Saturday Morning Gaming: Thunder Road Vendetta!

(I had no idea that this game was based on a board game from the 80s until just now.)

Last game night, we played one of the games from 2023 that got a kabillion awards from a bunch of different gaming outlets and, my goodness, it was a hoot. Thunder Road: Vendetta. It’s based off of a game from the 80s that was most likely trying to capture the excitement of Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome without wanting to pay any royalties whatsoever.

Based on nothing but what I’m seeing in the commercial, I’d say that the new and improved version of the boardgame cleans up a lot of gameplay, adds some nuance and additional hazards, and a load more gameboards for the cars to crash around on.

Here’s the basic conceit. It’s a Mad Maxian road race. Each of the up-to-four players has a small, medium, or large car and the last man standing wins. (Well, there’s also a “crossing the finish line” mechanic but you ain’t never gonna see that.)

Here’s your tiles to help you keep track of your cars:

You roll four dice each turn. You can assign the dice however you want… one to each of your cars and then an extra for something else. A nitro boost? The ability to ignore a “slam” (an interaction with another car)? Repair one of your vehicles? MAYBE CALL IN AN AIRSTRIKE ON THE JERK IN FIRST PLACE?!?!?

Here’s an example of one of the two potential starting boards:

Those little red triangles on the board are where you place hazards (and the numbers are based on the number of players… so if you’re playing with 3 players, you don’t put hazards down on the triangles with only 2s in them.

We didn’t pay attention to the numbers the first time we played because we’re made different. So our starting board looked like this:

And then we had our cars all come out and start Mad Maxing.

Your cars can shoot at cars in front of them (within 3 squares) or ram a car when they (temporarily) occupy the same space.

Put the ramming car on top of the rammed and then roll the outcome of the slam:

The dice determine what happens to either the car on top or the car on the bottom (there are 4 faces for the bottom car and two for the top) and the purple die determines where that particular car goes… and if you’re in the middle of a bunch of cars, you can easily have a chain reaction of slams. (If a larger car slams into a smaller one, the slammer has the option of a reroll).
Our record of chain reactions in the game we played was three.

Luckily, a slam doesn’t do damage. Only shooting does damage or hazards do damage. Each car has two hit points. Taking damage does different things. A dent does nothing but take the hit point, while other kinds of damage require the car to roll the purple die and skid into that square (you might start another chain reaction!). Another kind of damage results in shrapnel being thrown from the car and going into a nearby square and doing a point of damage (and start the chain reaction all over again).

When it comes to shooting, you roll a die to see if you hit. The die has two faces that hit small, three faces that hit medium, and four faces that hit large.

So maybe a good way to play is to have your smallest car just lead-foot it and make it to the next map… huh. Something to try next game.

When a car reaches the end of the map, you then pick the next card in the game based on a dice roll:

Each of those is two sided, by the way. You can get a *TON* of random replayability out of this game (assuming you make it to the second map, of course).

If someone gets too far ahead, well, that’s where the helicopter strike comes in.

One thing that is *VERY* dangerous is immovable objects, such as a cliff face. In the game we played, one of the players lost all three of his cars to the rocks on this board:

Hit one of those cliffs and your car is dead.

Ah, well. That just means that you’ve got an extra die to spend on your other cars.

All in all, this was an *AMAZING* four-player game. It’s a fun game that rewards ruthless aggression and everybody will have a hoot when the chain reactions start. Seriously, this game lives up to the hype.

So… what are you playing?

(Featured image is a photo of the Thunder Road: Vendetta box. All photos taken by the author.)