Car Wars is a game of vehicular combat.  Each player drives a car loaded out with armor and various weapons and equipment  in a no holds barred grudge match to the death.  It was originally published in 1980 by Steve Jackson Games.  Since then there have been a total of five editions.  Apparently, the game grew in complexity over the first four editions.  The fifth edition, the edition I played, reduced a lot of that complexity.  Which was probably for the best, because the edition I played seemed like just the right level of complexity to me.  The 5th edition is still in print and available here.  PDFs of various editions are available here.  There hasn’t been any new material published since late 2002.

You start out by choosing a car.  All the cars come pre-made (prior versions had vehicle creation rules, but the fifth edition never did).  Each car has various strengths and weaknesses.  Some had more armor, but fewer weapons.  Others had better weapons and better handling, but lightly armored. I ended up choosing a car with a few heavy rockets, decent armor, a ram plate, and some smoke screens.

Armor is divided among front, back, sides, top, and bottom.  Each car has a Handling Class (HC) which determines how often and how easily you can make difficult maneuvers.  There is a wide variety of weapons: rockets, machine guns, ram plates, flamethrowers, laser beams.  There is also fun equipment like smoke screens, oil slicks, and paint sprayers.

Each car was represented by a little card stock car.  But, you could use matchbox cars or micro-machines.  Movement is determined by your current speed and measured in inches.  There is a turning key that you use to measure your movement.  It also determines the cost to your HC for making manuevers.  A 30 degree turn costs you 1 HC whereas a 90 degree will cost you 5 HC.  Go below a certain threshold on your HC and you could lose control of your car where you could fish tail or roll it.

The rules are pretty straight forward and pretty easy to learn.  So, it is pretty friendly to new gamers, but you really need some well versed in the rules to teach it.  We actually had someone running the game for us as a sort of GM.  This isn’t really necessary, but it does help to have someone familiar with the rules and who can act as a referee.

I had a great time playing the game.  There are lots of fun little touches in the rules that lead to great moments in the game.  Like the random events that can happen when a daring maneuver goes bad.  Or how you determine the position of the cars after a collision (you pick the cars up and drop them).  You can blow off tires which cripples you HC.  You can roll down your window and shoot at the driver with your machine game.  (My driver met a gruesome death after rolling down the window, catching an incendiary bullet in the face, then catching fire.) The cars felt well balanced as no one seemed to have a clear advantage.

Car Wars also brought back warm memories of good car combat video games of yore.  Spy Hunter, Twisted Metal 2, and the old arcade game Demolition Derby come to mind.  I wonder if these games were influenced by Car Wars.

The game time is supposed to last around 45 minutes to an hour.  Our game clocked in at well over 3 hours.  I don’t think that is typical though.  We were all learning the rules.  And a couple of nasty hits early on knocked out a couple weapons on two of the cars, so there was a lot of cat and mouse. So, it did get a little tedious towards the end, but I think it was due to circumstances in the game that weren’t typical.

I recommend checking this game out if you can.  It’s too bad that it is not widely available and no new material is coming out for it.  Steve Jackson Games would do well to reissue all the 5th edition stuff in one streamlined package.  It may regain some popularity.   It is a well balanced game that runs smoothly.

There are rockets, flying shrapnel, frickin’ laser beams, and cars smashing into each other.  What else do you want from a game?

Photo from the game on Saturday