Different kind of Arena battle

[Hemlock]

How would you react to an Arena fight where the winner was determined by the first player to reach a certain point total... but you didn't score any points at all for hitting/ killing other cars ? You only scored points for jumps, hitting frangible targets and/ or making laps around a circuit ?

Shooting other cars doesn't help you win, except that it stops them from scoring points ... (and the arena management could stop the event when all but one car is immobile). And you would need to worry about actually maneuvering around the board (as opposed to accelerate to 5 mph, pivot, stop, fire, repeat).

[svawter]

I've done some of those types of games back when I was running games for a local convention (Slug-A-Thon)... they seem to be well received ; )

This was CWC era about 2 decades ago (damn, I'm old)

[swordtart]

Whilst this would be fine as a real-life activity, I worry that it might not be visceral enough for a CW session.

CW takes a dogs age to play unless vehicles get eliminated quickly. Most sessions I played with counters took about 15 minutes per turn. I only once played a non-combat scenario (a race) and it was deadly dull. We only got a quarter of the way round the first lap before we canned it (after 3 hours).

If there isn't a casualty (and preferably a spectacular explosion) every hour my players quickly lost interest.

Part of the fun of CW is testing your car design against your peers, and a bit aspect of that is the rock/paper/scissors interplay of weaponry, armour and agility. If you take away the first two, you are going to severely limit your design options and thence some of the challenge.

CW is cars with guns shooting each other up.

YMMV

[juris]

Move your entire turn all at once then fire. Duels last 1/2 hour. Solved your problem there ;)

Phase-movement is only for ramming

And yes we did events like running over/shooting pedestrian 'prisoners' for points, points for crossing certain sections of the arena to reward high speed and reckless maneuvers.

I seem to recall an ADQ with a giant (fireproof) rubber ball like motorized polo - I'd definitely do that one lol

Originally Posted by swordtart

CW takes a dogs age to play unless vehicles get eliminated quickly. Most sessions I played with counters took about 15 minutes per turn. I only once played a non-combat scenario (a race) and it was deadly dull. We only got a quarter of the way round the first lap before we canned it (after 3 hours).

If there isn't a casualty (and preferably a spectacular explosion) every hour my players quickly lost interest.

CW is cars with guns shooting each other up.

YMMV

[Hemlock]

I agree, Phased movement is really only used when vehicles are close enough for it to matter (usually less than 5 inches or so; maybe a two second distance from each other).

[ammulder]

I would enjoy such an event. If history is any guide, I would bring in an super-fast and maneuverable but underarmored design. Then I'd get shot in turn 1 phase 5 while still getting up to speed. Then in turn 2 phase 1, when the shooter could literally have finished me off with another shot through the shards of my fragile armor, and with a +1 sustained-fire bonus to boot, he would inexplicably not fire, leaving me alive long enough to gain speed, get out of range or arc, and go for that first crucial jump across the arena. :)

[swordtart]

In a game focussing on intricate manoeuvre (rather than shooting) phased movement is even more vital than one where you are only interested in the final position at the point everyone fires.

In the racing game for example how do you handle the jockeying for position if everyone is effectively incorporeal until the end of movement. If all cars are optimised for speed and agility rather than firepower and armour they are likely to have very similar stat lines (particularly acceleration and top speed). When two cars are travelling at 70 1" apart (as was generally the case) every move needs to be phased as a collision could occur in any phase.

If everyone moves their whole move at once, who is first to move their 7" is likely to be fairly critical. How are you going to determine this.

Is there really much point in a game where you "need to worry about actually manoeuvring around the board"

[Racer]

Variants of 'The Joust' from Road Atlas 1 can be fun : high speeds , good handling , pin point accurate shooting needed , innovative design & very little Tire Shooting involved ! :-D

Add in Tag Teams & Front plus Rear mounted FCGS and it REALLY gets interesting ... hee hee ...

[MazeMonster]

A lot of tournament play from the mid 80's onward took on this character, with jumping and driving across fixed points in trick arenas becoming the norm. It took a lot of fun out of the game. I understand the need to make victory conditions equitable in a multiplayer event, but I enjoyed Car Wars more for the combat element. I'm encouraged that the 6th Edition will support two player games that will run more like a Star Fleet Battles style duel.

[Parody]

Many of our standard arena battles have secondary rewards for properly completing jumps, circling around pillars, or crossing central features. Individually they're not worth as much as a kill, but people fight for them nevertheless while keeping busy blowing each other up. We have done score multipliers at times (so points after a jump are doubled or whatever) but not recently.

When we do racing events we normally space folks out around the track rather than have everyone start in a clump, shoot each other with no speed mods, and watch everyone die the first time someone loses control and starts a cascade of collisions. We also use a bunch of restrictions to encourage racing over duelling. (You can read those on our website if you'd like.)