Cue the game description, thanks to the Restoration Games website: “Like its bigger sibling, Thunder Road: Vendetta – in Thunder Road: Ignition your crew is racing through the wastelands – get your cars across the finish line first to win. But the roads are perilous, the other crews are aiming for you, and those barricades are everywhere. Thunder Road: Ignition is a stand alone game – get into gear right out of the box! Or you can mix it in with other Thunder Road: Vendetta and its expansions for endless variety.” (You can provide your own soundtrack – mine includes “Real Gone” [Sheryl Crow] and “Life is a Highway” [Rascal Flatts] – both from the Pixar movie CARS.)

Restoration Games bills Thunder Road: Ignition as “the perfect introduction to Thunder Road” – and as a HUGE fan of Thunder Road: Vendetta, I’ll evaluate that claim as part of my review of the new game. 

The design team of Noah Cohen, Rob Daviau, Justin D. Jacobson, and Justin Kemppainen worked to make a version of Thunder Road with a lower price point and less barriers for entry than the aforementioned “bigger sibling”. While many of the elements and structure of TR: Vendetta are still a key part of the game, there were a number of changes made.

• Each command board no longer has particular dice number ranges to place a die. Any die can go on any command action.
• The helicopters are gone. In their place is the ability to fire a missile as one of the command actions which allows you to shoot any car in the race.
• There is no more Nitro – instead, you can slipstream rolling the green stunt die and move either of your trailing cars forward that many spaces. (The good folks at Restoration HQ have confirmed that vehicle that have finished the race do not count for figuring out which cars are trailing.)
• There are new types of terrain/hazards, including the multi-ramps (originally seen in the Carnival of Chaos expansion) and rubble. 
• No road die – instead, there’s just a single space bonus for sticking to the road. You know, in addition to the fact that it’s a road and not the hazard-strewn ruins of a post-apocalyptic wasteland.
• We’ll get to the addition of pit stops in a minute – but they didn’t exist in the original game.
• Neither did curved track pieces… but you’ve got them in the box this time around.
  • You build a fixed track to play Ignition – normally a starting piece plus five road pieces. (The rules do suggest eight pieces if you want a longer game.)

The biggest changes are tied to the victory conditions – evidently the denizens of Thunder Road have discovered the joys (ha!) of auto dealership service bays and skilled mechanics, because vehicles that are eliminated from the race are sent back to the closest pit stop marker. That’s right: no player elimination. 

Cars at a pit stop are placed on the board at the back edge of the pit stop road piece, which costs an entire die/move to make happen. The final new command (replacing Repair) is Jumpstart, which allows you to take a regular turn with a car coming out of a pit stop.

Victory is achieved when TWO of your cars cross the finish line.

Otherwise, the underlying game system is Thunder Road: Vendetta. 

I Have Thoughts & Feelings

As stated above, I’m a huge fan of Restoration Games and specifically their whiz-bang re-imagining of Thunder Road. I think Brett Myers and Dave Chalker did a fantastic job taking a classic Milton Bradley mass-market game and transforming it into a thing of beauty. 

I don’t feel as positive about Thunder Road: Ignition. But I also don’t think that I’m the intended audience for this game. 

This version of Thunder Road is aimed at new players and mass-market release… a chance to try out the game system at a lower price point. It’s still more of a game than the original released from 1986 (wow – forty years ago!) and there are opportunities for all the slamming, shooting, and high speed nonsense a new player could want without plunking down the big bucks for Thunder Road: Vendetta.

For those of us with the Maximum Chrome edition on our shelves, though, this is just not going to hit the table that much. I deeply appreciate the extra map boards (especially the curved pieces to vary up the terrain) and the usual high quality of the hazard and damage pieces. According to Brett & Dave, the road pieces will go nicely with the upcoming campaign expansion (Interstate of Decay).

But the gameplay just doesn’t have the same “oomph” as Vendetta. I’m not sure if it’s the “king of the mountain” slog (get a car in the lead and everyone else targets you with missiles to force you back to a pit stop) or the fact that this simpler version of the game takes almost as long to play as a game of its “big brother”. 

I will note that as the game progresses and a couple of players manage to get cars across the finish line, the speed of the game picks up, both because some players have less decisions to make and other players have less targets. That’s life out there on the mean streets, people.

Final verdict: for Thunder Road: Vendetta owners, Ignition offers extra road pieces and some more hazard and damage ideas. For players who are new to the system, Ignition is a solid entry point at a less intimidating price. 

Note: While I received a review copy of Ignition, my copies of Thunder Road: Vendetta and the Carnival of Chaos expansion were purchased by me.

Thoughts from other Opinionated Gamers

Lucas Hedgren: Ignition is 85% of Vendetta, for $35. 85% of a game I rate a 9 is an 8, for me. (I checked the math.) Switching to pit stops instead of repairs keeps everyone fully in the game, and encourages more risky/fun behaviors. Yes, everyone tries to hold back the leader. That happens in Vendetta as well. As an expansion, this box offers very little, imho. I plan on keeping it separate as my “travel” Thunder Road. 

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

• I love it! Lucas Hedgren
• I like it. 
• Neutral. Mark Jackson
• Not for me…