“Crews race and shoot to be the last car standing.”

Link: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/342070/thunder-road-vendetta
Playing Time: 45-75 minutes
Weight: light-to-mid
Genre: Demolition derby racing
Designer: Dave Chalker & more
Players: 2-4 players

“Let’s roll some dice.” Yes, Thunder Road: Vendetta is technically a racing game, but it’s also 90% a demolition derby. Each player manages a team of 3 cars that they try to complete a race, which is replete with road hazards and hidden surprises. This game is the ultimate game of ‘okay, let’s see what happens’.

Image from boardgamegeek.com

The game is a chaotic mess – everytime a car enters a space with another car, dice are rolled as one of the two cars can spin into a random direction. And these actions can chain, meaning an opportunistic driver can turn the whole board into chaos, like a bowling ball knocking over dominos. Certainly, there’s a good chance any such action might backfire on you, but to be fair most of the time when you play Thunder Road Vendetta you care less about winning than you do about the spectacle of the whole thing.

There’s a host of various modules and expansions for this game, but to be honest, none of them are going to be a better spend of your money than going to Etsy to get a terrain upgrade set that makes your ramps and terrain obstacles look that much more exciting and deadly.

image from boardgamegeek. Example of one of the many terrain upgrade sets on etsy.