Tuesday, May 27, 2014

Gaming Highlights: Memorial Day Weekend 2014 (Friday)

Thunder Road

Gamers have a tendency to bemoan the dreck that is often released as a movie tie-in game. (For example: I happen to think that the Congo board game is actually worse than Congo the movie, which is no mean feat, considering it has a 21% positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes.)

Thunder Road is the game that SHOULD have been the Mad Max movie tie-in... it is the most family-friendly & consistently enjoyable "battle w/vehicles in a post-apocalyptic wasteland" game out there. (Car Wars & Dark Future are both classics - but they are massively fiddly and NSFNG. [Not Safe For Non-Gamers].)

It was myself,. my oldest son (Braeden), and his good friends Bryce & Rece that began racing across the wreck-strewn desert. Braeden was quickly eliminated while Bryce (the green cars in the picture) did his best to stay out of the fray. Rece & I tangled - with my final car escaping only to crash as I tried to catch up to Bryce. 

A note to fellow Thunder Road players: we've revised the recovery rule to work on double 4's through double 6's (rather than just double 6's)... it gives players a chance to get back in the game and makes for some exciting comebacks! (We've also tried with ALL doubles "healing" a vehicle, but that makes the game run on too long.)


My youngest son and I switched strategies this time around as we played one of our favorite games. Normally, I would be the one building settlements to increase production while he focused on cities & theme cards. But this time, I was the one digging for sages & groves (the Age of Sages deck from the Age of Enlightenment expansion) while Collin expanded his kingdom. 

This was possibly one of the closest fought games of this we've ever played - I edged out a 12-11 win... and together we build all the possible settlements & cities.

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And the weekend was just beginning - stay tuned this week for 3 more days stuffed with gaming fun (and pictures)!


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