Jeffro’s Car Wars Blog

Back in the day, Car Wars Designers were disappointed when everyone hunkered down in their 3 ton luxury cars at a measely 30 mph. Then the Combat Showcase debuted with several designs featuring HD transmission. Suddenly cars could accelerate just as poorly as an oversized vehicle. This did not help. There had to be a way to encourage people to go faster!

So when the Compendium was being put together, they threw in some new speed mods. They were complicated and time consuming– but they worked. Everyone began loading up with spoilers, airdams, and HD Shocks just to try to hang on.

5th edition takes a different approach. First, all accelerations are pretty much doubled. In the old game, most electric powered cars had accelerations of 5 or 10. Now they accelerate at 10 or 20! In addition to this, a vehicle’s handling track resets completely at the end of each turn. (In the old game, it simply went up HC + Driver’s skill– so it could take a few seconds to recover from dropping to -6 if your HC was only 2 or 3.) Finally, the fastest car has initiative, so everyone is vying to be the fastest one in the arena.

Collectively, these changes eliminate “grandma’s” from the game without adding additional complications the way the old speed mods did. Games play faster, people drive faster, and duels have a much more of a dogfight feel to them as opposed to the “tank war” feel of the old days.

Actually… there are some “grandma’s” left in the game…. Just the ones with lead feet!