote:
       | The last time our family played it became frustrating: one team
       | being unable to even get their car rolling off the starting line
       | -- waiting, waiting for the magic cards to fix a flat, get a
       | green light, etc. The opposing team had wonderful hands and were
       | ruthless.
       | 
       | I kept thinking that there's a fun game in here, but not with the
       | current rules/deck. I think a driving game should have more
       | driving ... less sitting around broken down. It was more fun when
       | both teams were rolling along in the race, trying to inch past
       | one another with the milestone cards.
        
         | kergonath wrote:
         | The whole "waiting for a green light to just start" is the
         | problem, I think. We have house rules that limit the cases
         | where you need a green light, and the pace is much better. And
         | less frustrating.
        
           | flopit wrote:
           | New house rule : It's illegal to say you have a house rule
           | without citing said house rule.
        
             | labster wrote:
             | Coup-fourre! I play my Grognard card sideways and block
             | your unofficial rules.
        
             | kergonath wrote:
             | Fair enough! IIRC (it was a long time ago) we did not need
             | a green light to start except after a red light. This
             | avoids the first player reaching 500 km with the last one
             | having yet to actually start. You need to remove a couple
             | of green lights because otherwise there are too many of
             | them, though.
        
         | lots2learn wrote:
         | Got this recently for my kids and was pleasantly surprised that
         | the current rules no longer require a GO card after recovering
         | from an incident.
        
         | MAGZine wrote:
         | someone funnily, my mother refuses to play this game because
         | the broken down mechanics are extremely unfun, borderline
         | triggering for her.
         | 
         | makes me wonder if it's a bad experience, or if there some some
         | personality trait that makes these games unfun for some.
        
       | renox wrote:
       | We bought the 'Mario'-themed version of Mille borne: what a
       | mistake! The original version is much more understandable..
        
       | josephcsible wrote:
       | I remember playing this several years ago. I'm convinced that the
       | Right of Way card is massively overpowered. It felt like whoever
       | got it basically always won.
        
         | lots2learn wrote:
         | In more recent versions they changed the rules to not require a
         | GO card after recovering from an incident card so the right of
         | way card got nerfed a bit. It's still OP though.
        
       | mcphage wrote:
       | We played a lot of this when I was a kid... our edition had the
       | 1960s French artwork. When my sister bought a new copy a few
       | months back to play while my dad was in the hospital, she made
       | sure to find one with the classic artwork. It really is a lot
       | more charming than newer styles.
        
       | pdw wrote:
       | If you have a BSD system, or if you have bsdgames installed, you
       | can run "mille" to play Mille Bornes. This version was done by
       | Ken Arnold, who also created the curses library. Even better, I
       | seem to remember that Mille Bornes was the first program to use
       | curses, but I can't find a citation for that now.
        
         | kencausey wrote:
         | And on Debian and presumably derivatives there are packages
         | xmille as well as bsdgames which includes mille.
         | 
         | edited for reduced ambiguity.
        
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       (page generated 2022-09-05 23:01 UTC)