Car Wars Sixth Edition - More Pics added Feb 5

[Manchu]

The notion of trying the latest edition of Car Wars struck me last Tuesday. The game arrived on Thursday. I built and painted some terrain as well as painting the first six cars in order to get it on the table earlier this evening (Saturday). I can assure readers, this is not the usual pace for one of my projects. The terrain in question, for example, was ordered (for a Gaslands project) last July …

But something about Car Wars 6E just looked so very exciting. And the game certainly lived up to its siren call when I and three friends spent the evening burning rubber in the dystopian demolition derby. For those who somehow haven’t yet heard of Car Wars over the past 43 years, the conceit is that about 50 years from now (whenever “now” may currently be) Americans, for sport or profit, duel one another to the death in automobiles. Here are some pictures to give you the idea:





Carnage ensued with three of our contestants tearing hell for leather directly toward one another, seemingly with an “accelerate first, evade later” mentality. But for the Jack Rabbit (blue car) crew, ramming was the plan. He plowed into the Boomerang (orange car), knocking it into one of the gate pylons, before frontending the Slipstream (purple) and then further to smack into another gate pylon.





The Dragon (red car) veered away from the pile-up after taking some opportunistic shots with its flame throwers, pursued closely by the Booerang. The following exchange of recoilless rifle slugs and rockets left both cars heavily damaged.



The Dragon zoomed away, leaving the limping Boomerang in it dust, only to be rammed by the resurgent Jack Rabbit. After taking out the Dragon in the movement phase, the Jack Rabbit then finished off the Boomerang with its gatling canon in the combat phase.





Meanwhile, the Slipstream roared up and finished off the Jack Rabbit.

Car Wars 6E is ridiculously fun. Everyone seems eager to play again as soon as possible. Next session, I’d like to do a race.

[Manchu]

Pics from our second session, using SJG’s chipboard tiles:

[DivisMal]

Great looking game. I love your cars, and the terrain fits perfectly!

[Manchu]

Thank you!

The first session felt very crowded by all the scenery elements. In CW6E, “terrain” as a term of art refers primarily to ground conditions. My impression is that LOS-blocking objects are meant to be somewhat rare; or, at least, structural objects like buildings and shipping containers are meant to be. Those kind of objects give the target three automatic successes, in addition to successes on whatever defense dice they’re entitled to roll and re-roll when attacked, if ANY line connecting the arc from which the weapon is fired to the arc which is receiving the attack crosses/clips such objects. So far, this has made such attacks seem academic in many cases. Other smaller objects, such as intervening cars or wrecks, provide what the rules call “partial cover” amounting to one automatic defense success.

Even just using the six containers in the second session was arguably too much. Will have to experiment a lot more to get a better idea about what feels like the right balance.

[Manchu]

Back at it again for Session 3 of CW6E!

Ramming proved to be a fairly effective tactic in previous sessions. This time, one player built his car with no weapons other than his crew’s sidearms — just plenty of armor and a few upgrades to make collisions safer for him to endure. He was driving the Goblin on the yellow base at the top of this pic:



He was also first player and immediately hard accelerated from Speed 2 to 4 — naturally, Speed determines damage when ramming — and took a fairly hard maneuver on Level 2 Terrain, losing control on a particularly bad roll and dooming himself to three straight movements toward the Superflash (on the red base). Meanwhile, the rest of us took a more deliberate approach …



The Superflash used pole position to slow down and line me up (in the Boomerang - green base, bottom left) with his twin-linked laser. I closed the distance, having overheard the laser was even more dangerous at longer ranges. He  chucked a big handful of dice: somehow all misses! Meanwhile, the Goblin piled into the Jack Rabbit.

Skipping ahead a bit, the Superflash made minimal progress and my Boomerang zoomed around, spinning out after assassinating the Superflash’s driver. The Goblin continued bullying the Jack Rabbit down the track:



This lead to an improbably complicated series of collisions and close-range sidearm fire that left both the Goblin and Superflash fiery wrecks. We played two more turns to see if there was much point continuing with 50% of the players disqualified but, after plinking through a bit more armor, the Jack Rabbit player and I were happy to call it a draw.