Thunder Road: Vendetta First Impressions

Thunder Road: Vendetta is a restoration of a game I’ve played before.

It was over 30 years ago but still counts.

A revved-up restoration of the classic 1986 game of mayhem on the asphalt. Grab your crew, roll your dice, race your cars, shoot your guns, and try not to get wrecked.

Thunder Road: Vendetta Game Overview

Quick Rules Summary

Players control a team of vehicles. Most of the teams have one small, medium and large vehicle, Some other teams are made up of just small bikes or just one big rig.

With these, they are racing across a track avoiding hazards and each other.

Players can shoot ram and use other abilities in order to try and take out opponents’ vehicles and/or get ahead. Vehicles can be taken out by going off the board, falling into traps or taking too much damage.

The board itself is made up of 3 tiles and when a vehicle gets to the end, the back tile and anything on it is removed from the game. A new tile is then added to the front.

How do you win?

In our 4-player game, when a player runs out of vehicles they are eliminated. When a player gets their vehicle to the end of the track after this they win.

Main Mechanisms

So racing obviously as you barrel down the track.

But this is all done with dice placement. You roll your dice and assign them to the vehicle you want to move and it moves that many spaces. Once per round, you can also assign one die to your player board that has special abilities.

You also use your dice to attack but there are other dice to determine directions, see what movement bonus you get from driving on the road, see how fire affects your on-fire vehicles and more.

USP

In 1986 it had all of the USPs but now, not so much.

Theme

The Mad Max-style race for survival clearly influenced the original game.

I’m not really sure how someone ‘wins’ though. Like, this is a race for survival surely? How do you “win”?

Setup

I shuffled and laid things out as instructed. But, it’s all in those vacuumed-packed trays which means you have to do that awkward lift-and-shuffle thing. I prefer things stuffed in bags, it makes it so much easier.

Components & Artwork

I’m not sure what is and isn’t different to the retail version. I played a nice pimped-out Kickstarter one.

But all of the components were great, especially the vehicles and dice.

I really like the style of art, I’m not sure what it’s called but I’d like to see it more.

Ease of Teaching

The base rules are easy to teach.

The hardest part was working out how the big rig moved as it’s 3 spaces long and bendable.

Similar Games

Take your pick nowadays. I recently said when looking at Joyride that there are quite a few racer/shooters.

I think Apocalypse Road is still my favourite of them currently.

Thunder Road: Vendetta Review

Positives

The components are really nice and the artwork is cool.

The dice placement is restrictive making you consider each action you take.

The team with the bikes and the team with the big rig are very different. The standard teams with 3 cars each have a player board with a special ability to keep those different too.

Taking someone out is satisfying.

Everything in the game is very thematic. There’s usually a die roll or some other element that adds to the unknown nature of this kind of race. However…

Negatives

…you can lose a vehicle purely by chance.

The big rig slows the game down, leave it in the box.

Summary

This is a really well-made upgrade on a classic game with much improved, updated rules.

Jesta ThaRogue