Daniel (@dungeondive) takes a look at DustRunner, the newest entry in Jason Glover’s Tin series — and the first one to ship with little plastic Mad-Max vehicles inside the tin. The pitch: you have stolen plans from a raider faction, and now you must race across a post-apocalyptic Fury-Road landscape and reach your base before they catch you or your car explodes.
Vehicle setup is the standout. Three sections — rear (ammo), middle (bonus damage and fuel), front (health) — each flip to a different stat trade-off, with starting victory points as the balancing currency: the better your stats, the fewer VPs you begin with. VPs are score and also the spend-resource to redraw bad resolution cards, so the configuration choice is also a how much luck-mitigation do I want? choice.
Gameplay follows the Glover canon: face-up card or pressed-luck face-down card, an encounter deck of narrative choices, raiders, and one unavoidable Dust Worm. A resolution deck does the multi-purpose lifting (enemy bonus health, initiative, raider movement, attack damage, loot). Modifications (cloak, shields, stable track, scanner, nitro boost) personalise the run.
Daniel finds it the easiest Tin-series game so far — one win in a handful of attempts — and praises the post-apocalyptic theme for filling a niche the channel rarely touches.
DustRunner turns victory points into both score and luck-mitigation currency. Do dual-purpose resources make games richer, or do they just collapse two decisions into one?