Gavin Birnbaum is a London-based game creator who started producing small-run, handmade, (mostly) wooden games in 2009 under the name Cubiko. He produced some two dozen games until 2023, among them two cycling games (check the other one here). In most cases, these games were made available on crowdfunding sites and then shown on his website (sadly closed at the moment of writing). However, you had to be fast to get the games since they sold out quite quickly.

The first of his cycling games is Yellow Jersey, of which Gavin made a pre-release edition of 12 personalized games, all of them different. I chose to have one of those (mine is game no. 6, the 1906 Tour de France), but I missed the "standard" tile edition, which came in a cloth bag. However, François Cardinet chose otherwise.

 

 

These are the 10 tiles in the cloth bag, appropiately called "the tile edition".

According to the game maker (I quote literally, since his English is much better than mine):

Yellow Jersey is a "Tour de France" type of cycling race for 2-4 players. Starting in Paris, you move your team of three cyclists around France through a series of race stages by choosing (a variable number of) movement tokens from your stack, with the token being numbered 1-6. Each round the player holding the Yellow Jersey moves first. You will need to plan how to move your bikes so that you retain maximum movement and take advantage of opportunities to slipstream. Crashes, uphill slopes, and the outside lane will slow you down, whereas downhill slopes and the inside lane may work in your favor. The race can be conducted either way around the circuit and the first player to get one cyclist back to Paris wins. (The game includes a team winning variant.)

(...end of quote...)

Well, yes and no. To me the game is a one-day race game, not a "Tour de France" (or any other stage race) game. This said, the rules are quite interesting. Technically, the game is a no-chance race game. Players do not move by dice throws or card draws, but they have six tokens numbered 1-6 from which they choose their movement. These tokens cannot be recycled to be played again until all the other tokens have been played.

 

 

This game also features some other usual cycling rules, such as uphill (squares marked with the symbol ">") or slipstreaming. All in all it is an interesting quick race game that will appeal to all the chance haters (or dice haters) in the cycling gaming world.

 

Of course there is chance involved in the game, since players choose their movement tokens simultaneously, unaware of what other players have chosen, and this may affect the situation of the game when it is your turn to play. You might even crash if you find a blocked road.

 

 

Like in some other team racing games, the winner of the game is the one to get his first rider around the track (though the usual variants are proposed in the rules as alternatives), but you will not be able to unless your trailing riders are near enough from the leader.

 

Furthermore, if you allow a large gap to develop between your leading and second rider, your leading rider will slow down.

 

 

 

 

As said above, Gavin made a pre-release edition of 12 personalised games, all of them different. Mine is game no. 6, the 1906 Tour de France (won by René Pottier, a tragic figure, which is why I chose that year).

 

 

 

 

In this case, the pegs inserted in the board form the so-called "stages" (though they are not stages, IMHO). It is in a team's best interest to have its riders grouped in the same "stage", since in every turn a team draws as many tokens as the largest number of bikes it has within one stage of the race.

 

Gavin admits that he loves carving wood. He's quite good at it! You may see some imperfections in these close-up pictures, but keep in mind that the riders are quite small (the box measures 25 x 25 x 5.5 cm, and the riders are less than 2 cm).

 

 

They DO look like riders, don't they?

Hand-made counters

The riders in the "tile edition" have spoked wheels (left), while the ones in the pre-release do not (right).

 Support boards are not exactly alike (though interchangeable). On the left, tile edition's; on the right, game no.6's.

 

 

Thanks, Mathilde, for gifting me your father's collection of cycling games.
 

Description rewritten in July 2026.