How to Play

You compete in a 5-stage tour with 10 teams of 3 riders each (30 total).

Choose your team and role: Leader (stronger stats, the star) or Domestique (support rider, team player).

All riders in the same group finish with the same time. Within a group, the sprint determines the order. Top 3 earn time bonifications (10s, 6s, 4s).

The rider with the lowest cumulative time across all stages wins the General Classification.

Each stage has a terrain profile — the terrain type changes every turn, affecting card values and strategy.

Each stage has a weather condition assigned based on the race's climate. Weather modifiers stack with terrain effects.

1. Draw — You and all riders draw 4 cards from your deck.

2. Play — Choose a card from your hand. You must play a card every turn.

3. Reveal — All played cards are shown simultaneously.

4. Resolve — Card effects apply: movement, fatigue, recovery, attacks. Groups form or merge.

5. Update — Positions shift, played cards are exhausted (permanently removed), next turn begins.

During the race, you can see intention icons next to riders. These show what each rider is doing — like reading their body language in the peloton.

In Peloton Tactics, played cards are permanently removed from the game — every card choice matters.

Unplayed cards from your hand return to your discard pile and will be reshuffled.

Your deck starts with 24 cards. Each turn you draw 4 and play 1 — the played card is exhausted. Every stage is 24 turns, so budget your cards wisely.

Meanwhile, fatigue can grow your deck: Exhaustion and Bonk cards get injected, diluting your hand.

The last 3 turns of each stage are the Sprint Zone. A "🏆 SPRINT" badge appears on each group.

All riders accumulate sprint score during the sprint zone:

Within a group, riders are ranked by sprint score. The top 3 overall earn time bonifications (10s, 6s, 4s) — crucial for the GC.

If your played card value is too low for the group speed, you get dropped to a grupetto — a slower group that falls behind.

Drop check: card value < group speed - 2 → you're dropped.

Immune cards: Sit In and Water Bottle never cause drops. Only Pedal, Attack, and Fatigue cards can trigger drops.

Grupettos use a relaxed threshold (speed - 4). If a grupetto catches up (gap reaches 0), groups merge.

Riders race in groups. The main peloton starts as one group. Breakaways form when a rider's attack exceeds group speed by 3+.

Breakaway offer: If any card you play from P1 exceeds the group speed by 3+, you'll be offered the chance to break away — even non-attack cards like Hard Effort. No extra cost! AI riders auto-decide.

If you accept that offer, your new breakaway uses the same-turn source gap snapshot. This keeps same-origin breakaways aligned instead of adding an artificial delay gap.

Multiple riders (2-3) share P0 duty. Group speed = highest card among P0 riders.

Each puller rotates out after 2 turns or weak card. Domestiques pull first, then rouleurs, then highest energy.

At P1, toggle "Volunteer to Pull" + card value ≥ 4 to move to P0. The toggle resets each turn.

After each stage, you earn XP:

Between stages, visit the Card Shop:

Your rider has 5 stats (base 5, range 1-10) that affect race mechanics:

Check your stats on the pre-stage screen before each race.

Season Mode: level progression is disabled (single-season format, fixed level).

Career Mode: level progression is active and persistent across seasons.

Career thresholds: L2 (900), L3 (1,900), L4 (3,000), L5 (4,200), L6 (5,500), L7 (6,900). They are pitched so a rider who races well gains roughly one level per season — a season is about 49 stages, so a single race will not move you a whole level.

Every level-up opens a Level Up screen where you pick +1 stat point.

Level 2: choose a permanent archetype (+1 auto stat, +2 archetype cards).

Level 3: choose a permanent specialization inside your archetype (+1 auto stat, +2 specialization cards).

Levels 4-7: each new level gives another +1 stat point and a skill from the skill tree — up to four over a career. Level 4 also lets you upgrade a basic card, and Level 5 hands you your archetype's elite card. Your higher stats keep scaling core effects too (more max energy, stronger mountain/sprint/slipstream/recovery impact).

At Level 2, choose one of 5 archetypes. This choice is permanent and grants +1 auto stat + 2 unique cards.

At Level 3, pick one of the 2 specializations inside your archetype. Also permanent: +1 auto stat and 2 more cards.

Your specialization also decides which skills the tree will let you learn later, so it is worth reading the descriptions before you commit.

From Level 4 onwards, every level-up also lets you learn one skill — a permanent passive. Four level-ups, so four skills per career. Choose "Decide Later" and the pick carries over to your next level-up.

The tree has three tiers: Basic (anyone), Specialization (Level 3+ and the right specialization) and Peak (Level 6+). Locked nodes tell you what they need; a few are still in development and are marked as such.

At Level 4 you pick one basic card to upgrade, and the upgrade replaces every copy of it in your deck — all six Easy Spins, or both Demarrages. One upgrade per career, and "Decide Later" keeps it available at your next level-up.

At Level 5 your archetype's elite card is added to your deck automatically — there is nothing to choose. Elite cards are powerful but narrow: outside their window they simply can't be played, and none of them is ever for sale in the shop.

Season Mode is a full season of racing with multiple events: Grand Tours, Mini-Tours, and Classics.

Your chosen team competes across all races. AI riders persist all season, and the calendar, standings, fatigue, and shop decisions evolve between races.

Three season classifications are tracked:

• General Classification — Points from race final standings. The overall champion.
• Points Classification — Sprint marker points + finish positions.
• King of the Mountains — Points from KOM markers at mountain summits.

At the end of the season, top 3 riders in each classification earn bonus XP.

Career Mode is one rider's whole life in the sport: about ten seasons, each one a full Season Mode calendar, with everything you earn carrying over.

Between two seasons comes the pre-season interlude, which reports what changed:

• • Winter rest — all your accumulated fatigue is cleared. The long-term cost in this mode is age, not tiredness.
• • Palmares — the wins the season added to your record.
• • Retirements — rivals grow, peak and retire on their own arcs, and rookies take their place. The peloton you finish against is not the one you started against.

Decline begins once you reach Level 7, or after your seventh season if you never got there — whichever comes first. It runs in three phases, one per season:

• • D1 — Early decline: your two weakest stats each lose 1 point, and your fatigue threshold drops by 1.
• • D2 — Fading: your two weakest stats each lose 2 points, and your fatigue threshold drops by 2.
• • D3 — Final season: your three weakest stats each lose 2 points, and you start every stage with 20% less energy. One more season, then you hang up the wheels.

Each phase also takes one card off your deck, and it takes them in the order you earned them: the elite card from Level 5 first, then the Level 4 upgrade — every copy of it reverts to the card it was made from — then one of the two cards your specialization brought. A specialization card drops to the basic card below it, or leaves the deck if there is nothing weaker in its category.

You can also retire early at any interlude. Either way the rider joins the Hall of Fame, which is stored separately from your save — starting a new career never erases the riders who came before.

Your palmares is your record of first places only. A podium is not a palmares — it already pays you in XP.

• • Stage win — 1st on a stage of a stage race.
• • Race win — 1st in a race's final classification. Winning a classic counts here and never as a stage win: it's one afternoon, so it's one honour.
• • Season jerseys — 1st in the GC, points or KOM classification when the year closes.

When you retire, that record is rated from ★☆☆☆☆ Amateur to ★★★★★ GOAT. Each rating lists minimums, and you get the highest one you meet in full:

Grand Tour and classic wins are part of your race wins, not extra ones. Season jerseys don't count toward the rating — they're honours, not the measure. Amateur is the floor: every career gets a rating, including one that never won.

Retiring scores your career against a list of achievements. Each one you cleared adds its card to the shop pool of every career after this one — permanently, under the same key as the Hall of Fame.

You still buy the card with XP like anything else in the shop. An unlock widens what your next rider can become; it never gives them a stronger start.

Every card on that list is a specialization card — normally the only way to hold one is to pick that specialization at Level 3. Unlocking is what lets a climber buy the sprinter's Jump, or a rouleur the time trialist's TT Effort, without giving up their own path.

During stages, KOM markers appear at mountain summits and Sprint markers appear at intermediate sprints.

KOM categories are based on mountain length:

• • HC (5+ mountain turns) — 20/15/10/6/3 pts
• • Cat 1 (4 turns) — 10/6/4/2/1 pts
• • Cat 2 (3 turns) — 5/3/2/1 pts
• • Cat 3 (2 turns) — 3/2/1 pts

Sprint markers award 15/12/10/8/6/4/2/1 pts at intermediate points, and more at the finish line.

Marker positions are resolved by: group gap, zone (P0 > P1 > P2), card value, and energy.

Your tour is saved automatically between stages, in this browser. Races themselves can't be saved mid-way — finish the stage before closing.

Pick it back up with Continue Tour — or Continue Career, which resumes at the season and race you left off. Finishing a tour, or retiring, clears the save.

The Hall of Fame is kept under its own key, so it outlives any one career: clearing a save or starting fresh leaves your retired riders untouched.

⚠ Progress not saved — if this warning appears, the browser refused to store your tour: storage is full, disabled for this site, or you're in private browsing. You can keep playing, but closing the tab loses the tour. Free up space and the next save clears the warning.