Re: Worth it for nostalgia...?
 

That is nifty. Thanks for sharing.

Re: Worth it for nostalgia...?
 

"Historical significance", more than anything -- NOVA was playing _CW_ every week (nearly) for years; not sure how this affected playing time.

I do know one of the complaints I keep hearing about OG _CW_ is "there was too much stuff; CW6 pares it down to 'stuff which makes the car move' and 'stuff which makes other cars blow up'". That was never a problem for NOVA; to quote Captain Kolos: "We do not burden our units with Non-Essentials." .:) Our duelcars were: The requisites required to operate it (body; engine/plant; driver; tires; chassis; suspension); a bunch of weapons (make other cars go BOOM); armor (prevent self going BOOM .:) ); anything else was left in the catalog, as it took money, weight, and space away from the previous three factors.

This is how NOVA flat-out annihilated a group from Des Moines calling itself "SAS/Zebra". They showed up with a bunch of designs with fancy tech, and much-lower firepower and armor than what we had; in three events, they utterly failed to so much as breach the armor on any of our vehicles, while we destroyed every one of theirs. (I suppose this is what some folks mean by "losing in the design phase", but this is more a lack of grasp of what an arena duel is.)

Anywho: That's today's Duelling History Lesson. .:)

Re: Worth it for nostalgia...?
 

Having everyone show up with a car already designed and the vehicle sheet ready to go cuts down on quite a bit of time.

We would play in spurts of four to five weeks in a row and everyone knew what the division we would be playing, what arena/scenario, etc. and after pleasantries, we'd jump right in (as I sure NOVA did - possibly without pleasantries!!!)

This cuts down on non-playing time and is not unique to CW.

Re: Worth it for nostalgia...?
 

Yep. If you're paying build dollars for anything other than damage resiliency/damage evasion or damage throw weight, you aren't gonna have a good time where the victory condition is "last-man-standing".

Re: Worth it for nostalgia...?
 

My silly little question was answered long ago but the continuing discussion on this thread has been entertaining and enlightening to read!! :)

I remember our CW games taking many hours back in the day but we were pretty attention challenged and it was more about hanging out and goofing off than seriously playing. My friends and I were, after all, mid-teens in the mid-eighties.

I’m sure looking forward to refined gameplay in 6E but my heart will always be with “classic” Car Wars; my first true autoduel love.

Re: Worth it for nostalgia...?
 

That was part of it -- everyone had his "standard designs" (I suppose one could call them "factions" .>:) ) statted-out (cost, weight, space, etc. all on the sheet where anyone could make sure the math was correct). In addition: We wrote down to-hits, damage, and such -- "I wrote it down in my diary so I *wouldn't have to remember*." .:) Speeds matters up a bunch when one isn't having to go manual-diving.

Re: Worth it for nostalgia...?
 

This.

I like to declare my attack and then roll dice - both the to-hit and damage. The two large dice are to-hit and the smaller die/dice are damage. Of course you have sets in different colors for linked weapons.

Google Battletech Box-of-Death and adapt for Car Wars if you really want to go nuts!!!!

If you have a good idea you need a 7 to hit, you know rolls of 2 (miss anyway) and 3 are going to miss and 11 and 12 are going to hit.

Re: Worth it for nostalgia...?
 

We did a variant of this -- 6-siders in different colors. For ex.: Three RRs linked F, one had three pairs of d6s in three different colors (say, "red", "white", and "blue"); each color pair was a TH roll. TH dice which scored hits were re-rolled (with d6s added or subtracted as required); misses were set aside. One could whip through TH and damage in about 5 seconds. .:)

I see the BoD most weekends these days; it's more useful for dealing with the "Macross Missile Massacre" (TVTropes -- look it up .>:) ) the players seem to be fond of. Most THs I ever saw at once in _CW_ was when someone brought a _Grand Slam_ to a scenario (10x HR linked F). 2-3 THs was more common; that can be dealt with by hand.

Re: Worth it for nostalgia...?
 

At least you only have to roll it all once :)

Re: Worth it for nostalgia...?
 

Indeed.

At least he didn't bring the MNR variant....