Thunder Road: Vendetta Choppe Shoppe Review

Thunder Road: Vendetta is a fantastic game! Read why you should buy it here! If you missed out on the chance to back the Kickstarter fear not – all the content is available via the gift of expansions. But are they any good? And if so which should you get? And will England ever win a major sporting trophy again? Some of these answers and maybe more can be found within…

Chop Suey

As per it’s name the Choppe Shoppe expansion is all about upgrades. And generous with them it is too. More generous than I was to you, dear reader, with that last sentence. The Choppe Shoppe provides new car upgrades and crew leaders that can only be used with the base vehicles. Take that Big Rig and Final Five! Now you are not the only ones with extra exciting stuff!

Car upgrades are cards that you apply to one of your vehicles giving it that upgrade for the rest of the game. Every player who is using the standard vehicles gets dealt four of these cars and drafts them before choosing three from their final hand and placing a card above the dash of the vehicle size they want to assign it too.

The upgrades are nearly all good too, with enhancements to your shooting, extra protection, the ability to drop oil slicks and so on.

Where’s Ma Crew At?

Crew leaders are the other part of this tasty expansion muffin. These replace the standard command modules with different options and a crew leader with a unique power. This does mean that you might not be able to use powers you are use to like drift and nitro, but fear not – you will always been able to use the mighty chopper!

The powers included are varied and fit well with their command module, and you can create some good synergies with the car upgrades.

Roll Cage

To me this is the best expansion and the one you should start with if you are only getting one. It doesn’t add any extra players but it does add more to the base game. It also makes the other expansions better which is no small feat. Taking your crew led, upgraded cars up against the Big Rig and Final Five isn’t as daunting with this expansion, and arguably balances things out.

On the downside the interactions between powers may require the odd rule clarification but in a game like Thunder Road the most thematic answer is usually the best one.