Jeffro’s Car Wars Blog

Cruising the Division 20 field and putting the “death” back into death sports, the Warthog has been seen more and more as the vehicle of choice of the most sadistic and brutal duelists in the Atlantic Coast Conference.  Drivers of the car are racking up an impressive amount of kills… yet a startling number of them are literally going out in flames of glory.  It remains to be seen whether the “Greho’gwak” special has staying power or if it is just a passing fad.  For the present, the car is certainly contributing to a minor cleansing of the gene pool.

Gothmog’s Refried Honey Glazed “Warthog” Killomatic Special: Sedan; Extra-Heavy chassis; Improved suspension; Large PP w/PlatCats; 4 PR tires.  Driver.  5 linked Heavy Machine Guns each with 7 shots HD ammo front.  Sloped Plastic Armor: F 56, R 25, L 25, B 30, T 5, U 5; 2 6 pt Armored Wheel Hubs front, 2 6 pt Wheel Guards back, 10 pts CA around driver; 10 pts CA around plant.  Cost: $19,831, Wgt: 6,100, HC: 3, Top Speed: 90, Accel: 5.         

[This design is made with Compendiun 2e rules and the ever popular HMG from Car Wars Tanks.  With HD ammo it became the only one-space/two-die weapon in the game... giving this sedan a frightening potential of 10 dice damage per second.  The car is ineffective against large amounts of metal armor... and incendiary weapons could provide the key taking this car out. Note that even if its front armor is breached a few times it is likely to retain a respectable amount of weaponry.  Special thanks to SPARK for the nifty design tool.]  

[Update: This vehicle had been revised due to a misunderstanding of the SPARK design tool: I inadvertantly gave just it 10 rounds for all 5 weapons-- enough for two salvoes.  Loading it up with 7 shots per gun forced me to cut back the wheel guards and switch to PR tires, so squeaking into Division 20 with this thing may not be the best idea.  It might work better as a division 25 concept....]

I drive a Yamani.

I know, I know… it’s been really unpopular to by these Japanese makes for quite some time, but I’m telling you, they’ve nailed this one.  The Shuriken is ancient history, buddy.

You wouldn’t believe the ‘charge mileage this thing gets.  She’s not as sporty as some, but she’s got it where it counts.  She can really haul it if you need to get out of a sticky situation.  The trusty HMG gives me the power of a Vulcan without the bulk.  There’s plenty of ammo there to take care of those annoying romantic yahoos that think that they can pull off the whole cycle gang thing anymore these days.

But what I like best about the Yamani is the rockets.  3 of ‘em, man!  See, that’s what I can’t stand is the dweebs that are pulling onto the freeway.  There’s like nobody for a mile in front of you… and nobody for a mile behind me.  (And I’m in the slow lane because I know better than to get in the way of the hot rod set.)  But there it is… some dude in a pick up matches speeds with me and starts pulling into my lane almost right on top of me.  I can’t stand that!  I’m not the most trigger happy guy around, but I’m sorry… that’s an immediate point-blank shot with 3 armor piercing heavy rockets into the guy’s left armor right there, man.

Funny though… ever since I started driving a Yamani, I really haven’t had to do that….  (Must be our reputation….)  I’m tempted to replace the rockets with fakes and trade them out for extra cargo space, but you know… I just might need to make and example out of somebody. 

Not that the Yamani doesn’t have plenty of space.  What’s the deal with all those cars on the market that have, like, no passenger space whatsoever?  Do they think we’re all teenagers or something?  The Yamani has all of this offensive capability, all of this acceleration… and I’ve still got room for my wife and the two kids. 

But you know, it’s not so practical that I can’t take it into the arena every now and then.  Shoot… just upgrade the computer to a Hi-Res and maybe throw in a little Flame Cloud Discharger and I’m ready to burn it up at division 25.

You just can’t beat it, my brother.

You know… I’d almost go so far as to say that my Yamani is one of the best things that ever happened to me.  My commute is so much more care free now….  I love this car.  (Aw shucks… I’m, tearing up.)  Excuse me, guys… I think I’m going to go take a spin in my new Mitsui Yamani.

(Disclosure: Mitsui provided Jeffro’s Car Wars Blog with a complimentary Yamani in December, 2006.)

Mitsui Yamani: Sedan; Extra Heavy chassis; Heavy suspension; Sport PP; 4 Solid Steelbelted tires.  Driver, passenger,  Heavy Machine Gun with 15 shots HD ammo in Universal Turret; 3 AP Heavy Rockets linked Right,  Targeting Computer.  Plastic Armor: F 40, R 25, L 25, B 35, T 25, U 10; 2 10 pt. Plastic Armored Wheel Hubs Front; 2 10 pt. Plastic Wheel Guards Back; 10 points CA around driver and cargo area.  Cargo: 2 spaces, 140 lbs.  Cost: $21,830, Weight: 5,980, HC: 3, Top Speed: 120, Accel: 10 (with up to 20 lbs of cargo.) 

 [This design was built with material from Car Wars Compendium 2e and the HMG from Tanks.  Special thanks to SPARK for the nifty design tool.]

No, he wasn’t building a model of the battle at Helm’s Deep in Candy…. 

(Actually, I don’t think the Sith even celebrate Christmas.)

Wow.  I haven’t seen anything that weird since my high-school friends got together to melt army men with candles and paint them with toll paints and model kit stuff.  (It’s tricky work– you’ll burn your fingers– and who knows about the fumes.  But it’s more fun and less expensive than buying real miniatures and never getting around to painting them!  My personal favorites were the flame thrower dude with four arms and the giant WWII head with 6 little legs.)

But that’s not the main reason I’m posting today.  If you haven’t seen the video about what happened after the death star blew up, then get going and check it out!

In the latest Roll 2d6 podcast we get a pretty good over view of Carcassone by a couple of seasoned gamers.  I find it interesting that the blurb for their site that’s returned by Google emphasizes the fact that these dudes occasionally throw in some Car Wars material on thier show.  Oh yeah… like that fact’s really gonna help Google pull in more ad revenue.  Like 80% of their listeners wait with baited breath for the next Car Warsreference from these two guys….  Heh.  (Well… it’s why I listen to the show.)  At any rate, it’s evident that whoever is getting tapped for these Google blurbs is as obsessed with Car Wars as I am.

Anyways… I’ve covered Carcassone in previous blog entries… though I notice that the Wikipedia page does a better job of summarizing the key tactics of the game.  I’ve played several games of it in the past few months and have a few thoughts to add in.

As Adam and Nate so humorously put it, Carcassone is a great “gateway game.”  It’s short playing time of 45 minutes combined with it’s attractive pieces and simple rules make it very accessible.  You can’t always find people to play Ogre and Car Wars… and Carcassone can keep you gaming when you’re stuck with less-than-geeky people.  While Settlers of Catan’s similarity to the classic M.U.L.E. makes it highly intriguing to myself, it’s just a little bit too consuming to work as a game to be played with “normal” people.

I’ve ended up playing Carcassonne as a two player game quite a bit.  I’m used to crushing the typical non-gaming sort of player… but after getting whipped 5 times in a row by a new player, I begin to suspect my tactical skills are lacking.  I believe I think way too much like an accountant… and not near enough like a warrior.  Being a good accountant has caused me win more than my fair share of autodueling events… but I notice that my neanderthal-style just-play-for-material approach to chess puts a distinct limit on my potential rating in that game.

I agree with Adam and Nate that the score board in Carcassonne leaves much to be desired– the final game that I lost ended in grumbling over whether or not one player had scored over 50 points or under 50 points.  It was late at night and I’ll never know if I really lost or not.  How aggravating!

One thing we noticed was that the player that goes first has a big advantage in that they can play a farmer before anyone else.  This gives that player a strong advantage in scoring the central farm at the end of the game– and as we were playing Winner-Goes-First, I have to wonder if this fact is enough to completely unbalance 2 player Carcassone.  Or maybe I really am that bad….

We quickly switched to playing with the river expansion and also with The Count of Carcassone.  The Count completely changes the dynamic of the game as he allows people to “pin” the other players… and then win not so much by scoring but by preventing other people from scoring.  This makes for a risky game… as any attempt to score a section with The Count in play opens up an opportunity for the other players to pin you.  This makes the tactics much more difficult to ascertain… and the usual “Accountant” mindset becomes irrelevant.

At any rate… keep an eye out for upcoming Roll 2d6 podcasts.  These guys are smart, humorous, and put out a well-produced show.  And don’t forget to comb through their back log looking for Car Wars references.  (The show is named for the 2d6 to hit rolls from Car Wars, by the way….  So don’t miss it!)

The mini-series really impressed me, so I started downloading them from iTunes.  I was all set for some serious Hard Sci-fi.  In the mini-series you had the ship’s personnel getting flushed out into space when they decompressed a section of the Galactica to put out a fire.  Then in the first couple of episodes you had them dealing with issues such as the need for water and so forth.  Yep… it looked like more Hard Sci-Fi was on the way!

Then… for several episodes the various plot threads got sucked into at least three iterations of the “My Cylon Lover” theme.  On the one hand, I began to feel that the show was going overboard in slamming any sort of religious person via its weird Cylon God-talk… while on the other hand I got the feeling that the show was getting overly aggressive in metaphorically protesting The Patriot Act and The War On Terror.  All of that drivel was exeedingly irritating when all I wanted was to see spaceships fight it out with somewhat realistic physics defining the tactics.

I was pretty disgusted with the show and gave up on it until I’d heard some pretty high praise from an uber-geek.  Now I see that the first season was set up like a typical album side: the good shows were at the beginning and end… and the middle shows were all mediocre.  With the wrap up of the first season, and the beginning of the second, most of the themes that irritated me have been refocused or balanced out somehow… and the drama has intensified along much more interesting lines.  The first five episodes of Season Two are a tour de force in plotting– I haven’t seen anything this well architected since Joss Whedon’s Firefly or John Byrne’s Next Men.

Here’s my take on the cast:

Starbuck:  I just don’t see how a female impersonating “The Faceman” can ever really work.  Sorry.

Boomer:  Always involved in the most irritating “My Cylon Lover” plot threads.  Barf.  She even has the most irritating cliche line of all time that’s straight from Star Wars Episode III!

Apollo:  The dude looks gay… and he’s always insubordinate and rebelling.  (I don’t care how much they need pilots, these prima donna types have to either obey the chain of command or stay in the brig.)  This rampant feminization of the “Alpha-Male” type characters has just gone too far here.

Tom Zarek: Played by the same actor that played Apollo in the original series.  He adds so much to this show; I’m glad he’s on it.

Tigh:  Finally, an ‘X-O’ that actually does something!  This guy could beat Will Reicher with one hand tied behind his back.  He’s by far my favorite character– probably the only realistic male character with real faults and real sense in any sci-fi series.  He’s made more real decisions than any other “Number 1″ type ever.  Awesome!  This makes up somewhat for the girly-ification of the rest of the cast.

The Toasters: The new robot Cylons are patterned more after the Terminator than those goofy Star Wars Stormtroopers.  Good call.

Perhaps the niftiest thing about the series is that the continuity of the original series only sorta happened.  The old Cylon ships and robots actually existed, but the history of the “old war” is twisted in subtle ways.  At the same time, Cylon religiosity in the new series emphasizes the fact that everyone is a part of a history that is repeating itself and that will repeat again!  Very cute.  This way they can utilize the coolest parts of the old continuity without being bound to it unnecessarily the way it has occurred in other sci-fi  series resurrections .

In the latest MADHAT Car Wars podcast, Jimmy Logan asks, “what are HTM’s?”  Me, I have no idea what the answer to that one is….  I presume it must be a part of the Car Wars I never knew.  If I had to guess, I’d say it’s some sort of tricked up power plant accessory that resulted in numerous rules changes and arguments at the national championships….

I notice that most newcomers to the game are directed to buy something called Compendium 2.5 and Uncle Alberts Catalogue from Hell.  (A guy just wrote to the MADHAT podcast to say as much.)  I also notice that most of the designs floating around on the web utilize Tanks era equipment– and the 1 space/2 die HMG weapon in particular.  I see this sort of thing and feel distinctly out of touch.

For me Car Wars was all about the development of the game from the Pocket Box to the first Deluxe Edition to the two Compendiums.  It was about incredibly cool products that made me jealous when my friends owned them but I didn’t: products like Dueltrack, the Uncle Albert’s Catalogues, The Combat Showcase, and the ADQ featuring Microplanes.  (Of course, the compendiums included most of the material I was too cheap to buy, so us cheapskates had our day eventually….)

The Car Wars material from the latter days generally suffers from lower production values and a diffused emphasis.  During the first five years of ADQ, the game was about duelists, cycle gangs, highways, truckstops, and interesting folks in a rugged future.  Even critics like Herb Helzer would get caught up into thinking about the consequences of the setting and future history.   In the last years, “Road Warrior” style role-playing content dissipated and we mostly got articles centered on boats, planes, and tanks.  You know… material that had little or nothing to do with… CARS….

As I said, I feel a bit out of touch with Car Wars fandom.  Am I the only one out here that’s obsessed with the iteration of the game that folks like John Nowak wrote for and played to death?