Jeffro’s Car Wars Blog

I introduced the game to a new player last night. We played two rounds. He liked flamethrowers so he grabbed the Napalm. I took a Stinger– the fast recoiless totin’ car.

It was his first game and I didn’t want to be mean– and I wanted to go ever every major rules section in the game. This was accomplished by my maneuvering into point blank range. I shot him up– then he returned fire and rammed me. Game over for me! Two seconds of game time and less than ten minutes of real time and we’d gone over most of the rules.

I explained that we were playing in a eight vehicle single elimination event with no repairs between rounds. In the second round I played the Bumblebee that won the last game I refereed.

Our two slightly damaged vehicles faced off. After the first pass he asks me, “What’s a Light Ramplate??” Doh!! The ramplate isn’t marked with an icon on the vehicle sheet, so I’d forgotten he had it!! (ARGH!) That did a lot to increase the front armor of his vehicle….

He scored fire markers on my poor Bumblebee a couple times. I was breached, so that was really bad. I kicked up the speed and pulled 2 d3’s a turn to try to get rid of them. He got to see me spin out– while he skidded really bad a couple of times. (The new Crash Table is very well done, I have to say. Very cinematic, playable, and fun.)

It took a few passes, but he finally scored a hit with his flame throwers through my breached armor. That was it for me!

That gave him a total of 2 kills on his first night: and 3 skill points in each of Driver and Gunner. I see that instead of salvage, the new rules for Amateur Night offer cash prizes. That sure cuts back on the math for the referee!

After the game he asked if Car Wars was still available. I take that as a good sign. He was irked when I told him there were no design rules for the new edition… (”designing stuff is half the fun!”) but he did seem to like how fast the game plays and also how all you need for a game board is a table top….

Tired of the fact that too often players spend five minutes shuffling counters and turning keys to figure out a way to just barely miss those pesky spike counters? Or maybe they’re bringing play to a halt by trying choose the perfect amount of manuevers to keep their opponents in line of sight until just the last moment. Or maybe games are just lasting a little too long in real-time to account for a measly 8 second arena duel….

There is a way for you ref’s to take care of these things– and I’m surprised I never thought of this before. I had suggested earlier that the referee should track everything: Handling, Speed, and Damage– that way players don’t have to do any bookkeeping and everyone stays honest. After thumbing though a copy of Savage Worlds at the local game store, I’ve decided it might be good to take this a little further.

To speed things up, only allow maneuvers on the first, fourth, and seventh inch of movement in each phase. (On the other phases, cars move straight ahead one inch.) When a player comes up to his turn, don’t let him touch the counter at all. He may look at the board for a moment and then shout out his move. The referee then plays out the move.

For example, a player going 50 mph would shout, “Two D0 to the right!” on his turn. Really mean ref’s might count to 3 when he announces each phase for the players– if the players don’t respond with a valid instruction, they end up just going straight for the whole phase and miss their chance to fire!

Refs running a game this way may seem like drill sergeants, but playing this way will eliminate most of the unrealistic exactness that Car Wars players routinely pull.