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I had such an awesome surprise tonight while at a friends for her birthday. She'd been given a whole pile of rulebooks for games (she's a roleplayer and hoarder of books, you see) amongst which were the Car Wars Compendium and the expansion pack Muskogee Mayhem. Both of these books I've NEVER found available for sale anywhere since the mid-'90s when I first heard about them and yet these are in excellent condition with the Muskogee Mayhem book still having the whole map (in four pieces) intact and apparently unused!

These books were published originally in the mid-'80s and from what I understand were not very popular. Steve Jackson's rules are complicated but comprehensive and like the 2nd Edition WH40K ruleset, difficult to learn but fun once one had. I doubt I'll find any Car Wars fans, let alone players, now and the models have never come up for sale anywhere I've looked since I first heard of this game so I suspect they shall remain a pleasant nostalgic novelty in my collection.

Oh, you want to know how much I paid for these perhaps? Nothing. My friend kept them aside because I was the only person she thought might like them.

These are probably utterly worthless books to most, but to me, they're marvellous slices of gaming history that I want to keep and use. Who knows, I might even build a little gang of my own just for the heck of it.

Nice. I still have all of my old Car Wars stuff somewhere, including the Uncle Albert's catalogues.

I don't remember official models though; just the thin cardboard cutout counters.

Mannahnin wrote:I don't remember official models though; just the thin cardboard cutout counters.

There was a tiny range of tiny miniatures produced by Citadel or Marauder or whatever they were back then of some very low detailed cars and vans, nothing special. I forget now where I found the information but there is a site out there hosting old catalogue pages for the identification of such stuff. Since my hard drive crashed earlier this year I lost a whole bunch of relevant links to pages online that I'm yet to rediscover, but the info is out there somewhere.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I love the internet, here's the range I found previously: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~tpope/sol/grenadier/car-wars.html

The GW models were for their own Dark future game (interceptors, Renegades and bikes, and some 25mm metal minis) - the rules are available on the net to download.

My mates and I used to use old Matchbox, Corgi, Hotwheels, etc cars with various plastic-y gun bits glued to them as the weapons (they were also glued down to a rectangular base).

I used to play this back in the early 90s (we used to have tourney games as well that got 40+ players).

I've still got my original Car Wars, some expansions (Sunday Drivers)? and Boat Wars.

It was a brilliant game offering a surprisingly convincing manoeuvring system and a fun design system at a very low price.

When Dark Future came out, I was very disappointed at what an extremely limited game it was in comparison.

Steve Jackson Games has recently publish The Car Wars Compendium.

http://www.sjgames.com/carwars/

Car Wars was a great game. I *still* think that the Armadillo AutoDuel Arena was modeled after the Barton Creek Mall in Austin, TX. I also still twitch a little when I recall my horrendous performance in round 1 of the '88 World Championships.

SJG is based in Austin, has been for decades.

Car Wars was a great game in its day -- I still have all my Car Wars stuff in a box even though I can't imagine I will play it again.

The Muskogee Mayhem map was a favourite, I must have raced on that dozens of time.

I had some of the Grenadier figures but I have no idea where they ended up -- they were not all that great.

I have Dark Future as well. The best thing about it was the scale, which was the same as Hot Wheels, so you could paint/convert die-cast toy cars for the game.

I don't ever remember seeing minis for Car Wars. Those Grenadier ones, while not the prettiest, are sweet! I even recognize some of the cars from the game.

I have some of the newer car wars mini books, seems like a great game but no one wants to play it!

I got the 2nd edition "Deluxe Compendium" a couple of years ago and tried to get a game going for that. But as with most out of print rulesets it was hard to get motivated to sift through tons and tons of hard to find books.

Initially I was really rather overwhelmed at the whole system (it's much funner if someone just explains the rules to you), but if you skip over the special case rules on a first read through, the basics of the game are actually surprisingly simple. I find the whole Handling Class / Handling Status approach to be great for simulating fast paced driving. Shooting and damage allocation is simple as heck too. Really the only issue comes in when you start crashing or doing fancy maneuvers and need to dig into the rulebook a bit more.

I saw recently (well, in Car Wars terms haha) they released a totally updated PDF compendium that cleaned everything up (http://e23.sjgames.com/item.html?id=SJG30-7142). I ended up buying this and it's been great.

I also tried the new, simplified 5th edition of Car Wars. They have these little starter sets where you get rules and counters enough to play 2 variants of 2 cars against each other. The other benefit is this version is already set to Hot Wheels scale (ie: 3x). Nothing attracts players like the joy of rolling childhood toys around on a table and firing heavy rockets, flaming oil, and vulcan machine guns at each other.

So yeah, I got a few 5th edition games going, and am slowly trying to edge my players towards the new compendium PDF (ie: the "advanced" rules, as I see it, or at least the complete version that would be better for campaigns because of it's design system).

Kind of makes me sad I missed the heyday of Car Wars in the 80s, but that tends to happen with me a lot (similarly for Silent Death, etc.). Maybe it'll see a revival like Classic Battletech...the genre of putting guns on cars sure seems due for it. If only they could have cashed in on the recent Death Race remake movie, ah well, I digress.

Though I, and the group I play with , preferred Dark Future, Car Wars was a decent game hiding behind too many special rules.

As others have said the scale meant DF was more accessible as well, being able to cannabilise your old hot wheels and matchbox collection.

However for any CW fans out there check out Irregular Miniatures who do two sets of cheap and cheerful 6mm cars , normal and post apocalypse.

My old friend Francis Greenaway has a great Web site for Dark Future. Francis was the person responsible for scanning the Dark Future and White Line Fever Supplement into Adobe Acrobat format. The electronic versions of these two rulebooks are available on the Specialist Games section of the Games Workshop Web site.

There are four other automotive combat games, recently released or being playtested, using 1:64 diecast cars.

Axles and Alloys 2
Outrider
Speed Rally
Warlands


Dark Future
Games Workshop
http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/content/article.jsp?community=&catId=cat1290025&categoryId=1100014&aId=5300012
http://www.games-workshop.com/MEDIA_CustomProductCatalog/m1340008_Dark_Future.pdf


Dark Future: White Line Fever
Games Workshop
http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/content/article.jsp?community=&catId=cat1290025&categoryId=1100014&aId=5300012
http://www.games-workshop.com/MEDIA_CustomProductCatalog/m1340008_Dark_Future.pdf


Dark Future: Future Highways
Painted Target
http://feggula.0dollarwebspace.com
http://futurehighways.roll2dice.com


Dark Future Yahoo! Group
http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/dark_futuregw


Axles and Alloys Blog
http://axlesalloys.blogspot.com


Axles and Alloys
Rogviler's Library
http://home.mesastate.edu/~zvigil
http://home.mesastate.edu/~zvigil/aa.html


Axles and Alloys II: Dork Future Blog
http://axlesalloys2.blogspot.com


Outrider
DiceFestGames Blog and BoardGameGeek
http://dicefestgames.blogspot.com
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/68504


Speed Rally
Glory Games
http://jptrostle.com/index.html


Warlands: Full Throttle Vehicular Combat!
Aberrant Games and Wargame Vault
http://www.aberrantgames.com/warlands.html
http://www.wargamevault.com/product_info.php?products_id=79374&src=FrontPage


Jada Toys - Battle Machines
http://jadaclub.com/index.php?cPath=394_395


Seattle Washington Autoduel Team Headquarters (SWAT HQ)
http://www.seanet.com/~owenmp/swathome.html

Micro Machines (do they still sell them?) are close enough in scale to use without much trouble.

Micro Machines and Speedeez have been out of print for several years. Both lines of vehicles can still be found on eBay.

Micro Machines and Speedeez are actually 1.5X Car Wars scale. A gaming group in Omak, Washington State ran arena circuit campaign for several years. The group used 1.5X scale playing materials with customized Micro Machines.

The Death Racing Association of Washington (DRAW) built a 3-D version of Midville in 1.5X scale. I had an opportunity to play a duel in the town several years ago.

You can use Micro Machines and Speedeez with 1X scale maps and counters however you will need to raise the miniature (placing the miniature on a d6 that is attached to a 1X car counter) when it is placed on a 1X base. Micro Machines and Speedeez will overlap a 1X base if you do not lift them.


Car Wars Scales


1X: Original Car Wars Playing Materials
Cars: 1" x 0.5"
Motorcycles: 0.5" x 0.5"


1.5X: Micro Machines
Cars: 1.5" x 0.75"
Motorcycles: 0.75" x 0.75"


3X: Car Wars Fifth Edition, 1/64 Die-Cast Cars
Cars: 3" x 1.5"
Motorcycles: 1.5" x 1.5"


8X: 1/24 Metal and Plastic Models
Cars: 8" x 4"
Motorcycles: 4" x 4"


16X: Tonka Toys
Cars: 16" x 8"
Motorcycles: 8" x 8"


Modeling Tips


Roadwarriors: War on the Autobahn
Military Miniatures Magazine
http://www.figuras.miniatures.de/roadwarriors.html


Super-Scale Car Wars
http://www.sjgames.com/pyramid/sample.cgi?250
Author: Loren Dean
Source: Pyramid Online


Super-Scale Car Wars
http://www.seanet.com/~owenmp/metal/supercw.html
Author: Loren Dean
Source: CWIN 1.03


Upscaling Car Wars, or You've Got to Think Big
Autoduel Quarterly Vol. 2, No. 3
http://www.sjgames.com/car-wars/adq/2/3

i have that game still with all the papercut out to go with it... got to love those biker gangs vs mac trucks ... road warriors days .... give hell maxs

Uncle Albert ... HELLL YEAH !!!!! =) i remember the days of car wars ... HRS AND HRS of fun then a few hrs of mechwarrior wow the days of car wars mechwarrior and star frontiers =)

Dennis

Uncle Albert ... HELLL YEAH !!!!! =) i remember the days of car wars ... HRS AND HRS of fun then a few hrs of mechwarrior wow the days of car wars mechwarrior and star frontiers =)

Dennis

I still have my Car Wars collection. We used to play it a good bit growing up. That and Battletech were my first two miniatures games.

Great memories.
Sadly no one in my area is interested in playing either these days.

Remember? My group plays on a fairly regular basis.

(Too bad my damned wife learned to love the game, rocket launchers, and killing me...)

Loki_TBC wrote:Too bad my damned wife learned to love the game, rocket launchers, and killing me...

This is why you should never give a woman a gun bigger than her own head, it only leads to trouble.

Wow, good memories. We had plenty of fun with this game. I still have, have to give it a go again one day, same with Crimson Skies.

loved CW... my fave accessory for vehicles has to be the Armored Beer Mini Fridge from Boat Wars.

I also remember ADQ had some optional magic rules.. including a spell for "Summon Game Designer".

Ahhh the nostalgia. All night gaming sessions and heated debates about what Mad Max's car stats would really be lol

The internet has opened alot of doors for gaming, but some of them I wish it hadnt, since in doing so it closed many more doors on these sort of little 'boutique' type games.

I was very inspired by reading about this game on the internet in the mid-90's... I even converted up some micro machines cars with tiny 40k bits to give them little machine guns and the like (I think I used a little piece of a scope from a bolter for one of them).

Very, very cool... I just wish I'd found someone who played it!!!

I do wonder why 30 years ago I would play Car Wars at almost any opportunity and now I don't think I would ever play it again. Is it because I have changed or because modern games play better?

owenmp wrote:

Super-Scale Car Wars
http://www.sjgames.com/pyramid/sample.cgi?250
Author: Loren Dean
Source: Pyramid Online

Super-Scale Car Wars
http://www.seanet.com/~owenmp/metal/supercw.html
Author: Loren Dean
Source: CWIN 1.03

This article can also be found (slightly updated, even) here

duncana wrote:I do wonder why 30 years ago I would play Car Wars at almost any opportunity and now I don't think I would ever play it again. Is it because I have changed or because modern games play better?

You have changed.

In the great history of tabletop post-apocalyptic car racing/shooting genre there have only even been two entries.

1. Car Wars, which presents a complete design system and a somewhat involved process for pulling off any manoeuvre a car might want to do in combat.
2. Dark Future, in which there is no mechanism for turning.

Kilkrazy wrote:
1. Car Wars, which presents a complete design system and a somewhat involved process for pulling off any manoeuvre a car might want to do in combat.
2. Dark Future, in which there is no mechanism for turning.

Bootlegger reverse! .... though the collision rules don't really stand up to the physics, Mythbusted.

helgrenze wrote:

Kilkrazy wrote:
1. Car Wars, which presents a complete design system and a somewhat involved process for pulling off any manoeuvre a car might want to do in combat.
2. Dark Future, in which there is no mechanism for turning.

Bootlegger reverse! .... though the collision rules don't really stand up to the physics, Mythbusted.

Bootlegger's reverse in a bus doesnt work so well.

I loved CarWars.
I miss my RedNex Express (Dually Van with off road tires)