Post 1st game questions

[Overload]

I'm sure we played these correctly, but I wanted to double check.

1) If internal damage is listed as going to a weapon, and the car has more than one, the person playing the car decides where the damage goes, and can even split it between weapons if they choose to if you need to do more than one?

2) Are rerolls granted by range able to be used one at a time, or do you need to grab as the dice to reroll all at once? (e.g. can you reroll the same die 3 times if you're at range 3) I know with Ace tokens they can be used one at a time.

3) Do handguns have a max range?

4) Do you get any defense to an attack if you're out of control? Or, just not your speed dice?

5) Do you automatically regain control at the start of a turn.

6) Can you turn if your one car length of forward movement will cause a collision?

7) It seems that when you slide you're not moving as far as a Straight or a Turn. Am I doing this right?


Played a one-on-one game with the cheap pre-gen vehicles. Took about three hours, and when I died via no crew, I had no armor, had lost all my tyres, half my PP, and most of my accessories and weapons. My opponent had lost his weapons and we were trying to finish each other with hand weapons.
For most of the game, after the first pass, we seemed to always be in danger of hitting an outside wall. The 3'x3' arena felt small, but I've played Car Wars since Deluxe Edition boxed set when we had three times the space. The small arena encouraged me to use all four sides of my car for attacking and defense.

[Sam Mitschke]

1) The defender chooses the weapon affected by a damage card. In most cases, the damage is limited to 1 before moving to the next line on the damage card, but if the card says "Weapon: Limit 2," you must apply both damage to the same weapon before moving to the next line.

2) Re-rolls should always happen one at a time. You can absolutely re-roll the same die multiple times, if you wish.

3) Handguns do not have a max range, but range re-rolls can significantly reduce the efficacy of any small weapons.

4) You do not get yellow dice for your speed when you're out of control, but you might be provided other ways to defend (some structure cards give you defense dice, for example).

5) The "Take Control" step literally has you taking control tokens based on the state of your dashboard and equipment. You almost always get 3 or more control tokens during this phase (the exception being at speed 1 with 0 tires, which only nets you 2 control). Consider this "regaining control" in a literal sense.

6) You are never *unable* to turn, but the instant your car is involved in a collision, the current movement point ends and any remaining distance you might have moved for that particular movement point is forfeit. This can happen as you're sliding forward, but before you're able to make the turn.

7) The slide maneuver is approximately half the distance of a normal forward movement.


Regarding your game synopsis...with more information, I may be able to narrow down what went wrong, but here are my guesses:

I'm presuming the tire damage came predominantly as the result of maneuvering (which is appropriate).

The damage spread all the way around the car suggests that, for most turns, you both only ever left one arc visible to your opponent. Doing this (when playing correctly) is exceedingly difficult for an experienced player, much less two new players.

So you either [1] both maintained near-impossible perfect positioning throughout the game, or [2] something was played incorrectly.

The fact that you felt the 3'x3' arena was small implies that you were driving fast (speed 3 or above) for an extended period. This seems very much at odds with your tire damage, which should have reduced your top speed as your tires were depleted.

With 0 tires, your max speed was 1, so you could only defend with 1 yellow die. You could only defend 2 hits per turn (rolling 1 shield on your single yellow die per attack), and that's with perfect die rolls. Your opponent should have been attacking twice per turn with the hand cannon, since both crew members are carrying your equipped sidearms. That's an average of 3 damage per turn (and could be as many as 6), which would deal enough average damage to creep over the top of your 1-yellow-die defense.

I'm guessing you were driving faster than you should have been and thus defending with more dice than you should have been, which would definitely drag the game out. It's also likely that there were mistakes made when targeting, as it should be infrequent/rare to only be able to target a single arc on an opponent. The game is designed to turn cars into sitting ducks as damage adds up.

For a comparison on game length, our *longer* teaching games take roughly 45 minutes per player, and games with experienced players get closer to 30 minutes per player (but we've also played/taught several hundred games at this point, so that's not necessarily a fair comparison).

[beetle496]

Originally Posted by Overload

Played a one-on-one game with the cheap pre-gen vehicles. Took about three hours…

Lol, played my first game last night. Also three hours with the 10 BP starter vehicles! It was not close. I lost all armor (on all four sides) and the tires, before the PowerPlant went. Crew had taken a couple hits, but were both alive up to that point. We had a fine time. I think. My friend declined my offer to loan him a binder full of cards…

Originally Posted by Sam Mitschke

Handguns do not have a max range, but range re-rolls can significantly reduce the efficacy of any small weapons.

Wait, is the range penalty different for the Hand Cannon than vehicular weapons? It is three blue dice, and in my game, those did as much damage as any of the vehicular weapons.

The damage spread all the way around the car suggests that, for most turns, you both only ever left one arc visible to your opponent. Doing this (when playing correctly) is exceedingly difficult for an experienced player, much less two new players.

This comment makes me worried we were doing something wrong! There were only a couple times when the attacker had a choice of more than one arc to fire from, and I don’t recall it ever being a question of which side the defender was being hit by. We read, out loud, Choosing a Target (p. 18, right side), like six times during the game.

So you either [1] both maintained near-impossible perfect positioning throughout the game, or [2] something was played incorrectly.

With my game, it was also a function of frequently only having one weapon that could take a shot.

For a comparison on game length, our *longer* teaching games take roughly 45 minutes per player…

I could see that with a ref. My friend and I were constantly looking up the rules. I had read them, my friend had not, and I thought I understood the flow much better than I did. For example, using the turning key looked obvious and easy, so I had not actually tried it or practiced. It took us a while to figure it out! When to reroll versus when to add a die was also more confusing that it had any right to be.

Mistakes were made…

[Overload]

Most of these answers are what I expected, and what we did. We just wanted to be sure. Bold face font below by me.

Originally Posted by Sam Mitschke

Regarding your game synopsis...with more information, I may be able to narrow down what went wrong, but here are my guesses:

The damage spread all the way around the car suggests that, for most turns, you both only ever left one arc visible to your opponent. Doing this (when playing correctly) is exceedingly difficult for an experienced player, much less two new players.

So you either [1] both maintained near-impossible perfect positioning throughout the game, or [2] something was played incorrectly.

The fact that you felt the 3'x3' arena was small implies that you were driving fast (speed 3 or above) for an extended period. This seems very much at odds with your tire damage, which should have reduced your top speed as your tires were depleted.

With 0 tires, your max speed was 1, so you could only defend with 1 yellow die. You could only defend 2 hits per turn (rolling 1 shield on your single yellow die per attack), and that's with perfect die rolls. Your opponent should have been attacking twice per turn with the hand cannon, since both crew members are carrying your equipped sidearms. That's an average of 3 damage per turn (and could be as many as 6), which would deal enough average damage to creep over the top of your 1-yellow-die defense.

[/INDENT]
I'm guessing you were driving faster than you should have been and thus defending with more dice than you should have been, which would definitely drag the game out. It's also likely that there were mistakes made when targeting, as it should be infrequent/rare to only be able to target a single arc on an opponent. The game is designed to turn cars into sitting ducks as damage adds up.

I may be playing the targeting rules incorrectly when it comes to what arcs I can fire into. It was rare that a firer's 'arc-line' went through an enemy car allowing fire from two arcs. But, what I think you were saying is that if the target isn't 100% squared up to the firer, that either of the two arcs visible are possible targets?!?!
Looking at the first example on p18, can the yellow car target either the front or left arc of the Green vehicle? The way I read it was that "Check the target's firing arcs to see which sides contain the attacking car. Those sides of the target can be attacked." In which case yellow could only target green's left side. If I'm correct, then the only time the shooter has a choice of target arcs is when the target's 'arc-line' passes through the shooter. This sounds exceedingly difficult to me, and only possible half the time when the target moves second.

Faster than we should have been? Going fast is the best way to negate damage in the cars we were using. There is no disadvantage to shooting when going fast, even if you lose control. Why wouldn't you go as fast as you can without losing control? I only slowed down when I was forced to by lack of tyres. Movement equals defense dice, and movement allows maneuvers, which equal ace tokens. Both help you defend.

Even though I lost, and it was fairly clear I was going to lose ~4 turns before I did, I still had fun and wasn't frustrated or annoyed that I was going to lose.

[beetle496]

Originally Posted by Overload

Even though I lost, and it was fairly clear I was going to lose ~4 turns before I did, I still had fun and wasn't frustrated or annoyed that I was going to lose.

This was also my own personal experience. I should have been driving faster as the beginning.

[Sam Mitschke]

So before this edges any closer to an argument (your use of boldface implies an aggression that I'd like to think you didn't intend), I want to be clear that I'm trying to help. As I said before, without more information such as how many turns were played overall, or step-by-step examples of how you resolved combat, I am left imagining what MIGHT have happened, rather than working with actual data. It's entirely possible you did nothing wrong at all, and your first game just naturally played to the outer ends of the bell curve. It is, at heart, a dice game, and I'm very happy — and relieved — you still had fun.

I suspected you were going faster than you should have been relative to the amount of tire damage you'd taken, but it now sounds like you were on top of that. How deep into your game did that tire damage started to affect you? Round 3? Round 26? I'm still missing too much info to do more than speculate.

When the target's arc line passes through the shooter's firing arc is indeed when the attacker has a choice of sides to target. In the example on p18, ALL of yellow's opponents are positioned so that only one arc can be targeted, and you are correct that yellow can only target green's left side. I'm not saying that it isn't possible to turn only one arc toward your opponent — just that it's exceedingly rare to happen all game long. It *is* easier to pull off when everyone is staying far apart, but that is generally not a sustainable tactic over the whole game. Maybe y'all were circling on opposite sides of the arena perimeter? Even then, it *should* be very difficult to maneuver well enough to protect three sides of your car every round, and your facing sides should have been torn apart early.

Your initial description aligned closely with some of our test games where players missed a crucial rule that created a snowball effect over multiple rounds. We had one group that was using ace tokens to re-roll the ATTACKER's dice, effectively removing a huge percentage of damage from the game and causing it to drag on forever. I have no idea what decisions your group made that led to this outcome, but that doesn't mean you are at fault — this game gives you a LOT of agency over how it plays out, which means there are a LOT of variables. You may have played it just right, and this is how it happened to unfold.

[Overload]

My apologies. I was trying to highlight text so I could refer to it in my reply, and Bold, Italics, and Underline are my three easy options. No aggression was meant or intended.
Overload in CO

Originally Posted by Sam Mitschke

So before this edges any closer to an argument (your use of boldface implies an aggression that I'd like to think you didn't intend), I want to be clear that I'm trying to help. As I said before, without more information such as how many turns were played overall, or step-by-step examples of how you resolved combat, I am left imagining what MIGHT have happened, rather than working with actual data. It's entirely possible you did nothing wrong at all, and your first game just naturally played to the outer ends of the bell curve. It is, at heart, a dice game, and I'm very happy — and relieved — you still had fun.

I suspected you were going faster than you should have been relative to the amount of tire damage you'd taken, but it now sounds like you were on top of that. How deep into your game did that tire damage started to affect you? Round 3? Round 26? I'm still missing too much info to do more than speculate.

When the target's arc line passes through the shooter's firing arc is indeed when the attacker has a choice of sides to target. In the example on p18, ALL of yellow's opponents are positioned so that only one arc can be targeted, and you are correct that yellow can only target green's left side. I'm not saying that it isn't possible to turn only one arc toward your opponent — just that it's exceedingly rare to happen all game long. It *is* easier to pull off when everyone is staying far apart, but that is generally not a sustainable tactic over the whole game. Maybe y'all were circling on opposite sides of the arena perimeter? Even then, it *should* be very difficult to maneuver well enough to protect three sides of your car every round, and your facing sides should have been torn apart early.

Your initial description aligned closely with some of our test games where players missed a crucial rule that created a snowball effect over multiple rounds. We had one group that was using ace tokens to re-roll the ATTACKER's dice, effectively removing a huge percentage of damage from the game and causing it to drag on forever. I have no idea what decisions your group made that led to this outcome, but that doesn't mean you are at fault — this game gives you a LOT of agency over how it plays out, which means there are a LOT of variables. You may have played it just right, and this is how it happened to unfold.

I'm going to rewatch the 'How to Play Car Wars Sixth Edition' video with Chris Steele posted to the Daily Illuminator on November 2 to make sure we were doing everything correctly.

[Sam Mitschke]

No worries, and thanks for saying that.

It truly may be that you did everything right. The sheer number of variables at play are a big part of why I love the game, but also make it really difficult to drill down to one thing that might have skewed the outcome. Thanks for being willing to examine things closely (and hopefully play again!), and I'm happy to help as questions arise.