Thunder Road: Vendetta – Maximum Chrome

The world went bad and somebody turned the highway into a sport. You run a crew of three cars — large, medium and small — down a stretch of blacktop strewn with wrecks, oil slicks and burning debris, with your own chopper circling overhead for support. Every other crew on the road wants you gone, and the road is no friend either: fall too far behind and the tarmac behind you simply disappears, taking your cars with it. Get to the far end first, or be the last crew still moving when the smoke clears.

Game Mechanics

Everyone rolls their four movement dice at the same time, then players take turns placing them one at a time.

• Assign a die to one of your cars and move it that many spaces.
• Or assign a die on your command board instead: repair, nitro boost, drift through an obstacle, or send in the chopper.
• Drive into another vehicle and you slam it — dice decide who gets thrown where, and chain reactions are common.
• Shooting means rolling a die: the big car is an easy target, the small one is hard to hit.
• Type of damage is drawn face down from a pile of tokens with effects that send cars spinning, sliding or off the board entirely.
• Hazard tokens sit face down on every new road tile — wrecks, oil slicks and worse, revealed only when someone drives onto them.

Only three road tiles are in play at once. Every time a car drives off the front, a new tile is added at the head of the pack and the rearmost one is removed — with everything still on it. Two damage tokens leave a car inoperable, three dead cars put a player out, and the moment that happens the finish line goes down. Cross it and you win instantly. Or just be the last one with a car that still runs.

What Makes It Special

This is a full rebuild of the 1986 Milton Bradley classic by Restoration Games, and the new dice-allocation system is where the restoration really shows: the same gleeful destruction as the original, but every roll now gives you a real decision. Rules are light enough for a family table (ages 10+, 45–75 minutes, 2–5 players), while the outcomes are anything but — cars ricochet off each other in chain reactions nobody planned and nobody forgets. Designed by Brett Myers and Dave Chalker with Rob Daviau, Justin D. Jacobson, Noah Cohen and Brian Neff, with artwork by Marie Bergeron.

What's in the Box

• Thunder Road: Vendetta (base game) — 5 double-sided road boards, 12 car minis, 4 choppers, 4 wrecks, 16 movement dice, 5 FX dice, 12 dashboards, 4 command boards, 20 damage tokens, 26 hazard tokens, 1 finish line tile
• Big Rig and the Final Five — a three-section armoured truck and a gang of 5 motorcycles, plus a fifth player: 1 Big Rig figure, 5 motorcycles, 2 choppers, 10 movement dice, 3 boards, 5 dashboards, 8 off-road tokens, 15 minor damage tokens
• Carnage at Devil's Run — fire, ramps and new terrain: 5 double-sided road boards, 1 fire FX die, 12 ON FIRE! tokens, 22 hazard tokens, 21 ongoing effect cards, 10 damage tokens
• Choppe Shoppe — crew leaders with unique powers and vehicle upgrades: 11 crew leader command boards, 15 command tokens, 27 upgrade cards, 6 upgrade hazard tokens
• Extra Ammo — five mini-decks, 54 cards: road conditions, advanced airstrikes, bounties, one shots and bonus commands
• German Engineering (exclusive) — 72 mini cards in four player sets
• Em Berco (exclusive crew leader)
• 1 consolidated rulebook and a custom plastic insert

Click the image below to see the original crowdfunding campaign: