Hi guys. So I have two questions: 1- What should I do in the mountain stages? Should I follow the attack or do something else? 2- Is PCM expansion pack(s) any good? Thanks in advance!
1: Protect your best riders (with high mountain and recuperation stats). And rider on effort 65-85 and try to protect your captain as long as possible. Attack in the last 1-2 km and make sure you empty the yellow bar, without fully emptying your red bar (if you empty the red bar too early, your rider is too tired to keep a good tempo).
2: I can recommend the PCM Daily expansion pack. Definitely worth it! Many teams, realistic stats (except for Sagan climbing maybe), many variants for giro, tour and vuelta.
Your anwser to the first question didn't helped me but thanks anyway
markvr wrote:
1: Protect your best riders (with high mountain and recuperation stats). And rider on effort 65-85 and try to protect your captain as long as possible. Attack in the last 1-2 km and make sure you empty the yellow bar, without fully emptying your red bar (if you empty the red bar too early, your rider is too tired to keep a good tempo).
2: I can recommend the PCM Daily expansion pack. Definitely worth it! Many teams, realistic stats (except for Sagan climbing maybe), many variants for giro, tour and vuelta.
Yeah don't follow attacks, other riders keep attacking but will quickly get tired so you will be able to catch them up.
In mountain stages, protect your best rider almost at all times so that he starts the last climb with the most energy and resistance as possible (if you have enough climbers in your team, try and protect your second best climber as he will be useful at the end of the stage).
- During the flat parts, protect him with someone that has good flat stats
- During the climbs, with a decent climber. If it's a very mountainous stage, the first few climbs will be climbed quite slowly so you can either protect him with your worst climber or keep using the flat guy (but he might not last the whole climb, depending on difficulty/length etc...)
- Then the more climbs you have, protect your best rider(s) with other climbers. As you've protected him for the whole stage, he will arrive at the last climb with his yellow and red bars very high.
- When it comes to the last climb, you have your best riders left. If you have more than two, then create a train from the worse to the best or if you only have two and protect your best with your second best climber.
Most of the time, the best climbers will attack straight away, so have your best climber between 80 and 85 in the effort bar, he will eventually catch up. Once you have caught up, bring the effort down between 65 and 70. They will carry on attacking but you can eventually catch them and they will get tired so you can attack in the last 1 or 2 kms and can win.
Obviously, there can't be a huge difference in stats for it to work. If your best climber has around 75 in MO then he won't catch up with Contador/Quintana etc...
I finished 2nd in the Giro with Barguil using that tactic, catching up on time I lost to Porte and Aru in the TT. I couldn't catch Contador but I managed to keep the gap around 3mns.