Monday 8 June 2015

Car Wars - The Beginning?

Sorting through some old boxes looking for some old RPG supplements for a bit of inspiration for an campaign thang I'm putting together the other day, and I came across the original microgame box for Steve Jackson Games Car Wars.

With all the hoo-ha at the moment for Mad Max related gaming following the release of the re-make of the film, I thought I'd dig it out and have a shufty at the game and see if it was worth resurrecting at all after 34 years (ouch).

Thinking back, I think we only played the game a handful of times at the time, mainly due to the card pieces and playing board were very fiddly, and didn't get into it though the game at the time, even though the game certainly took off with lots of add-on's and supplements etc and was pretty popular back in the day.

Having looked through the rules and bit (amazingly they all seem to be there still) I deduced that they might worth a spin (un-intended pun) though I believe there are some more updated versions about, so that may change once some investigation and reconnaissance has been done with the other bods at t'club.

May your road be clear!

8 comments:

  1. Most of the rules are available as (scanned) PDFs from the store http://www.sjgames.com/car-wars/

    Car Wars 5th edition was designed for Hotwheels scale (roughly 1:60), so 3x the original map and counter scale, but you can always modify the original to 3X. They recently re-released the Car Wars Classic box set, which has updated rules (5 phases per turn instead of 10, improved crash/collision tables, some additional body types and equipment).

    They are looking to do a 6th edition but it's in the very early planning stages.

    5th edition is quite good for a quick game - each book (look for the ones "Car Wars Division X Set Y - aaaa vs bbbb") contains all the rules for 5e plus the counters you'll need for those cars. Unfortunately they never got round to doing the vehicle design scheme, but there is a thread on the forum where some people have reverse-engineered it.

    It might be worth getting one or two of the 5e PDFs and modding a couple of Hotwheels type cars to get the ball rolling.

    Drive offensively!

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    1. Thanks for the info Tamsin, will check out the PDFs. Could I remember the catch phrase 'drive offensively' :-S

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  2. I played many a game of Car Wars back in the day. Or [possibly spent many a long hour designing cars and rather less time playing what was a bit of a complex game IIRC.
    There's a free Car Wars like game that uses diecast toys out there that I've looked at several time. Axles and Alloys You can download it here: http://axlesalloys2.blogspot.co.uk/
    Tom

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    1. Cheers Tom, I'll check out the rules. I remember the Car designing bit too, a couple of pals, that was all they did :-) and never actually played the game.

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  3. I remember getting the rules in 1982 and having a lot of fun with them!

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    1. They do seem to bring out fond memories from a few bods in these parts too.

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  4. I'm sure I have a quickstart version somewhere, but I do remember spending days on end trying to design a car back at Uni from Uncle Alberts catalogs. Can't honestly remember much about playing the game though.

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    1. The car designing seems to stick in peoples minds, maybe says something about the rules ;-)

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