by David Park

Created on: January 18, 2009

"Take this flat tire!" "Ah, but I have puncture-proof tires! Coup Fourre!" Mille Bornes is the classic French card game made in the mid 1950's, licensed by Hasbro. Basically, you and your opponents are competing to see who can drive 1000 miles first, hence the name "Mille Bornes" or "1000 milestones". The deck is comprised of unique cards. There are "hazard cards", such as the Accident, Flat Tire, Out of Gas, Speed Limit, or Stop cards, and there are the "remedy cards" - Repairs, Spare Tire, Gasoline, End of Speed Limit, and Go. There are also 4 Safety cards, and many distance or Milestone cards.

Each player is dealt 6 cards, and has to keep 6 cards in their hand. At the start of each turn, the player picks up a card from the draw pile, and either plays a card benefiting themselves, deterring an opponent, or they can discard a card if they cannot do anything with what they have in their hand. Then the play passes to the next player. The next play then draws from the draw pile. Unlike some card games, you cannot draw from the discard pile! The game continues onwards until someone reaches 700 miles.

So let's say in your starting hand you have a 100 milestone card, a stop card, the Extra Tank safety card, and a few others. You'd think that you'd be able to play the milestone card, right? Wrong! You can't travel anywhere until you have a Go card in play. Until you play a Go card, you must remain immobile. That is what's really difficult about this game: getting started. Usually people have hazard cards in their hand at the beginning, so right when you play a Go, their turn comes along and they put an Out of Gas on your car! Now how are you supposed to get anywhere!? Well, there are two ways. First, you can play a gasoline card on your next turn and then a Go card after that, or you can play that Extra Tank card right now! Playing a preventative safety card right when someone puts the hazard it prevents against is called a Coup-Fourre (pronounced Coo Foo-ray), and it gets you bonus points.

The safety cards are as follows. The Extra Tank, Puncture Proof, and Driving Ace cards prevent against Out of Gas, Flat Tire, and Accident cards, respectively. If you have the safety in play, the hazard cannot be put on your Go card. Now, the Right of Way card is special. It defends against Speed Limit cards as well as Stop cards, and it also acts as a permanent Go card. So let's say you have a Flat Tire, and the Right of Way is in play for you. You can then put a Spare Tire on,

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