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Thunder Alley Published
- SuperflyPete
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- Sagrilarus
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I don't want to dis the game too badly because I haven't played and frankly it looks very interesting, but the game boards are of ridiculous quality for what the game is, so the package is big, heavy, and not going to be very attractive to carry in my heavy-rotation bag.
Rules read in about fifteen minutes, there's essentially four kinds of movement that are super-easy and super-intuitive to understand, has a phase order like a wargame but is very small and simple. From a game perspective it looks like a winner (this impression is prior to first-play mind you) but damn, it isn't going in the bag unless someone requests it, and any expansion tracks won't fit in the already too-big box. I think it's C&C Ancients size, which is pretty remarkable considering it comes with two chit sheets, two decks of cards, 7 little baby player tableaus (perhaps 6"x8" or so?) and two monstrous, eight-fold double-side boards. The box is all boards.
If they sell paper copies of the tracks I'll pop this sucker in one of the one-inch clamshells I use for magazine games and shelf-toad the original packaging.
Market-perception driven decision, increased the price on the game, makes it impractical to take on vacation or even carry on a regular basis. Granted, it will survive a tsunami, and given how tight the lid is on the box that may not be much of an exaggeration, though it will most assuredly sink.
S.
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My copy, alas, has not arrived. Perhaps today.
Also, the gold standard in ridiculously heavy games, by actual weight, is still Wars of the Roses by Z-man. That game is ponderously heavy. Once my copy of TA comes in I'll weigh them both and declare a winner.
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- Michael Barnes
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- Sagrilarus
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repoman wrote: Also, the gold standard in ridiculously heavy games, by actual weight, is still Wars of the Roses by Z-man. That game is ponderously heavy. Once my copy of TA comes in I'll weigh them both and declare a winner.
After you're done have a look at the components that come in each. War of the Roses is a doggone complicated package, Thunder Alley is a tight Euro that plays in under an hour. It should be a welterweight.
This is this concept I keep coming back to, but can't figure out how to approach it to write an article. You guys argue about theme and setting, but to me the bigger issue is games that are misfits for their packaging and art decisions. Why is a 40 minute game coming in a GMT tall box? C&C manages to pull it off with its components and thematic context, but this is a game that could have come in a Leaping Lemmings size box. That would make more sense because, intellectually and spiritually, Thunder Alley is the size of Leaping Lemmings. The designer specifically requested mounted boards so this wasn't just a GMT decision to bulk it up. But maybe GMT should have pushed back a little.
S.
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I'd rather have it tall than a big long flatbox like Thunder Road.
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- Sagrilarus
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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.
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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.
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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.
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- Sagrilarus
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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.
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5.8 for Thunder Alley still in shrink.
Not even close.
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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.
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- Sagrilarus
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I plan to play a real game this evening with my boys and I'll likely have a better idea.
S.
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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.
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