Jeffro’s Car Wars Blog

Three game stores closed their doors in rapid succession early last year right around January; I’ve been stuck with browsing AD&D books at Barnes & Noble the past while until a Hobbytown USA opened up near by.  They have a fair selection of “Eurogames” and some wargames, but they don’t keep their selection up to date.  When I ask the clerks/managers about the latest stuff, they offer to special order it, but they never stock it.  They used to keep a fair selection of AD&D books, but they’ve been exiled from their prominent racks and are now tucked behind the big gaming table. 

The only game people play there is Warhammer 40k.  Things don’t seem to have improved much since my highschool days playing Car Wars.  The last bunch I saw trying to play Warhammer ended up working on their force designs, setting up mini’s, and arguing about rules for two straight hours– it took them that long to get anything started and at that point there was no hope of finishing the game!  Sheesh.

I can see the attraction of the mini’s themselves– this company has figured out how to market toys to an older age bracket. Woo-hoo.  But the game… I don’t see how people can stand it.  There’s just about no maneuver in it from what I’ve seen– people just line up their men and they start taking turns rolling dice.  There’s not even any flanking actions from what I’ve seen.  So it’s like Napoleonic battles… but without any tactical movement or positioning.  Soldiers just line up at short range and take turns unloading on each other.  There’s not even any prone or kneeling minis like my dark green WW2 plastic army men. I mean… do these space marines in the future not know the meaning of “hit the deck?!”

Maybe I’m just an old grog that doesn’t grok what’s going on, but it just appears that there’s little to no depth to this game.  If there’s a fan out there that can explain what’s fun about this game I’d be glad to hear it.  It really is just about the only wargaming type thing going in my area.  Can I be convinced to give it a try, or am I too stuck in the eighties to learn something new?

[Update 2/7/07: if these guys were playing near me, I'd suck it up and shell out the $$ for an army of miniatures and just go play Warhammer!  That's an amazing setup that club has....  Wow.]

I went to the gaming store of my youth this past weekend.  Nosing around I found a slightly dented Boat Wars boxed set with the plastic half ripped off.  They did have a few historical war games– less than either of Gary’s Games and The Compleat Strategist– and maybe about a foot of older looking BattleTech stuff.  Over by the miniatures section there was a small crate of marked down stuff.  Inside were a baker’s dozen of SFB modules at more than half off.

The store was pretty busy.  It took a while to get the manager’s attention.  I’ve been buying games from his store for twenty years.  A few of the games that I got into were because of his suggestion– and that includes the Star Fleet Battles “doomsday” Basic Set.  But gone are the days when Car Wars, SFB, and Battletech had places of honor on their own racks.  [Wistful sigh.]

I explained to the manager that Boat Wars had been on his shelf for 15 years and that it was beat up to boot.  I’d picked out several SFB products, too: The Tactics Manual, The Campaign Designer’s Handbook, Module T 2000, J2, and Y1.  He offered to let me have them all for 35 dollars and also to let me take the rest of the SFB stuff for another even 35.  (The second stack included Omega 1, Omega 2, R1, R2, C3, and several Captain’s Logs including the really cool “Return of the Hood” issue.)

There’ve been few store managers as nice and as knowledgeable as this guy.  He still has a brand new copy of R10 over in with the BattleTech stuff, and also some Prime Directive and Traveller stuff over in the GURPS section.  I was glad for the deal, but sorry that there’d probably be no more Car Wars and SFB stuff to buy there in the future.

Wow, it’s great out here! Car pool lanes, sea food, great Chinese restraunts– and cars even stop for pedestrians. The weather’s great and there’s lots to see.

I got in one game of SFB at Gary’s Games. It’s a pretty nice store– a bit dumpier than The Compleat Strategist, though they did have a pretty good selection: a yard of SFB stuff and a good stock of Ogre material. The clerk was a little eccentric and didn’t seem to be a fount of knowledge when it came to historical wargames, but he was friendly and let us use the tables in the side room to play our games. (He didn’t allow us to eat or drink back there– and even though it was understandable, it still was inconvenient!)

The guy I played against was a pretty nice fellow. He was a programmer that worked with the same stuff that I do and probably the same age as me. He’d owned SFB and F&E type stuff all the way back to the Commander’s edition days of the mid 80’s. He’d never played much though, so he was excited to finally get down to business.

We broke out the Federation heavy cruiser and the Klingon D7 battlecruiser. I took the Klingons again, and we agreed to have a “plan vanilla” game of no refits, a floating map, and no Commander’s level rules such as mid turn speed changes.

After a few turns a few other SFB players showed up. One was an ADB contact that owned everything that had ever been published for the game. The other was a very competent player that happened to not frequent the message boards too much. Another slightly older fellow showed up, too. They were all on the whole a clean cut crowd, intelligent, and not too obnoxious (not like the creepy dudes playing Magic out front, anyway!!) I was glad to see them all together planning their next big get together. Hopefully a new gaming group will form out here….

My opponent didn’t overload his torps and really chewed me up in my attempts to “Sabre Dance.” His phaser-1’s cut down my rear shields and every time I turned away after firing my disruptors, he still managed to pull into range 8 and ruin my day. I came to the conclusion that I really don’t know beans about flying the Klinks– turning toward the Fed like I was doing was suicide!! I got some tips from the more experienced players there, so maybe next time….

(I conceded after 7 turns….)

I figure it takes at least 4 games to master the rules and tactics of a new game, so hopefully I’m half way there on getting the hang of that D7. We’ll see. The Fed ended up right on the corner of two shields several times, so the importance of that particular rule was drilled into me. Also, I didn’t fire my drone rack again in this game. I really ought to do that. I felt it was pointless because it was only speed 8 drones. Still, if the Fed flys around them, that still means he’s not closing the distance so much– and even if he shoots it, that’s one phaser shot I don’t have to eat!

Ah well…. The next game will be better, I promise!

–

I finally made it to The Compleat Strategiststore. Very nice! The had a yard or so of Star Fleet Battles material– they even had the latest module displayed out front– but I didn’t see any Car Wars or Battletech stuff.

They also had two huge shelves full of wargames. They all ran from 30 to 50 dollars or so, and not knowing the duds from the good ones, I didn’t buy any of them. The clerk was polite, but not very helpful– he was a “new breed” gamer that only knew about goofy rpg type stuff. Oh well. I was hoping to meet a Games Guru there….

I did pick up the latest issue of Strategy and Tactics. Great magazine!! The current issue covers German tactics at the end of WW1, Egypt after Napoleon left, and Japan’s invasion of Korea in the 1590’s. It came with a complete game, 1918, which covers Germany’s last push into France and Belgium in WWI. The rules are very interesting. They are only slightly more complex than Steve Jackson’s G.E.V., but they address things that aren’t often covered in the sci-fi games I’ve played.

Here’s their site.

[Update on 2/2/07: I did get around to playing the game in this magazine once and I blogged about it here.  The time commitment required for this game and the lack of a local historical wargaming network have led me to play shorter games like Ogre or simple games with a broader appeal like the new Axis and Allies.  I probably won't be buying the magazine in the future unless I can somehow connect with a decent group of historical gamers.]

So I call the local games store. It’s a bit of a dump, but they have tables in the back for people to come in and play. I’d called and asked the management before about the people that come in– do they mind if people drop in for a pick-up game? They’d said sure. Now I’m calling again to see what’s going on:

“Hello, super-duper Game store.”

“Yes, I was wondering if there were any groups scheduled to play there anytime soon.”

“Actually, there’s one here now playing Battletech.”

“Cool! I can’t make it tonight… will they be playing next week some time?”

“Uh… I don’t know.”

“Well, if one of their guys is there, maybe I could talk to him?”

…

“Hello?”

“Hi, I was wondering if you all were getting together next week for a game and if I could join in…?”

“Oh, uhh… do you have internet access?”

(Wow… I thinking think gaming group has a web page scheduling all of their events. Pretty cool!)

“Yeah.”

“Okay, go to whizkids.com and click on ‘find gamers in your area.’ Put down that you want to play Hero Clix Mechwarrior and you should be able to find someone.”

(pause)

“Right. Thanks.”

“Here’s the manager guy.”

…

(sigh)

You know, the guys at the chess club will be so glad to have another person dropping in….

[Trumpets: Wah Wah Wah Wah]

[Close up on Muppet-style frown/grimace.]