One of my favourite games of the last 5 years since I got into the board game hobby has been Radlands, a two player Mad Max style card dueller, as you fight against an opposing rebel band trying to destroy their steampunk aesthetic camps and raiders.
Using your main resource of water, you play a variety of raiders and punks to protect your camps, with every character you play and camp in your base offering abilties and tactics to defeat your opponent, allowing for powerful synergies and clever gameplay to pick up the victory.
One of my favourite games of the last 5 years since I got into the board game hobby has been Radlands, a two player Mad Max style card dueller, as you fight against an opposing rebel band trying to destroy their steampunk aesthetic camps and raiders.
Using your main resource of water, you play a variety of raiders and punks to protect your camps, with every character you play and camp in your base offering abilties and tactics to defeat your opponent, allowing for powerful synergies and clever gameplay to pick up the victory.
It’s an extremely fun, quick to grasp and ultra-competitive two player game, one which feels like you develop your skills and understanding of the game the more you play, which is why it has quickly become one of my favourite games of all time. It also helps that out of the 50+ games I own, Radlands is probably the one I am best at. (My wife and brother will disagree with this statement).
In the years since I’ve owned it, it has felt like the base game was ripe for an expansion. While you get a lot of game in a small box, if it was one played countless times you would quickly see every type of character and camp in the game, probably tried every tactic available, and it might become a box that you leave on the shelf mastered, with newer games taking your interest. Outside of some playmats, there wasn’t an expansion for Radlands for around 3 years until the release of 2024 expansion Cult of Chrome, which I was so pleased to finally get my hands on at the start of this year to reignite my love of the game.
But did I find myself fully invested in this Chrome coloured Cult, or should I have left the wilds of the Radlands well alone?
Back into the Radlands Radlands: Cult of Chrome is more of a booster pack you would find in a TCG than a full on expansion for the main game. Within Cult of Chrome you will find 32 camp cards, 10 rebalanced camps from the original, as well as a few new rules which you can sticker on to the base games rulebook.
As such it all fits into the original box without requiring you to find more shelf space, which believe me is always welcome in my forever bursting collection.
With this in mind there isn’t a huge amount of changes I can discuss within its packet. You’re not playing with crazy new ideas, new resources, new powers that totally change the game. And realistically at this stage I don’t think I necessarily want that from a Radlands expansion. As I said in my introduction, Radlands is one of my favourites, I love how it plays with the card duelling and synergies you create, so a large part of me was pleased to see that for a very decent price, Cult of Chrome simply adds more variety to your game.
The new camps add more depth and strategies to experienced players, playing with some of the new rules you have literally stuck onto your base game in fun and exciting ways. The Boulder is stupid fun, a Hail Mary which allows you to destroy all enemies in a lane, damage the camp in that column as well, all for the price of destroying your Boulder (camp). You weren’t going to roll that thing back up the hill were you, you’re not Sisyphus!
Or you have the Asylum, a fun new camp which allows you to move any damaged enemy to your side to become yours, so you can literally steal your opponent’s people, a really fun mechanic which adds new jeopardy to each game and one which I immediately took advantage of. (My brother will never get over the betrayal of Vera Vosh).
The rebalanced cards all improve upon the originals, just making them more exciting and in the case of the Obelisk, actually usable. And with the slightly updated rules, it does help balance the game overall and tighten up some of the potentially more confusing elements of the game, such as the restore mechanic, without adding unnecessary bloat or complexity to the base game.
The art on the new 30 camps as well, with its Mad Max style insanity, continues the wonderfully thematic design of the original game, the Cannibal Totem in particular is very evocative and brilliantly encapsulated in the vibrant, neon art style in this post-apocalyptic world.
Not Reinventing the Wheel With this expansion, Radlands: Cult of Chrome is very much aimed at experienced players who perhaps have already gotten as much out of the original as they’re going to.
If you only play the base game once or twice a year, I do think this expansion isn’t necessary, while its new camps are fun and the rule tweaks helpful, ultimately it doesn’t add anything truly revolutionary to justify any additional content for a game that you will get as much out of by simply bringing the original to the table every so often.
Also the stickers that get added to your game have made my rulebook look a little shoddy, as you literally just stick them over the rules, and as the expansion didn’t give much explanation in terms of how to place them or warning about their application on your rulebook, I have been left with a messy looking game, which is something I really can’t abide. But some of this could also be blamed on my complete inability with anything remotely resembling ‘crafty’.
These are just small gripes though. While I wouldn’t recommend this to any new players of Radlands, or anyone who doesn’t really love the original, I would say if you’re like me and the base game is a constant fixture on your table, Cult of Chrome is a welcome new addition, ensuring my games now have some additional variety and new strategies to master, all while still feeding my love of this horrific post-apocalyptic landscape. It’s a theme I love, (I also own Thunder Road: Vendetta), and just getting more of this insane world will always be well received.
I do hope one day once I have raided my way through all the new camps and rules, there will be a proper new expansion to Radlands, as I could see ways of making this game a living breathing card game which can always get added to and expanded on, but for now I am more than pleased with my additional camps and bouldering my way through my competition. I am an expert player, after all.
