01-25-2020, 03:49 PM | #1 |
Join Date: May 2019
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Introducing the game
Hey all, currently reliving my misspent youth by introducing my Monday night board game group to The Fantasy Trip and Car Wars.
I have played about five games of car wars with total newbies (a couple of people played in more than one of those games) and I just want to share a few observations I had that might benefit people interested in running introductory games. For reference, I was playing with the 1996 compendium. Four of those games were arena brawls using these glorified golf-carts: Lil'Banger: Subcompact, Light chassis, Light suspension, Small power plant, 4 Standard tires, Driver w/BA and Bowie Knife and Submachine Gun and 3 Explosive Grenades, Vehicular Shotgun Front, Junk Dropper Back, Plastic Armor: F4, L2, R2, B3, T2, U2, Acceleration 5, Top Speed 100, HC 2, 2070 lbs., $2900 I know this vehicle seems weird and pathetic but it worked out pretty well. One hit to the side and then you're taking internal hits. Junk droppers taught about how automatic fire worked and avoiding the junk resulted in a few spectacular deaths. It kept games short and spicy. Also I was hoping they would try to knife each other, lol. The last game was a homebrew scenario using an off-road map where an off-road rescue van was subcontracted by Gold Cross to recover a duellist's corpse from a wreck that was being looted by a cycle-gang. It was a real hit. So anyhoo, here are a few observations: 1: Grenades are too annoying for introductory games. The player's loved them and were constantly biffing them t each other. I, the referee hated them. I gave them to players because I thought they would encourage pedestrians to stay and get smushed rather than run to a bunker, but the bookkeeping was too much. Save grenades for the campaign when your players have some experience and can track their own handling and speed and whatnot. This leads me to my next observation: 2: Like many games of a certain vintage (original Warhammer 40k, Battletech, etc), this game benefits from a referee as opposed to a "player that knows the rules". This is my own personal "cause celebre". I know I know, I wanna play too, but the game kinda needs an accountant, and sorry to break it to you, but if you are reading the SJG car wars older editions forum, that person is probably you. 3: After the first turn or so, if movement isn't going to be relevant for a player due to distance or whatnot, just let them move a full turn's movement at once. Use the 5-phase movement as a video-game "bullet time". I've considered marking out a ruler with 17mm increments and using the 1/3 second phases in 5th edition to speed up the game. Thoughts? 4: Don't limit yourself to arenas. The arena maps (especially the one that comes in the latest printing box) aren't exactly eye-candy when compared to the Midville and off-road maps. The rescue scenario I put together was a real hit. 5: Let drivers get pasted. Half the fun of this game is the hilarious, spectacular and gory ways your character can die. How many other games can you processually and verisimilitudinously play out the last 4 seconds of your character's death as their car flips and burns? The Eurogames me and my buddies usually play reward you with a point total, while Ameritrash like car wars reward you with an awesome story. Anyways, I'm not trying to tell anyone not to do. These were the first games of car wars i've played in like 25 years, and I'm mostly trying to organize my thoughts and figured I'd share. I feel like the "refereed tactical wargame" is kind of a lost art. I feel like gamers would really get a lot out of experiencing one, and the mirthful dystopian hyper-violence of car wars is just about the coolest way to go about it, in my humble opinion. |
01-25-2020, 05:59 PM | #2 |
Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Bellevue, WA, USA
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Re: Introducing the game
Dear PeteC,
Your post has excellent observations and advice. Here are links to older resources you might find interesting. Steve Jackson Games - Car Wars Plus Pro II Gold http://www.sjgames.com/car-wars/suck.html Steve Jackson Games - Car Wars Rules Questions http://www.sjgames.com/car-wars/questions.html Ireland Autoduel Association (IADA) Archive https://www.seanet.com/~owenmp/iada/index.html Tampa Wrecking Crew: Car Wars Rules from the Black Circle Gaming Society https://www.seanet.com/~owenmp/twc/index.html
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Michael P. Owen Seattle Washington Autoduel Team https://www.seanet.com/~owenmp/swathome.html Twitter: Car Combat Central https://twitter.com/carcombat |
01-26-2020, 02:24 PM | #3 | ||||
Join Date: Dec 2007
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Re: Introducing the game
By a wide margin -- for us, it was the scattering rules which caused most of the problem. We adopted a much-simpler rule:
Take a coin, die-with-number, or other object with a defined "top"; flip it; whichever direction the "top" is pointing is the direction of scatter, and each point by which the roll came in under 12 equals 1/4" (thrown) or 1" (fired) of scatter. Quote:
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Good points, all.
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"Dale *who*?" 79er The Jeremy Clarkson Debate Course: 1) I'm Right. 2) You're Wrong. 3) The End. |
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01-29-2020, 06:34 PM | #4 |
Join Date: Jun 2012
Location: CA
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Re: Introducing the game
Agree the grenade rules are horrible, especially grenade scatter. The 1 phase per 4" of range rule is just annoying. Just have grenades land immediately no matter how far they travel, and use impact fuses.
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01-30-2020, 11:46 AM | #5 |
Join Date: Aug 2011
Location: Snohomish, WA
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Re: Introducing the game
For intro games, I don't usually give hand weapons for the crew. They're just not worth the rules explanation time and effort.
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Dynamax Designs, Designing quality since 2035. Watch your handling and remember to Drive Offensively! |
01-30-2020, 02:10 PM | #6 |
Join Date: Dec 2007
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Re: Introducing the game
The only problem I've ever had with the "hang time" rule is: It does tend to render grenades ineffective for anything save area-denial -- the user has to designate where the grenade is supposed to go; the rest of the table has that many phases to Not Be There. So, aside from "projected dropped-weapon" use, I've rarely sees grenades being used.
__________________
"Dale *who*?" 79er The Jeremy Clarkson Debate Course: 1) I'm Right. 2) You're Wrong. 3) The End. |
01-30-2020, 03:09 PM | #7 |
Join Date: Jun 2008
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Re: Introducing the game
Grenades, basically use them for anti-personnel (explosive or flechette) to make sure you are playing Car Wars or persistent effects (paint, smoke) to make up for a lack of DWs (but dischargers are probably a better bet).
Some of the weirder ones work better as placed charges (but that is what thermite grenades are for in real life). We never had an issue with scatter, with a 2" burst effect, someone was always in the wrong place. Keeping track of when they went off wasn't an issue in a PBM game (and the thrower just noted the turn number they would go off in face to face games and revealed it at the appropriate time). We also house ruled that they went off on the phase they were triggered (after however many seconds) rather than always at the end of the turn. That mean a 1 second delay was actually 1 second not 1-1.8 seconds. We also took advantage of the fact that you could place a grenade within 1/4" (on foot) without any chance of deviation and short tosses can only deviate by 2 squares max (even if thrown from a moving vehicle). If you keep the distances short, you need the delay to clear the area yourself (or to duck behind cover) - again exactly how they are supposed to work. Using walls was also a good way to prevent overthrowing. Grenades are at least fairly cheap compared to vehicular weapons and creative use of fake grenades keeps people on their toes. And we probably differ on our interpretation of impact fuses. Some people interpret them to mean that they don't scatter but the rule says they don't "bounce". Since the "scatter" rules actually talk about deviation, we rule they still deviate, they just don't bounce when they hit an obstruction en-route. Last edited by swordtart; 01-30-2020 at 03:36 PM. |
01-30-2020, 04:00 PM | #8 |
Join Date: May 2019
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Re: Introducing the game
Yeah, that would be smart but I printed out the car (complete with driver armaments) I designed on Combat Garage and laminated them so that damage and ammo could be marked off with dry-erase markers and now I'm too lazy to do that again, haha.
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02-02-2020, 04:19 PM | #9 |
Join Date: Oct 2004
Location: California
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Re: Introducing the game
the 3 phase movement chart was introduced with 5th edition car wars. the only problem with it is that it starts limiting maneuverability if you still limit to one maneuver per phase. you might rule that you can make a second maneuver on phases with more than 2 inches of movement, so long as there is a straight foreward inch between maneuvers.
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10-12-2020, 08:25 PM | #10 |
Join Date: Oct 2020
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Re: Introducing the game
Scrolling back looking since the COVID hit and I found this thread. We've been playing D&D and Gamma World remotely for the past few months. Some players are in the mid-west, some are on the west coast. It's my turn to GM, and the group is excited about giving Car Wars a go.
I've created an excel spreadsheet, because well quite frankly excel can do anything, to be the game board. We're going to share screens via the video conference technology and I'm going to GM the game remotely. I grabbed little car icons of 8 different colors and have grabbed a large circle with an X in the middle to show the different angles the cars can shoot from. Week 1 I'm going to give everyone a Killer Kart and run an arena battle. I figure, no gernades, no trikes, no extra rules, just get them started on the basics of driving and shooting a machine gun. Then if they like it each week we will add a few items to make it more and more true Car Wars. Should be fun! |
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