Photos from 5 recent games

[Colman]

I had a bunch of Car Wars (5th edition) games recently and I thought I'd post some pictures. It looks like I can't put inline thumbnails, so you'll have to check out the galleries individually.

The first was against my fiance, who unfortunately has a very similar playing style (mainly because she learned from me), so our games tend to drag. I put too much terrain on the table which didn't help matters. We basically circled one central building waiting to shoot our forward guns in a WW1 style dogfight/jousting match. In the end we decided to speed things up by allowing firing EVERY phase, instead of once per turn. That was fun, and also prompted me to post a thread a while back asking why not allow firing every phase which had some interesting responses.
Gallery: Circle Chase

The remaining four games were against my cousin, and went fairly fast because he tends to play rather suicidally. Living fast and dangerously and splitting his forces with over the top speed must be a by product of today's youth, haha.
The first was a simple one vs one using our custom "Offroad rules". Basically instead of doing a collision when hitting a piece of terrain, the car can drive over it as a DC 1 maneuver. This changes the tactics quite a bit as vehicles can run away behind a hill, or come at you from new angles. Not too many pictures of this game as I was more focused on playing than photographing to start with.
Gallery: Offroad Duel

Then we used the same board setup but added a second car for a fun two vs two match. As I mentioned my cousin tends to split his forces, in this case going 100mph and 50mph. I could shoot his faster vehicle to pieces before the second vehicle even reached the combat. Still a fun match and my skidding off the map doing daring (aka foolish) maneuvers later balanced things out.
Gallery: Fast and Slow

We switched up the terrain after this to use a more realistic highway layout. By having thick, tall hills on one end and gradual prairies on the other we could get a "mountains to foothills" look going. Two cars each set up in opposite lanes at opposite ends of a straight highway. Again he split his forces which mean his faster truck was destroyed before the slower car could arrive. Awkward!
Gallery: Caravan Battle

The final game of the night was on the same highway map since it was such a hit. This time I thought I'd help my cousin out by showing him how splitting forces isn't the greatest plan. I sped ahead with my red convertible (seemed fitting) and got tangled in early on. This round was insane for failed Control Rolls. Me skidding off the map wasn't even the best crash. His taxi that rolled over for a ton of phases was the best crash. Especially when I misjudged the rolling distance and actually collided with the flipping car, which destroyed me.
Gallery: Crazy Round

All in all some fun games. I've started playing bi-weekly (or thereabouts) at my local hobby shop, so hopefully I can get some pictures of that (since they have a ridiculous selection of awesome terrain).

[aquilaprime]

Great pics ... what are you using for your road tiles?

2010 was a great year for hot wheels releases ... lots of '70s muscle.

-G

[Jeffr0]

Nice idea to have a visible handling status marker with the beads.

Beautiful games, there.

[thudthwacker]

Awesome, awesome setup, and the games looked like they were fantastically fun.

[kabson]

Thanks for the the pics, looks like you had a lot of fun.

[Colman]

Definitely some fun games, and it's interesting how much different setups or themes can change the feel of the round.

Originally Posted by aquilaprime

Great pics ... what are you using for your road tiles?

They are custom built roads. Basically thin wood that is flat on one side and textured on the other. I cut them based off a grid, then spray painted them with textured spray paint (which is a really neat gimmick) then black and gloss.
Some more pictures of them:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sunny-h...7624707395906/

Originally Posted by Jeffr0

Nice idea to have a visible handling status marker with the beads.

Thanks, it works especially well when the sheets aren't nearby, which tends to happen on bigger tables or for bigger games. I tried using different colored dice but I found twirling the D6 around looking for the proper number took some time and was a bit tedious. Do you always mark on the sheets or do you have similar tricks?

[Alan Hume]

Awesome looking game

just wanted to ask, where did you get/make your turning key and dropped weapon counters?

very cool set up indeed

[Jeffr0]

Originally Posted by Colman

Do you always mark on the sheets or do you have similar tricks?

Last game I ran with 5 new players... I tracked Handling Status for *everyone* while I reffed.

I've mostly marked fire mods on the board-- if someone does a d3 maneuver and I expect fire from everyone that phase... I generally slap a d6 on the table so that I don't forget the penalty.

[Parody]

Originally Posted by Alan Hume

just wanted to ask, where did you get/make your turning key and dropped weapon counters?

They're from CW5. You can download PDFs of the CW5 counters from the CW PDF page. The turning keys are only in the starter books.

[Alan Hume]

brilliant, many thanks for that