Thunder Alley Published

Is it just because it is tall?
I'd rather have it tall than a big long flatbox like Thunder Road.

It's about storage, and about weight and bulk for transport. It ain't OGRE, but it's cumbersome for what it is.

Gottcha.

Your idea got me thinking about Arcadia Quest again though. It was a Cool Mini or Not Kickstarter that towards the end to buy the base game, expansions and some extras it was like a $250 buy in. Just the base game would have been close to $100.

As more info came out about the game though I felt that it was at best a $40-50 game. So I get what you're saying about a disconnect.

I agree that this is a cement block of a game, but I think I would have been really disappointed with paper maps. This looks like the kind of game where having to deal with creases and folds would induce blood vessel bursting levels of frustration.

I think the could have just used a thinner material for the boards and it might have been better, but I suppose you could also just pack a single track board when you want to transport and it would cut down on the weight pretty well. It's not like you need to have all tracks at all times.

Looks really good- and I would have never thought to get a NASCAR game without you talking this up, Sag. Now I just need to convince my group to play in wife-beater shirts while drinking Natty Lights for the full experience.

Thunder Alley looks great though. The box is bigger and heavier than I expected, and Sag's box size to game weight comparison is apt. I'm more likely to carry a smaller/lighter box with me than a large one for a game with a short playing time.

That said I'm pretty impressed with the production quality of Thunder Alley. I can live with the box size, but I also bought the 3" box for Sekigahara just so I wouldn't have to piddle around with making the blocks lay flat to get it into the original 1st edition short box.

The rules are truly simple. Card draws drive all the actions. There's a fair number of chits to manage your cars' conditions but that's about it for clutter. There's no Pit area, you slide down to the inside shoulder of the track anywhere, move back five spaces and come back onto the pack in a position farther back. Moving your car likely brings a line of cars with it (and you have multiple cars on the track) so a bit of careful manoeuvring can pull your other cars along for the ride and leave other players behind.

You get points for leading at the end of turns, counted via chits too. Lead a turn, get a chit. Count up at the end. Big points are awarded for finishing first, but points are awarded for all the lower finish positions as well. So the guy that takes 2nd and 4th will likely beat the guy that takes 1st and 8th. It's scored like Sprint Cup and I could see someone keeping a running tally over a season, even having buddies over on race days and running their own season-long series. Tracks are really simple, so it's about card play as much as anything.

S.

7.2 pounds for War of the Roses

5.8 for Thunder Alley still in shrink.

Not even close.

Played it tonight with Cranky Dan, Engineer Al, and Josh Look. I'm really impressed. I like how it models certain aspects of Winston Cup (yeah it will always be Winston Cup to me). The paramount nature of drafting, rapidly changing positions, importance of properly timed pit stops.

I also really dug how lots of what is overly complex in other racing games is abstracted out or removed. Car set up is out, damage is very simple and thankfully pit procedures are clear concise, effective, and super simple to implement and remember.

We all liked it and look forward to playing again. For the record, Dan won with Al in second.

I just played a test turn and it certainly flows very smoothly after you've moved one or two cars. Super simple phase sequence. A question though -- 2-player, 12 cars on the track. My first turn got the entire pack two-thirds of the way around a lap, so if things stay this way I'll finish someone in three turns so there will be no need to pit. Granted, I finished on a yellow flag which caught up the stragglers. Does this match with what you saw? It may vary by number of players.

I plan to play a real game this evening with my boys and I'll likely have a better idea.

S.

In our one 2P game that didn't happen. We used the default staggered starting grid setup, which basically results in a checkerboard pattern of the two player colors. We tried to split off of each other and into our own groups. Due to that the first lap was the slowest (most turns). By the end of the race I had pitted several of my cars twice, which slowed them down as well. I didn't keep track, but I believe we had about 3-4 turns each per lap, with the first lap probably being closer to five turns.

I tried to only push/pull/draft a group of cars if a large majority of them were mine, and tried to use solo movement to break up her groups, create better groups of my own, or bring up the stragglers. One car got lapped on lap 3, one car came out of the race due to damage, and the other 10 finished (although another was threatening to get lapped). We only had one yellow flag.

I had a healthy group of 4 cars I was able to keep together pretty well for the last half of the race. All the cars were taking damage through push/pull/draft, but my blue #24 was taking the most due to being in the front and me getting a lot of lead movement cards. By the end of the race my #24 had 5 points of damage and was only really moving due to being in a group with other cars.