Car Wars Linked Weapons Pack Unlocked and a New Project Add-On
over 4 years ago – Sun, Dec 08, 2019 at 09:15:28 PM

The $470,000 stretch goal has been unlocked, adding the Car Wars Linked Weapons Pack to the Double Ace rewards package. This set of cards -- two of each weapon in each of the four player colors -- expands your design options and adds more firepower to the game! 

 Car Wars Rules Pack Add-On

For those of you who have been asking for even more of the basic components -- damage decks, turning keys, dice, tokens, rules -- we've opened up a $25 add-on for a duplicate copy of the core rules components. 

Your best bargain is to get a duplicate of the game, but we know some of you wish to be selective in which parts you add as extras so we've cut the components into subassemblies that both give you what you're asking for and allows us to make money. Every time an item has to be touched in the assembly and fulfillment stages costs us money, so we can only break the set down so small to sell as individual parts.

Last Day of PAX

Today is the last day of PAX and we will again be running Car Wars Sixth Edition demos at the booth. The two tables have been packed every afternoon, and we've been teaching the game to inexperienced autoduellists and veterans of the arenas of the eighties . . . and the response is overwhelmingly positive. Time and again, old-school Car Wars fans have sat down to play and walked away very happy with the speed and flow of the new edition.

- Phil Reed

Quick PAX Pics
over 4 years ago – Sat, Dec 07, 2019 at 01:10:52 AM

Randy and Jimmie are running demos while I deal with meetings. I snapped some photos at the booth to share with those of you who cannot make it to the show.

-Phil Reed

$450,000 Stretch Goal Unlocked, New Painted Miniatures, and New Stretch Goals Revealed
over 4 years ago – Fri, Dec 06, 2019 at 09:14:21 PM

With $450,000 down, you've added eight more cards to Playmat #1. That's a total of 16 cards packed with Playmat #1. For those of you asking: What cards? We're not yet ready to reveal those details. Sam and I have been holding off on determining exactly which cards go with which terrain packs until we have a better understanding of how many tile sets and playmats will need cards. Generally, these will be things like gear -- for those of you who wish to leave the roads and hit that off-road terrain -- hazards, and terrain reference cards. If a few TV tower cards sneak in, I won't complain.

New Painted Miniatures

Ben spent the last few days working on road tiles, arena tiles, and painting the three new minis that arrived earlier this week. Here are a few graphics that he sent over; we'll update these once Brandon Moore finishes the artwork. (As to why every miniature is getting a painted illustration by Brandon . . . we've not yet revealed all of the project's stretch goals.)

New Stretch Goals!

At the moment, the locked project stretch goals are:

• $470,000 - Double Ace - Car Wars Linked Weapons Pack. A set of new cards representing linked weapons. 
• $485,000 - Improved - Three tiles added to the Road Tiles pack.
• $500,000 - Add-On - Car Wars Miniatures Set 4 add-on with three new plastic car miniatures.
• $525,000 - Double Ace - Playmat #3! This playmat connects to Playmat #2. Rumors of a Playmat #4 that connects to both #1 and #3 are . . . well, we've not yet revealed all of the project's stretch goals.

And that covers the latest news, gang! Again, please stop by and see us if you're at PAX this weekend. Randy and Jimmie will be running Car Wars Sixth Edition demos all weekend long using prototype components. All components are still under construction, so everything you see may change before the game ships, but we're very close to the final stage on many of these bits.

Any questions? Please ask in the comments and our crew will answer as best we can.

- Phil Reed

Car Wars Shirts, Clear Bases, and Wrecks!
over 4 years ago – Thu, Dec 05, 2019 at 11:29:06 PM

We've opened new add-ons for those of you who have been asking! We now have two different Car Wars shirts available as add-on items; you'll select both the exact shirt as well as sizes in the BackerKit pledge manager.

In addition to shirts, we also have two new game add-ons: A pack of two miniatures (plus four clear bases) and a set of four clear bases. Again, as with all add-ons, you may add these to your pledge now and then make your final selection in BackerKit.

Thanks for the suggestions, gang! When possible, we will try to find ways to turn your better ideas into real items that can be offered as a part of this campaign. If you have more requests, please let us know in the comments!

- Phil Reed

Car Wars With More than Four
over 4 years ago – Wed, Dec 04, 2019 at 11:56:51 PM

The Car Wars core set is designed for a max of four players for a reason: we think 2-4 is the maximum fun zone. We settled on that very early. More than four and the game begins to slow down . . . and of all the things we wanted to change from the last edition, play time was the big one. Four players should give you a two-hour game. Adding players increases time, and not necessarily in a linear way.

Having said that, we know perfectly well that some of you, especially for conventions, are going to want to take all night and play with five, or six, or eight . . . So here’s what we have learned (and theorized) that might be useful. These are not official rules, or even official “house” rules. Tweak them as you will and share what you learn.

Experience is Good

We strongly suggest that everybody in a larger game be experienced with Car Wars, and specifically with Sixth Edition. That will help reduce the possible unfairness in turn order (see below). And we’d really hate it if a new player’s first experience with Car Wars was with an unfair, s-l-o-o-o-w game. Especially since new players are, themselves, one of the greatest sources of slowness.

What Do You Need?

You get all the physical components you need for a six-player game by combining a regular 4-player core set and one of the 2-player sets. You get all the components you need for an 8-player game by combining two 4-player sets. The only issue is component colors, and that’s not a big deal. (Some of you have asked if we might add more colors. It’s uneconomical, and where would we stop?) Here’s how to work with the four we’ve got.

Dashboards

It doesn’t matter at all if your dashboard is the same color as Joe’s. You won’t accidentally be adjusting his dashboard, because it’s in front of him, not you. That one’s a non-problem.

Cards

A core set has four decks of build cards, identical except for color. If you have five or more in the game, some players will have cards the same color. In play that makes no difference. After the end, though, you want to keep the sets separate for the next game! We have three possible solutions for that . . .

  ---- Mark one set of cards.

  ---- Be very, very careful when you break the game down (Hah!)

  ---- Sleeve one set of cards – or sleeve them both in different colors.

Bases

There are four transparent bases, one each in red, blue, yellow, and green. If you add an extra set, you’ll have two bases of each color. Here’s where painting the cars comes in handy. If you leave the cars gray, you may move the wrong blue base . . . but if one of those blue bases has a white car, and the other is scarlet, there’ll be no mixing them up. You will quickly learn to look at the car and not the base. That works . . . at the beginning of playtest, all our bases were cardboard and the cars were the only thing that was different! Yet we shot each other with great abandon.

It can also help if you take a photo of each car and print them out for the game. If I have a picture of the purple Dagger in front of me, I’m a lot less likely to move the green Goblin by mistake.

“But I don’t paint!” you say. Fair enough. I don’t paint either, not the way Ben does! But it’s easy to put on one coat of a bright color, just to tell the cars apart. Later, if you feel like it, you might get a bit fancier . . . maybe wash and drybrush them. Or maybe not! No one can make you pick up a paintbrush if you don’t feel like it.

Turn Order

This is the thing that makes a really big game potentially unfair, especially for newbies. These cars have guns all over them, and everybody is shooting . . . in turn order. Potentially, player 8 might never get a shot!

Here are some things that you might try to keep the last player in the game. When you start playing, tell us about your own findings.

--- Seeding. The most experienced players take the latest turn order. (But in a big game, everyone should be experienced to start with, so this might be hard to settle. Bid build points for low play positions?)

--- Targeting rules. For instance, in a 6-player game, perhaps car 5 cannot be fired upon during the first turn, and car 6 cannot be fired upon in the first or second. I cannot emphasize too much that those numbers are just made up. I have not tried this! 

--- Setup. A fair 8-player setup is a problem all to itself. You may want to use a really big table and have everyone enter at maximum speed from far apart. Scenario design is going to be important. It might be that a scenario that gives lots of points for completing a circuit, and fewer points for kills, will work better than a straight slugfest.

- Penny shields. Put a stack of pennies on the table – this is a new kind of game token. Take a penny each time you are attacked (two attacks from one foe counts as two pennies). They stay with you until the end of the round. During the firing phase, every penny you have is an automatic shield. So if you have been shot at once, the second attack automatically does one hit less. If you are shot at again in that round, you now have two pennies and the third shot does 2 hits less. And so on. This should tend to keep the attacks spread out. (And, at the end of the round, the pennies go back to the pool like other tokens.)

Conclusion

This is not a conclusion! This is a reward for those who have read all the way through: three tips for a better Car Wars game regardless of player count.

--- Roll your dice toward you. The player who sends his dice bounding across the table is the player who will totally mess up the board and send one of the blue ones onto the floor where the cat will get it.

--- Let yourself get a bit excited! Table talk is good. Playing in character is a gas (so to speak). And revenge is sweet when served flaming hot.

--- Nine out of ten duellists agree that faster is better. The tenth one is dead.

– Steve Jackson