Episode 251: Thunder Road – Vendetta

Thunder Road: Vendetta is 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.

Each player is piloting three cars and a chopper to race to the finish line, each player will have three car dashboards, a command board and a set of four dice. The road will consist of three road tiles containing hazards, different terrain types and obstacles. How it starts is all players will simultaneously roll their dice. Then in turn order players will do four steps, 1) assign a die to an operable car, 2) activate a command action, 3) move said car and 4) shoot with the car (if they can). Command board actions are “airstrike”-allowing you to move your chopper into an unoccupied space to shoot cars, “nitro”-giving your vehicle a boost of movement, “Drift”-allowing your car to ignore the first slam it would take and “repair”-fixing an inoperable car.

As players move their cars they are avoiding hazards, wrecks and obstacles. If your car ends its movement in a space with another car a “slam” is initiated in which die are rolled to determine which direction cars will fly. Be careful when slamming though because the larger vehicle will be allowed a re-roll if they don’t like the outcome. Hazards could be wrecks, mines, clear road, mud, or oil slicks all doing different things once they are hit and could cause a vehicle to take a damage token.

When a player’s vehicle encounters a slam, being shot at or a hazard, they could take a damage token. These damage tokens will do different things and be placed underneath the car’s dashboard. Once a vehicle takes two damage tokens it becomes inoperable and only fixing it through a “repair” action on the command board will make it operable once again.

As the race progresses cars might reach the end of the road tile, when this happens (and end game is not yet triggered) a new road tile will be placed and the first road tile will be taken away. Any cars left on the first road tile will be destroyed.

All in all this is a racing game in which chaos ensues and play is rewarded by taking risks. Now let’s head back to the studio to hear which PEGS put their pedal to the metal.