Thunder Road: Carnival of Chaos review

Thunder Road: Vendetta is my favorite game. Like, bar none, my absolute favorite. It’s big, it’s dumb, it’s the definition of Ameritrash, and I freaking love it. You’ve got cars rushing down a desert road, bashing each other into obstacles, blowing vehicles up. It doesn’t end until someone’s eliminated, and then it’s a mad scramble for the finish line. It’s like an even more unhinged version of Mario Kart.

If Thunder Road: Vendetta is like Mario Kart, then Thunder Road: Carnival of Chaos is like Mario Kart’s oft forgotten battle mode. Carnival of Chaos is an expansion that adds in some very impressive looking content to the base game, while allowing you to use all of the previously released content (outside of the Big Rig). There’s a 2-layer board to facilitate the chaos, a new team of purple cars, a bunch of new, extra-powerful super weapons, and, of course, the titular Carnival of Chaos mode.

This new game mode pits every player against each other in a Twisted Metal style deathmatch. The double layer arena board gets set on top of three different road tiles (from the base game). Each team drives their cars in from these road tiles. Each player has three cars, and there are three entry tiles, so each player must split their cars up between those three entry tiles. No one can shoot each other until they get into the arena itself, but once you reach the arena, all safeties are off.

Once in the arena, you go from driving in a straight line to being able to turn. The chevron shaped spaces are turned to hexes, and you have the freedom to travel around the arena to seek and destroy your opponents. The method of travel isn’t exactly as intuitive as the base game’s straight-line racing. Basically, your facing becomes incredibly important, and is always facing away from the tile you came from. You can still only enter tiles within your front arc, but when you do, you also turn in that direction, changing your facing. You still can only attack enemies in your front arc, so maneuvering becomes a larger challenge than in the base game. This results in people spending a bit more time zooming the car around trying to figure out what configuration of moves and turns gets someone in their crosshairs.

The arena itself isn’t static either. There are nine Pillars of Death around the arena, and each turn a random set of three of them are selected to be raised, and the others will be lowered. Moving into, getting pushed onto, or being on a pillar that raises are all insta-kills. That means that you take a huge risk by stopping on a lowered pillar. There’s no real benefit to stopping on a lowered pillar, so they’re best avoided altogether, if you can. However, they do make convenient obstacles to smash opponents into.

That’s not the only thing sprinkled around the arena. There’s a bunch of Party Favors and Super Weapons as well, which can be picked up by stopping one of your cars on them. Super Weapons are very exciting. The Choppe Shoppe upgrade pack is one of my most used expansions in the base game, and super weapons make those upgrades look like pea shooters. From a turret that can shoot anything within two spaces, a railgun that can hit everything in a line, or a super charger that lets players keep taking turns as long as they keep dealing damage, these Super Weapons truly are super. They make you powerful, true, but cars with super weapons quickly become targets for elimination, and none of the weapons make you any less easy to kill with a couple shots or a well placed Chopper.

The Party Favors are also sprinkled around the arena, as well as replacing every hazard token on the entry tiles. These are small bonus tiles that you can pick up and stockpile. They’re all useful, but one time use. Some allow you to drift your car through any number of other vehicles, some let you unexpectedly change your facing without warning, others let your cars shoot before and after moving, while still others let you choose which pillars are active. The least exciting, but perhaps the most important, are the golden mufflers and golden tailpipes, which offer scrap at the end of the game.

What is scrap? Well, unlike Vendetta, which only cared about who sent a single car across the final finish line, The Carnival of Chaos is about scoring points. It’s a blood sport with money, or at least scrap, on the line. Scrap is gained in a few ways, but the most straightforward way is by dealing damage and destroying opponents. You get 1 for a hit, and 2 for an elimination. The damage and elimination scrap goes to the player whose turn it is, not who actually dealt the final blow, so if someone blows themselves up on a mine dropped by another player, or gets bashed into a pillar by someone else, then the person whose turn it is gets the points. Pretty sensible, since the player whose turn it is likely caused the chaos.

The other way is to have a car in the spotlight at the end of the round. Every turn, a card is drawn, which shows just how much scrap that spotlighted car gets, as well as which pillars get raised, and what special rules might be in play. Those special rules might increase everyone’s movement dice, prevent rerolling dice in slams, or cause everyone’s car to fly into the air when pushed, sending everyone flying like bowling pins at the slightest tap.

The final way to get scrap is your WITNESS ME! card. Much like the movie the phrase comes from, the WITNESS ME! card is shiny and chrome, and lets players choose a single turn to truly try to shine. The card must be played at the beginning of the turn, so you need to have a plan to cause as much chaos as possible. Every damage dealt and vehicle smashed into provides an extra scrap. This can provide a decent chunk of scrap in one turn, which might get you into the lead, or might fail and leave you with nothing, especially since each player only ever gets one witness me card.

Once one player is completely eliminated, the game will end at the end of the round. Only players with cars left can have a chance at winning, so the final few turns often see players trying to kill off the lead player’s cars in a final rush to change the outcome.

Overall, Carnival of Chaos is a lot of fun. It’s a good time with a lot of people, and certainly supports larger player counts better than the base game. Watching all eyes shift to a player with a powerful super weapon, or who just earned a bunch of scrap can be very fun, assuming that the player in question isn’t you. As mentioned before, the turning and moving mechanics are nowhere near as easy to understand as in the base game. The slam mechanics aren’t as intuitive, either. Not only does the slammed car change its orientation to match the slamming car, but we often had to reorient the die next to the car to figure out which way the cars were supposed to move.

Since the game is about killing, not just racing, dealing with the often frustrating shooting die happens more often. Shooting stops being a way to get bonus hits on opponents in the race, and becomes the primary method of interaction. This means that what used to be a chance for fun extra interaction at the end of your turn (roughly 1 in 3 on smaller cars, and 2 in 3 on the larger car) becomes the only way to gain points. Putting points on a die roll doesn’t feel great, but neither would getting hit every time someone got into position to shoot you (unless you had way more hits before death). In short, it’s parts of the base game that don’t really translate as well to a death-match formula that brings down the experience. Crashing into a big group of cars is still fun, but things are slowed down in comparison to the base game, thanks to having to reorient and figure out who gets shoved where taking a few extra steps.

That isn’t to say I don’t think there’s any value to the expansion. I fully intend to integrate super weapons into the base game because why the heck not!? Having the purple team added in is also welcome, so you can play that base game at five players without breaking out the Big Rig or Final 5, or up to seven with those vehicles (if you like true chaos).

In short, if you’re playing a lot of Thunder Road, it’s nice to have alternate play modes. However, there’s a reason that the battle mode in Mario Kart isn’t played a lot. It’s just not as fun as the racing. Same goes for Thunder Road Vendetta.