I really respect the mission of Restoration Games. They take old games, refresh them for modern gaming sensibilities, a fresh coat of paint, and give the games a second chance. Games like Whosit turning into Dinosaur Tea Party, Star Wars: Epic Duels into Unmatched, and Top Race into Downforce. I love seeing how they manage to retain the core of the game, but breath so much life and character into these dated games.
Thunder Road: Vendetta is designed by Dave Chalker, Brett Myers, Noah Cohen, Rob Daviau, Justin D. Jacobson, Jim Keifer, and Brian Neff, and published by Restoration games in 2023. Ostensibly, this is a racing game, but more realistically, it’s a death run game. Each player has 3 cars, and are tasked with either being the first to cross a finish line, or be the last one standing. Basically at the start of a round, everyone rolls 4 dice, and on a turn you assign a die to one of your three cars, moving it that number of spaces. There are also some special actions that you can do once per round by assigning a specific die to do that special action.
If during your move you land on a spot that another car is in, you bump them, rolling two die to determine which car gets moved, and where. This can cause chain reaction bumps too. Now your three cars come in different sizes, large, medium, and small. Large cars get shot more easily, but they have the option to reroll when a bump occurs.
Now, the board that you’re moving on, has a side scrolling element. When someone reaches the end of the last board, you take off the earliest board and put a new board on the end of the track. I think the game ends after 6 boards, but we’ve never gotten to the end of a race. The board has road segments, dirt, oil slicks, and a bunch of face down hazards that might cause chaos. Also, impassible spaces that, if you’re forced onto those spaces, blam, that car is dead.
When cars take two damage, they’re incapacitated, and when a player has all 3 of their cars destroyed or incapacitated, they’re out of the game. At that point, the current final tile gets the finish line added to it, and the first player to get a car to that finish line is the winner, or, if there’s only one player left with operable cars, they’re the victor.
So, my game group is usually really boring. We like predictability, deterministic outcomes, economic simulations, you know, boring euro game stuff. But for some reason, the chaos that is Thunder Road: Vendetta gets us all cackling with laughter every time. In the game we played last night, one player put his car in between two impassible spots, and three people came and bumped him from behind. All three cars were thrown backwards into the impassible spot and were destroyed, on like, the second round of the game! Other things inject chaos too, like the damage tiles can make you blast off in a specific direction, or have you wobble around randomly, sometimes someone will damage you, then a piece of shrapnel will fly off and incapacitate their car in return. It just good fun to see everything go wrong.
The slams are a really fun and integral aspect to the game, but it’s also really flow breaking. You’re moving your car, then slam, then you have to stop and roll two dice, take a second to orient the direction die so you can see who is going where, decide if you want to reroll or not, and if that triggers a chain, then you do it over, and over, and over again. We’ve had a few slam sessions that chain 4 or 5 cars together, shuffling and reorienting a cluster of cars into something unrecognizable. It’s pretty fun, but it does feel like the game grinds to a halt during these segments.
Sometimes I feel like complaining about the dice rolls. In my last game, one round I rolled three 1’s, and one 4, so two of my cars just crawling along the back of the pack. Meanwhile, the other players all rolled a pair of 6’s, leaving me in the dust. It doesn’t feel very fun to move a single space, but on the other hand, there is a tactical advantage to being in the back. If no one is rushing the last tile and putting your cars in jeopardy of getting shunted off the board, then on the next round, it’s very likely all the obstacle have been cleared and you can just rush up and start shooting your opponents in the bum.
I’ve only played the retail version of Thunder Road: Vendetta, and as that product stands, it’s an excellent game. That said, I’ve found myself more than once looking over the plethora of expansions and salivating at the potential chaos that all these modules would add. From a big rig that is 3 big car pieces linked together to 5 little motorcycles, jumps, player powers and a demolition derby style arena that changes how the game is played altogether. I love the base game, but I’m so excited to explore all these expansions.
Thunder Road: Vendetta is a game about violence and player elimination. Sometimes you’ll roll poorly, and that’s just how it’s going to be. If you crave control, you aren’t going to find it here. Having a good time in this game is about embracing the chaos. Not always picking the safe, smart option, but the one that would make for a great story. Yes, you’ll more often than not crash into a ball of flames, but at least you’ll have a story to tell.
