Game Reviews

Rating:

This is a game that came out in the late 80’s (my edition did anyway), it is also called ‘The Ram and Wreck Survival Game’. It was no doubt inspired by the Mad Max movies and various dodgy post holocaust road movies of the period. For your money you get 2 lengths of board in thick card that is divided into fat rectangles. You also get 12 cars, 4 helicopters and 8 wrecked cars in plastic. Plus you get 3 yellow dice, 2 red dice and 1 black die.

The aim of the game is to either destroy the other cars or leave them behind in your dust. This invariably means that the game turns into a grudge match between the players who take the destruction of their cars personally and vow revenge. The player with the last running (not wrecked) car is the winner. When it is your turn you roll the yellow dice, and allocate each die to one of your three cars. Your cars can each move a number of ‘spaces’ forward determined by the yellow die you allocated to them. Because the spaces are misaligned you can move into the adjacent lane.

There is a tarmac road on the board, if a car starts its move on the road you can roll the black die and add the score to that cars movement so long as it stays on the road.

You can shoot a car if it is in the space in front of yours or the adjacent lane, or you can try to ram it. There are three types of car which are ranked 4, 5 or 6. If you shoot a car you roll 1 die and have to get equal to its rank or higher, if you do it’s wrecked.

If you ram a car you roll 1 die and add its rank, the other car does the same and the car that rolls lower is wrecked. The board is also littered with wrecks, if you move into or through a wreck you roll a die and if you get a 1, 2 or 3 your car is wrecked. You start the game with all the cars on one board. If a car has enough movement to move off the second board, you dump any cars off of the first board and lay it in front of the second board (the dumped cars are wrecked).

As you can see Thunder Road is an aggressive and fairly dumb game (admittedly aimed at kids). It is bright and colourful with a great theme, it’s simple and easy to learn, and is over quickly. If you can find a copy at a car boot sale or on the internet it is worth picking up for your kids or an occasional game with friends of a childish nature.

My brother and I put 2 sets together so we can have up to 8 players with a 4 board long stretch of road. About once a year we play Thunder Road with a bunch of friends and enjoy an hour of petty board game vindictiveness.

Rating:

This is a simple visual game with simple strategies. It is also absorbing and fun. You get 48 rectangular cards. They are illustrated with black pipes and or white pipes that are attached to the short and long sides of the card.

You can match up cards with the others by connecting pipes of the same colour together, so long as you do not connect any pipes of a different colour. As the cards are rectangular you can match up short sides to long sides, so that you get quite a big network of pipes.

You start with a hand of 4 cards. When it is your turn you pick up a card and lay a card on the table.

The aim of the game is to choose a black or white as your colour, and complete lengths of piping that are three or more cards long, by capping every pipe outlet with a dead end.

When you finish a pipe system you take the cards off the table and lay them beside so that your opponents can see how many you have. The player with the most cards at the end of the game wins. It is as simple as that.

Except you can make it more complicated. The cards are illustrated with different patterns or fields between the pipes. Instead of choosing a pipe colour you can choose a field pattern.

The process is the same except that you match the cards up to create large or small areas of the same field, and take the cards off the table when you surround an area with piping.

If there are 3 or 4 players each player can choose a pipe colour or a field pattern, so that all the players are laying cards to achieve different objectives. For something that is visually so simple, there are a lot of strategic options in game play.

You have to balance completing your own pipe systems or field areas against stopping your opponents from doing the same. You have also to judge whether it is better to complete lots of small pipe systems or field areas, or create a big network so you get lots of cards.

The cards are in black and white so it’s not a great game to look at, but it is a very cheap game and excellent value for both money and game play. It’s also a game that fits in your jacket pocket that plays out in 20 minutes, allowing you to play best out 3 or 5 games or whatever.

Rating:

This is an odd game, and I don’t know what category it would fall into. It is a game that revolves around mechanical reasoning, and is similar to IQ questions where you have to match up similar or identical shapes or patterns.

You get 5 sets of 3 pyramids. They are made of bright transparent coloured plastic, and slot into each other. You also get a six sided die, marked with ‘actions’ like ‘Swap’ and ‘Tip’.

One set of pyramids is reserved for the ‘house’ and is arranged in the centre of the table with 1 pyramid upright and 2 pyramids on their side. The players start the game with their pyramids stacked on top of each other.

The aim of the game is to have your pyramids matching the set up of the ‘house’. You do this by rolling the six sided die. If you get a ‘Tip’ for example you can tip an upright pyramid on its side, if you get a ‘Swap’ you can switch two pyramids around.

The six available actions on the die give you enough variables of action to make having your pyramids in the same formation as the ‘house’ quite difficult. It is also possible to change the formation of the ‘house’, to make it like your own or make it more awkward for another player to match the formation of the ‘house’.

It is a great game as far as conception goes, and good value in terms of components. As far as game play goes it is just boring. The turns pass quite quickly as each player rolls the die and changes their pyramids, but you aren’t exactly doing very much.

We found that you often end up rolling the die and just altering your pyramids in a fairly pointless way because you get the wrong action. In general each time you roll the die less than half of the actions are useful, and there is a minimum of forward planning in the game, if any.

It is the equivalent of playing a game where you roll a die each turn, and win the game once you have rolled a 6, 5 and 4 in that order, but have to start again if you roll a 1. To me it seems as though it is a waste of 10 minutes - unless, of course you know any better…..