OrcaCon 2 Car Wars Tournament Recap

[Magesmiley]

I wrapped up the Car Wars tournament for OrcaCon 2 a few days ago. The event consisted of 4 qualifier rounds and a final all of which were played on a 3X version of the Rainbow Bay Blast Furnace. The rules were 4th edition (Classic) Car Wars.

The organizers of OrcaCon gave me a large, brightly lit table front and center by the main entrance of the main game hall all-day on Saturday.

28 of the 32 slots for the qualifier games were filled (2 x8 players, 1 x7, and 1 x5). There were 8 attendees who played again in the finals as well. This doesn't include the numerous other attendees who stopped by to watch the event.

I posted the pictures up to an album on OrcaCon's Facebook group and will add them to Photobucket soon (I was running into issues with the site today).

As an added bonus, Steve Hobbs, one of the OrcaCon Podcasters also did a podcast exclusively on the tournament. He stopped by several times and also did interviews with the players as they were knocked out of the final.

[Blue Ghost]

Cool pod cast.

[svawter]

Nice work! I love the mega sized speed and handling charts! I may have to build some for my local games... (which would not live up to yours by a half way!)

[Magesmiley]

Originally Posted by svawter

Nice work! I love the mega sized speed and handling charts! I may have to build some for my local games... (which would not live up to yours by a half way!)

The charts are very useful. They are in 3 sections.

The left one has a control table, with safe in green, XX values in red and the others in yellow. These are mounted on a foamcore board (and hung off the center board).

The right one has targeting modifiers at the top and crash tables at the bottom. This is also mounted on a foamcore board (and hung off the center board).

The center section has the movement chart and it is mounted on a whiteboard. The items in the lower right corner of the whiteboard are circular magnetic discs (about 3/8" or so) with car number on them that I put on the right side of the movement chart. The little red markers are labeled with various crash table effects that I put on the discs as needed. This section sits on a large easel.

I actually made all of the charts using Excel to get the formatting and sizes. Then printed them in poster mode, laminated them, trimmed them, and stuck them on with double-back tape.

Not visible in the pictures, there is also an Autoduel America map hanging on the back (which people also stopped by to check out).

One other item you might have noticed were the speed and handling trackers. The red section has handling numbers (-6 on up); the other two sections tracking speed, green being 10s and yellows being 1s (so green 4 and yellow 0 = 40 mph). They've got white battleship pegs that can be moved around (and one red peg that is used to indicate maximum handling).

Another item that I highly recommend are markers to track speed changes and firing. I made up some markers you can see in some of the pictures. Players hang onto them and discard them when they change speed or fire (and pick them back up at the end of each turn). It makes a huge difference in being able to track who has and hasn't performed these actions.

[schoon]

Great work.

That arena looks like it might be a bear to transport though!

[TheAmishStig]

I officially need to step up my game...I was making the jump from posterboard to foam-core for this year, but...wow, that's awesome. Really hoping that 6E ends up that visually impressive, should be a great draw at events!

The speed chart is amazing, too...wasn't sure how to make one of my own in a way that was transport friendly, but now the juices are flowing...

Many thanks for the inspiration!

[Magesmiley]

Originally Posted by schoon

Great work.

That arena looks like it might be a bear to transport though!

It is. The arena is built in 4 sections, each measuring 2'6" square (for a combined play area of 5' square). It is mostly built out of plywood, with actual mirrors glued to the bunker sides and the bunker tops made out of styrene sheets. The floor of the arena is textured. And for those who might've noticed some familiar advertisements around the edges of the arena, those are mostly from ADQ with a bit of color added to some of them (plus a few more I created from scratch). I use a furniture roller to move it from my vehicle to the game area at conventions. I typically use our full-size van to move it, but I've managed to put it into a small SUV and also a car with a large trunk (with the rear seats folded down) too.

Originally Posted by TheAmishStig

I officially need to step up my game...I was making the jump from posterboard to foam-core for this year, but...wow, that's awesome. Really hoping that 6E ends up that visually impressive, should be a great draw at events!

The speed chart is amazing, too...wasn't sure how to make one of my own in a way that was transport friendly, but now the juices are flowing...

Many thanks for the inspiration!

Keep in mind that I seriously started working on this back in 2014 and have been making improvements and refinements to it ever since. A smaller speed chart is doable - the whiteboard I'm using I bought at Costco for under $20, but a smaller one will work.

[Herod]

Just saw this.

Looks awesome! Wish I was in closer proximity to the Con.

H