Car Wars @ MindSay

Jeffro's Car Wars Blog has moved to to a new site.

All posts have been reorganized and retagged. This gives us a few distinct feeds to help you find what your looking for and avoid off topic stuff.

There's of course the Main Car Wars Feed if you want to catch all of the Car Wars stuff.

Be sure to check out my Vehicle Designs which generally go beyond just stats and include extra options and advertisement copy. I'm up to 15 now.

I have one of the very few resources for Car Wars 5th Edition on the web. (You can even dig through the oldest posts to relive the painful death of the game!)

Don't miss My Favorite Posts if you just want to cut to only the best stuff. We've also got In Depth Coverage of the Development of the Rules for those that want to get into the nitty-gritty. But check out The Science Fiction Feed if you want to see my movie reviews and other geeky stuff.

I've been milling around Harshman Memorial during the special gala celebration of Car Wars's 25th anniversary.  The crowds have been absolutely tremendous here-- this could be a sign that autodueling is returning as the top televised sport in America.  Many of them are here to see such relics as Crazy Joe Harshman's Chevy and what's left of Mike Montgomery's Navigator.

 

I had particularly good seats during a demonstration match this afternoon.  Here's a close-up of a Hotshot just after getting nailed by three Laser shots from a team consisting of an Intimidator and a Security Six:

 

 

Note the piles of debris in the Hotshot's wake....

 

The driver of the Intimidator kindly gave me this read-out from his targeting computer:

 

 

Finally, here's a shot from the helicopter cam of the entire furball.

 

I'll stick around the arena here for the full slate of events and keep you posted on any news of note!  Adios for now....

 

We see here a Killer Kart executing a Moderate skid at 30 mph just a few seconds into an event at Harshman Memorial.  (The Rotation Formula comes in handy if you're trying to implement those tricky bends and fishtails, by the way....  Yeah, as if you ever wondered why it's so important to get a good solid grounding in Trigonometry while you were still in highschool!  Right.)

 

 

Click here for an uncropped 800x600 resolution image.

 

More pictures to follow in the days ahead.... 

I finally got to listen to the MADHAT Car Wars podcasts and episode 4 of the Roll2D6 pocasts.  The MADHAT shows are delivered in a downhome Tennessee twang by a diehard Car Wars fanatic that runs several PBEM games-- and his coverage of those games has inspired my to check 'em out.  This podcast-jockey (?) had 11 people sign up for his most recent game and 5 of those were repeat players.

 

The Roll2D6 podcast had slightly better production values; it came off more like a real radio talk show because the two hosts banter back and forth so much.  The Car Wars fanatic would try to describe the history of his favorite game while the other fellow cracked jokes!  On the other hand, the Madhat show scores many MONDO grooviness points for letting out the secret of the DwarfStar games web pages.  Follow the link to find a gold mine in classic gaming goodness!

We played a modified version of the classic Midville scenario yesterday afternoon.  It took a mere four hours to play it out.  This was my first time playing and I was rather pleased with it overall-- especially after hearing about some of the dirty tactics others have used in the game.  We still have reservations about the rules for burst effects, missed shots, and grenades-- and we play pretty fast and loose when figuring out where a cycle ends up after its killed-- but nevertheless a good time was had by all.

 

In a previous scenario, the Memphis police department was nearly wiped out.  The PC's were deputized shortly thereafter... and then were warned that cyclists would more than likely attack due to the percieved weakness of the locals.  The PC's played the part of both the duellists and the police, and the cyclists took an extra $20,000 or so to make up for the extra dollar value of the PC vehicles.

 

As the Mad Dog player, I decided to try to use cycle designs that looked like the original counters that came with the Sunday Drivers pocket box.  I didn't take the time to design them all by hand, so I used the original vehicle guide cycles extensively.  Here's my line up: (C-2 and C-16) Flash-II, (C-3) Hawk, (C-5, C-19) Maxi w/ sidecar, (C-8, C-12, C-15, and C21) Mad Dog Cycle w/ sidecar, (C-9) Taurus w/ sidecar, (C-10, C-13) Scrapper w. sidecar, (C-11, C-24) Spider, (C-13) Aquarius, (C-17) Santa Cruz, (C-18) Tornado.  The Mad Dog cycle carried an MG and two HR's with a side car carrying an SS and an SMG armed passenger.

 

Here are my first five cycles entering downtown:

 

 

Chain was no problem.  Just loose some front armor and take a hazard.  Mines on the other hand, are bad news.  The locals can block off any street they want with this stuff... and you're going to have to break through one of these things.  After the dust had settled I'd wished I'd taken a cheap van and a few really cheap cycles that were designed for the express purpose of busting through the road block.

 

Pedestrians located in doorways, etc. were impossible to hit.  Well...  11's and 12's might have gotten 'em.  Make your cyclists all Cyclist-0 Gunner-1 for a better chance of hitting stuff.  My MG's accomplished very little.  But with RR's and RL's... you can blow up most of the wimpy buildings in a second or two and then take out the pedestrians that flee the rubble with your burst effects of the following turn.  HR's can speed up the process of bringing a building down if there happens to be several pedestrians giving you grief from it.  Note that any pedestrian so foolish as to shoot from the rooftop will automatically die when the building collapses.  Also, keep in mind that side mounted weapons on the side cars-- and even SMG armed passengers-- can really earn their keep in this scenario.  

 

My heart sank when my opponent mentioned that a certain pedestrain had a plunger.  Here the surviving Mad Dogs split up after the cross walk went down due to the militia's explosives:

 

 

The Mad Dogs took down the hospital and killed most of the rifle-armed guards that tried to flee the scene.  Most of the cycles went straight down Kazango leveling every building on their left and then leaving the map.  Grenade launchers made life difficult for me, but the fact that most of my cycles had sidecars on the left side was the only reason I had any success at all in this scenario.  A half dozen of my cycles stayed near the area where they entered the map to take out some underdefended buildings.  The rest braved the fire of the militia men on third and the duellists on second and first.  It took about 8 seconds of game time to play this out-- we didn't bother using phased movement, either.

 

I ended up losing 2.5 cycles to grenades, 2.5 to mines, one to a portable flame thrower that hit a powerplant from the side, and three cycles to vehicular fire.  Note: don't bother taking cycles to town with anything less tough than PR tires.  Also... super power plants are much more survivable than small ones-- expect to take damage from the side.  (We played with just 2033 era equipment, so I didn't have the luxury of using component armor....)

 

If my opponent had left mine counters on the sidewalk next to the over-walk that got blown up, I'd have had a much harder time.  Also, mines and a vehicle guarding the other end of Kanzango would have made my killing spree a lot more costly.  The locals have a lot of ground to defend because even a lone damaged RL-armed cycle can drop a building in 6 seconds if there's nobody nearby to stop him.  A lone pedestrian with 4 grenades can take out a cycle or two, but he can't get anywhere fast.  The cars are monstrously strong against cycles... but they can't be everywhere.

 

The final victory point tally for the Mad Dogs was 126 points for buildings and 80 points for killing pedestrians (5 Militia, 11 Hospital Staff, and 5 Hospital Guards.)  This was plenty of points to make the 50 point margin for a decisive Mad Dog victory.  However, my opponent didn't stoop to such tactics as taking out my cyclists with his burst effects (the way I did against a couple of Militia men....)

 

It looks like the locals have to spread out a little more... and entice the cycles to come in and split up.  If the defense appears too strong on certain streets, the cycles simply won't go there.  This was the only mistake on my opponents part in an otherwise devious and spirited defense.  Of course his PC's vehicles may not have been in the thick of the fighting because he wanted them to survive the battle... but this will have its own consequences in due time....  (He claimed he didn't know where the cycles were going to go, so he was unsure of where to commit them until they were already gone....  Riiiiight. :))