Thunder Road: Vendetta

The Finish Line Is in Sight!
about 2 years ago – Mon, Feb 14, 2022 at 04:04:09 AM

It's been a heckuva ride, and somehow we've made it to the final tile. The finish line is oh so close, and we now have that German Engineering to help us peg the needle. But we also have a little more work left to do before we can claim victory. Which is all to say that we've posted our final batch of stretch goals. Let's have a look:

At $710k, we'll unlock "Bounties", the final mini-expansion for Extra Ammo, free to all backers. Bounties are hidden personal achievements that offer an immediate, powerful effect. For example, one of the four bounties we'll unlock at this level is "Hit and Run". When you render a small car inoperable, you can play your bounty to set one of your unassigned dice to a 6. Timing your bounty just right to gain maximum benefit, can really turn a game your way.

At $720k, we'll unlock two more bounties. "Slow and Steady" lets you give your cars a boost when you're behind. "Rubbing Is Racing" rewards a well timed slam with a free shooting attack.

At $730k, we'll add a module to our Restoration Games companion app for Thunder Road: Vendetta. This will include an FX die roller and a sound board and maybe some other things we can think up.

At $740k, we'll unlock the last two bounties, "Pinball Wizard" and "Down and Dirty". That will bring the total card count for Extra Ammo up to 45 cards! (We'll include a few extra blanks so folks can come up with their own custom additions.)

And, finally, at $750k, we'll unlock a finish line. When the end game is triggered, you can place the finish line to signify the final tile. This will be added to both the base game and Maximum Chrome.

There you have it. Lots of cool stuff to come, but you know there's only one way we're going to hit all of that: Pedal to the metal!

Into the Home Stretch! We Could Use Some German Engineering!
about 2 years ago – Sat, Feb 12, 2022 at 04:06:32 AM

Just a few days left in the campaign. Reminder: It ends on Monday night, February 14, at 10:00 PM ET. As is typical for Kickstarter, things are already starting to pick up as we near the finish line, and that momentum should continue to build right up to the end.

Since the last update, we've unlocked the Bonus Commands mini-expansion for Extra Ammo (free to all backers) and the sand worm hazard token (now part of the Carnage at Devil's Runn expansion). The next couple of stretch goals will unlock the rest of the Bonus Commands.

But we've all got our eyes on $700k to unlock German Engineering. This is an all-new mini-expansion that's only included in the Maximum Chrome pledge. And it offers a whole new approach to the game.

The concept is simple, but it has a profound effect on play. When using German Engineering, each player replaces their movement dice with a deck of cards. The deck contains three cards each of the numbers 1 through 6, for a total of 18 cards. At the start of the game, you draw a hand of five cards. You play as normal, but instead of assigning a movement die to your car, you play a card from your hand. You can also play a card to your command board as normal. At the end of the round, having played four cards, you'll draw back up to five cards.

In addition to the movement effect, each card also has an equal distribution of shooting die faces on it. When you make a shooting attack, instead of rolling the shooting die, you'll flip the top card of your deck and apply the result.

Where the mechanic really shines is when you start doing a little bit of card counting and strategizing. I remember one playtest, where I maneuvered behind two opposing cars, one large and one medium. Normally, you'd just take aim at the large car because it's easier to hit. But I was mostly through my deck and noticed that I had already seen two of my "large" results, so I shot at the medium car instead and hit it! I mean, it's still a beer-and-pretzels game, but it becomes a craft beer and a freshly baked pretzel -- appropriately German. It's really a fun twist (pretzel pun fully intended).

I don't know about you all, but I'm getting ready for a Happy Valentine's Day.

Meet the Crew Leaders!
about 2 years ago – Thu, Feb 10, 2022 at 03:06:31 AM

We're tantalizingly close to hitting $650k and unlocking the new Bonus Commands mini-expansion for Extra Ammo, free to all backers. Maybe checking out the crew leaders from the Choppe Shoppe expansion (and showing off some more of Marie's amazing art) will help push us past the mark. Reminder, if you're using the expansion, you replace your regular command board with one of these custom ones. At the top, they provide a number of command tokens. These tokens can be used to activate a command in addition to your regular movement die activation. They also have a special power and custom commands and trigger values. They can really change up the way you approach the game and add a layer of strategy to get as much of an edge out of them as you can. Check 'em out:

And, of course, Em Berco, only available as part of the Maximum Chrome box:

I'll be back tomorrow with part 3 in our designer diary. So grab your crew leader and push the pedal to the metal.

Design Diary Part 2: Revving the Engines!
about 2 years ago – Wed, Feb 09, 2022 at 03:34:03 AM

This is the second in a series of designer diaries by the designers of the new edition, Dave Chalker and Brett Myers. If you missed it, you can check out part 1 in this update. For this diary, the guys discuss their very earliest prototypes when they began tackling the project.

Dave: I remember you showing me your Thunder Road add-ons at one of the conventions we both go to every year. How did you get started on that?

Brett: After burning out on Magic, I became entranced with Eurogames and dove head first into that rabbit hole. But role-playing and miniatures wargaming had been baked into my gamer DNA. I craved the personalization of character creation and army building without the overhead of Magic or Games Workshop. I was a "Published Game Designer" by this time and that gave me the confidence to retune the engine of this old favorite and turn it into something that would scratch that itch.

Dave: What kind of add-ons and changes did you make to the original game in your version?

Brett: One of the first things I did was add on a layer of customization with a deck of vehicle upgrade cards: weapons, armor, speed enhancements, suspension and handling modifications, that sort of thing. Players were dealt a hand of upgrades at the beginning of the game and they would assign one to each vehicle and discard the rest. It gave players just enough flexibility to tweak their team to more closely fit their play style. Soon after that came a deck of damage cards to spice up the combat results which, up to that point, were brutal but less exciting than they could be.

Another thing I did around this time was add up the two long boards and divide them into three shorter ones which more easily fit into a modern board game box size. I also made them double-sided, for added variety. I added a set of alternate obstacle tokens, so we weren’t just smashing through wrecks along the road; we’d face oil slicks, pit traps and more. Lastly, I wrote up a tanker escort scenario and created rules for driving and combat with a big rig.

Dave: Much of that was kept through to the final version! How much were you working on it back then? And did you ever try and get it published?

Brett: It was a pet project which I would work on periodically over the years and play test with friends. I’d turn to it whenever I was stuck on another design or just needed a break. I began to get serious about it after Mad Max: Fury Road was announced. I figured the time was ripe for a Thunder Road reboot. I reached out to the original designer, Jim Keifer, and we talked for several months over email and Skype about working together on an updated version. Finally, in the spring of 2015, I met with the game inventor rep from Hasbro and pitched the idea to them. Let's just say they weren’t overly enthusiastic.

Dave: Since I couldn’t buy it anywhere, I would bug you to play it every year. I know at one point I just said, “hey, what if we worked on this together and tried to actually get it published?”

Brett: By this time, I’d basically given up on the idea of ever getting this idea off the ground. I mean, why on earth would Hasbro give me money for a game they already owned? A few older MB titles had leaked out of the Hasbro vaults to be published by other companies, but I would never be able to secure the rights myself. When Restoration Games burst onto the scene in 2017 with projects like this as their entire business model, I paid attention. Every time they did a poll asking for players' most-desired restoration, Thunder Road was always in the top rankings. I knew if I could get the game in front of the right people, I had a chance. With Origins Award-winning game designer Dave Chalker at my side, I knew my chances went up.

Dave: It’s actually “Extremely modest multiple award-winning game designer Dave Chalker” but I’ll let it slide this time.

At that time I had been doing more playtesting and development work than my own designs, and obviously I was pretty passionate about the original game and what you had done with it. Also Fury Road loomed large for both of us, so the timing seemed right.

Right after I got back from the convention where we had talked about working together, I started checking sites for copies of the original Thunder Road to work with. I grabbed a copy of the French-Canadian version, “Route-Conquette.” My Qubecois friend informs me that it actually means something like “Road Conquest” which is kind of cool too.

We're In the Home Stretch!
about 2 years ago – Tue, Feb 08, 2022 at 03:41:16 PM

We've got one week left in the campaign, and we're turbocharged for the final lap. Over the weekend, we blasted through three more stretch goals and have already unlocked 24 cards for Extra Ammo with more on the way!

We fully unlocked the "One Shots" mini-expansion, which includes 6 different, potent, one-use abilities. Choosing precisely the right time to flip the switch on your flux capacitor can mean the difference between winning and dying. Here's the full rundown on the one-shot effects:

• Guided Missile: Automatically hit with a shooting attack.
• Camouflage Coating: If one of your cars would take a damage, negate the effect.
• AI Danger Avoidance: If your car would move into an impassable space, move it to an adjacent space instead.
• Grapeshot: Make a shooting attack against all adjacent cars.
• Sonar Array: Peek at 2 face-down hazards.
• Flux Capacitor: Reroll all of your movement dice.

We also unlocked the Skull-Shift Knob upgrade for the Choppe Shoppe expansion that lets your car move less than the full amount on its movement die. Very handy, plus it looks cool.

As we head into the final 48 hours, the pace always starts to pick up, so I expect to blast through a lot more stretch goals before the race is done.

I want to quickly mention a couple of things about the pledge manager. To confirm, if you back at $1, you will be able to upgrade your pledge to any pledge level and tack on any add-ons you like. Also, we are listening to the ideas you all have for add-ons you'd like to see. We can't commit to specifics at this point because the factory is closed for Chinese New Year. But we'll be able to sort that out after the campaign is over and put that stuff in the pledge manager.

Remember: Keep the pedal to the metal!