A Thunderbirds Board Game

When I was a rather small kid, one of the TV shows we used to watch was Thunderbirds. This show was made using various puppets, rather than being animated as a normal cartoon. The premise of Thunderbirds was quite simple. A family called the Tracies ran International Rescue, and would go on adventures. There were six Tracies, the dad and five sons, all of whom had some pretty fucking cool aircraft, as well as a satellite in space, ran by the eldest kid, John Tracy. Everything in this show was animated with puppets and physical models, which were all pretty good at the time. As a kid, the siblings and I had a whole Tracy Island International Rescue base, along with metal diecast models for each of the Thunderbirds ships. It was genuinely awesome, but sadly it didn’t survive the test of time.

Now, the Thunderbirds is a very, very old show. It wasn’t just me who was watching it, in fact, Thunderbirds celebrated over FIFTY years of its existence, twenty years before I was even born. And part of the celebration of said 50 years of existence came in the form of a board game. A cooperative board game where we do a lot of rescuing. It’s called International Rescue for a reason.

There’s been other Thunderbirds media over the years, but the original puppet-based version is what we all remember. I recall there being a live action Thunderbirds movie, but it was shit and not at all worth watching. After all, people were watching to see the cool aircraft in action, not some kids doing kids things.

The Thunderbirds board game is pretty cool. It doesn’t really follow the storyline of Thunderbirds, but does follow the lore. The premise is quite simple: stop events and disasters, while the Hood, the antagonist of the series, moved forward with dasterdly schemes.

After setting up the game, my board game collecting best buddy and I got started playing the board game.

Basically, we needed to stop disasters all over the world. In the mean time, the Hood works in the shadows, and every time we mess up, the Hood comes closer and closer to successfully take over the world. Luckily, International Rescue are backed up by Lady Penelope and, of course, their amazing ships, able to travel across the planet in ease. A lot of the game is driven by getting certain Thunderbirds to the right locations, making it easier to stop disasters.

To stop a disaster, you need to roll die that, when added together, are higher than the disaster’s score. Moving people and aircraft to the correct area on the map makes beating the diaster score much easier. Really, the game becomes one of resource management, getting everything in place in order to get a good score and beat the disasters.

In the mean time though, the Hood is constantly on the move, and will cause problems for the Thunderbirds, working towards his biggest schemes. Luckily, the Thunderbirds can win by using resources and defeating a scheme before the Hood reaches it and enables it.

Honestly, the game is pretty fun, and, if you have it, I’d recommend it. Thunderbirds the Board Game is quite easy to play but also not horribly long either. It took two of us about 50 minutes to beat the game, but with more players (up to four), the game moves much more quickly.

My only complaint? Don’t play as John Tracy. Because being stuck in space on Thunderbird 5 is pretty dull.