Big guns and fast cars! Car Wars 6th Edition is on Kickstarter now
Car Wars as a game has been around for quite a while, with the first edition having been released in 1981 and consisted of only paper components and a rulebook. Now in it's 6th edition, Car Wars is making the jump to miniatures, and in the process trimming down the complexity for a fast and furious auto dueling game.
Car Wars 6th Edition is an arena battle miniatures game where you will outfit a car with armor, weapons, crew, and anything else you can think or in order to survive the no holds bar demolition derby to come. Assembling your car in the new edition is easy by using a points system. First everyone decides on a point value to build their cars with, say 24 points, and then from that value you will divide it by 4 to get how many crew points, in this example 6. With the points decided now it's time to peruse the 200+ car cards to pick out your armor, weapons, and anything else you want to attach to your car to help give you that edge. Each card has a specific point value, and once you decide on a car you can decide where to equip it between the front, rear, or two sides of your car. After your car is built then it's time to pick out your crew, with every team having one driver and one gunner you can decide to keep the base rookies, or upgrade them to more veteran with stronger abilities. You even have the option to equip your crew with some guns to provide a little extra oomph in your side arcs.
Now that you have assembled your car and crew, it's time to battle! Play for the game is like most other miniature games where you have a move phase and a shoot phase going in player turn order. When moving you will decide your speed and then use the movement template for going forward, turning, and sliding. You have to be careful though, if you try to do too much while going too fast, you may end up damaging your tires, making it harder to line up your shots. Or, you can choose not to be careful and just plow into other players, using the bases for the minis to push and shove cars around while dealing massive damage depending on how fast you were going. And once all the moving is done, everyone gets to shoot twice (because everyone has two crew) and try to take out your opponents. And this is where Car Wars differs from other miniatures games as the play area is small, and the weapons bring the heat from the get go, meaning there won't be long turns of maneuvering and planning to line up perfect shot, you are in the meat grinder from turn one. Play continues until all but one car is a smoldering wreck, and that survivor is the winner!
Having seen the game demoed at PAX Unplugged, it is definitely a fast and fun game, and Steve Jackson Games isn't holding back with the extras either. In addition to the base game they have four miniatures packs, two playmats, five different card packs, and more that you can add to your pledge to give you more miniatures, more cards for building the cars, and more options for play. Pledging for just the base game costs $75, but they sweeten the deal by adding in the crew pack and armory pack of cards for free. A pledge of $140 gets you the ridiculous deal of the base game, two miniature packs, a playmat, dice bag, road tiles, and four of the five card upgrade packs! There are other options for backing including a trimmed down two player only version (base game plays up to 4), getting the $140 bundle along with a FnordCon badge, and more. However there is one caveat, and that is the bundle deals at $75 and $140 only exist in the pledges, once the pledge manager comes around you will only be able to buy things a la carte, so you would have to shell out $300 to get the same stuff you get in a single $140 pledge.
So what are you waiting for, go check out the Kickstarter page now!
