Which Version of Car Wars Should I Run?
March 1, 2007
The original Deluxe Edition is Car Wars at the height of its craze under the guidance of Scott Haring. The crash table is harsh, but driver skill makes a big difference. There’s enough equipment to be interesting, and the movement chart is 10 phases.
Compendium Second Edition adds gas engines, lots of fancy equipment, boats, hovercraft, and better character rules. It moves to a 5 phase movement chart, fixes problems with gas engines, adds additional features to electric engines, and fixes major rules headaches introduced by laser guidance link, speed modifiers, spoilers & airdams, vehicle range, and top speed formulas.
Compendium 2e looks identical to Compendium 1e except that 2e has “Second Edition” written on the front just below the car (see picture to the left.) There are black box Deluxe Editions that came out with Compendium 2e inside and some extra bonus supplements. That’s the coolest release. If you want to go faster than 100 mph, go with Compendium 2e– it’s the most comprehensive edition. If you want John Nowak style gritty “road warrior” type action, Deluxe Edition is all you need, though.
The newer 5th edition stuff has really large turning keys and a streamlined 3-phase system that is very fast playing– duels between 6 players reportedly go much quicker. They are still in stock at Warehouse 23, but are reviled by fans because of the lack of a design system. It think its as fast as they could make the game without moving to a clicky base system. It is perfect if you want to play with Matchbox car sized minis.
The Car Wars Pocket Box is mostly a curiosity now…. It has several systems just glossed over and all of them were expanded into “advanced rules” later. You will wreck if you try to fight at high speeds!!
In computer lingo… pocket box is the Beta, the first deluxe edition is the 1.0, the first compendium is a 2.0, the second compendium is a 2.4, and then the fix for the ramplates and the jumping falling rules and the measuring = a fire action rules constitute a significant service pack.
The biggest problem with Compendium 2e is out-of-control ramplates and game-altering speed mods. For a faster game consider dropping speed mods altogether and use the patch for the ramplate rules. Also… look at the rules for Driver Skill and Crash Table Rolls and come to a agreement regarding how to work that… and maybe just go whole hog and give a flat HC bonus for Driver skill instead of using it as a silly/strange reflex roll bonus. (Also, the Incendiary rules from 5th edition are REALLY fun.)
Keep in mind that these finer points of the rules only matter in highly competitive duelling events– if you’re just using the system for combat in a role playing game, these details can safely be ignored. However, the reverse cannot be said for most rpg combat systems: they can’t generally be used to play out intricate free for alls to determined the baddest player of a bunch.
Compendium 2e represents a huge amount of iterations in the development - playtest cycle… unmatched by many games. It is a thing of great beauty… and certainly the greatest gaming book ever published.
March 2, 2007 at 11:33 am
In the years when I had a regular gaming group, we always used the 2nd Edition Deluxe Set. Our games were frequently big money, one-shot affairs that were staged in a variety of settings, but often took place in a homemade city.
Like you recommend, we completely did away with the speed mods, although we never had a problem with ram plates (perhaps because it was too difficult to use them in a crowded city). Either way, 2nd Deluxe was really the best edition in my opinion.
March 2, 2007 at 12:25 pm
We played in arenas a lot more… and there was no way get get away from the metal armored gas guzzlin’ ram car….
April 5, 2007 at 7:53 pm
The site looks great ! Thanks for all your help ( past, present and future !)
April 6, 2007 at 8:51 pm
Aw, shucks…
Thanks, morganusvitus.
(Usually the only people that say that are trying to sell me certain, er, “performance enhancing” drugs.)
April 23, 2007 at 12:22 am
Being a long time Car Wars player I have to disagree a little bit on your comment. I started playing shortly after the original Pocket Box Truck Stop was released, just as a bit of context. The Original Pocket Box games were limited but certainly not the equivalent of Beta Software (I’m also a software engineer, who stubbled on the site looking for the latest vehicle design software). The PB versions qualify as version 1, while Deluxe Edition is simply a collection of expansions with a few bug fixes so 1.x (where x is probably the total number of expansions + 1). The game didn’t make a significant leap until the release of Duel Track, with the addition of Metal armor and Gas Engines, since these where the first significant changes to the rules since the first release. Since this was a supplement and not a new version of the game, we have to wait until the first compendium to consider a true version change. Mind you SJ games obviously considers PB to be 1, Deluxe to be 2, Compendium is 3, Compendium SE is 4 and the current is 5, but you were comparing to software.
As for the dedicated Ram Car, yes they are powerful and should be, the changes are more of a nerf (to use modern terminology) than a fix. There were certainly ways to beat ram cars and to make the less effective in your arena (Ram cars do not perform as well when unlimited cash and multiple opponents are involved, not to mention the effectiveness of Roll Cages and composite armor). I was the first in my local area to use the dedicated ram, so I can tell you from experience they are not fool proof (though they did fair well at national/world championships). And remember that Ram Cars have a real hard time hitting vehicles in the air.
But other than that the blog looks good, and it’s good to see there are still CW fans and players around.
April 27, 2007 at 6:37 pm
I’m surprised at how people are sticking up for the pocket box Car Wars rules.
As far as the versioning of the editions… pocket box Car Wars did go through three editions of itself. “5th edition” picked up on that sequence… and I’m not sure what the 4th edition was. (Maybe the small-box “Compendium-lite” edition?)
And of course, the question of ram cars is not about whether or not they can be beaten, but whether or not you want the game polarized like that. It may be that the arenas and price levels that we tended to play in were particularly bad for this, of course.
November 6, 2007 at 9:04 pm
What about the black 1996 version of the compendium rules that are part of the final Deluxe box set? Is it any different?
Thanx,
Kizan
November 9, 2007 at 9:05 pm
It has very different artwork from the Compendium 2e above… but I’m not sure if there were significant changes. People refer to it as Compendium 2.5, I think, and it seems to be the standard for arena dueling with folks from different groups getting together since the nineties.