I've played the old Car Wars a few times when I was a kid and a few times at conventions, and I always liked the game. Cars and guns and crashes and explosions - what's not to like? So it was with great excitement that I picked up the new rules and gave them a whirl with friends. Here's my impression of the new game.
What do you need? You'll need at least one starter set (there are three right now, with more on the way), two six sided dice, some friends, a table or floor to play on, some cans or books for obstacles, and a little sandwich bag to keep the counters in.
What do you get? You get all the rules, two basic cars and variants, a turning-key, and lots of cutout counters. For $6! Even though you don't get any rules for making your own cars (yet), who cares? It's $6! There are three different sets out right now, so that's a total of 12 different cars. To be fair, two of those cars [in Starter Set 3] are upgraded and compete in a tougher division (see below). It's good for most of the players to have a copy of the rules (the most important of which are on the turning-key, so you don't have to thumb through the book), and if everyone has different sets, you have that many more cars to play with.
How does it play? It's fast. Only two of us had played the old game before, and I was the only one who had looked at the new rules (for about 10 minutes) before we started shooting. There were five people playing and it took about two hours to play. Most of the old Car Wars rules are streamlined - there are only three phases to each round, not six, and you move every phase. The fastest cars always go first. Maneuvers (everything from drifting left or right to doing a bootlegger reverse) are rated with a number. The higher it is, the harder it is to accomplish. Each maneuver subtracts from your car's handling rating each turn, making it harder to keep control of your vehicle. This is dependent on speed, of course (it's harder to do a 75 degree turn at 90 than at 5 mph), but there's a handy chart on the turning-key to tell you what you need to roll to keep control (if you even need to; at lower speeds you can do several maneuvers without worrying). You get one such maneuver each phase for every three inches your car moves, and your handling value resets every turn. The scale is now 3x what it used to be, so you can use Match Box cars without any real trouble.
How do you kill things? Each car has a weapon or three, and you roll 2d6 with a few simple modifiers for range, car size, and so on (these, too, are on that increasingly handy turning-key). That's compared to a number based on your weapon - if it's lower, you hit and do damage. Some weapons, like spikes and mines, wait menacingly for some poor sop to run over them. Others, like the flamethrower, keep doing damage every round! Cars have armor, of course; you must penetrate this before you can trash your opponent's weapons, engine, tires (well, OK, you can target the tires first if you're just plain mean), and anyone in the car. By far the most dangerous attack in the game is the ram provided your car has a ram plate - this indispensable item reduces the damage you take from the ram but gives more to the person you're hitting. All of our kills involved ramming and we also discovered that ramming the side of a car is particularly effective. There were two occasions in our playtest where the attacker did enough damage to go THROUGH another car! I'm unsure if this makes ram plates unbalanced or not, since cars with good acceleration, long range weapons, or weapons in the rear and sides all have defenses against the ram.
And crashes? Car Wars offers several options here. You can skid, fishtail, t-bone, sideswipe, and even roll a car. The rules here are much simpler than in the old game. They're fast, but I think somewhat less satisfying than the original, because sometimes the cars will turn in bizarre directions after crashing into each other. Steve Jackson Games claims that the rules of the two editions are really not compatible (I suspect this is mostly in the car design department), but I see no reason why the old rules for handling crashes won't work OK (especially "conforming movement"). There are rules, too, for bad weather conditions - fog, rain, snow, and ice. That's nice when you want more crashing.
Other Rules? There are some rules for campaigns - how to increase a driver's fame and skill, how to repair cars between fights, how much money drivers should win compared to how well they fared, and so on. Cars fight in divisions based on the cost of the car - more money means better engines, armor, and more guns. There's not nearly as much there as in the old game, but what can you expect for $6 and under twenty pages? That means no rules for falling, jumping, or big rigs. Since the rules for falling and jumping in the old game were wonky anyway, I see no big loss, even if I can't do some of those Dukes of Hazard stunts.
To sum up, the new Car Wars is faster, meaner, and leaner than the original. It's fun, it's cheap, and it's easy to play. Some people might complain that after you buy the first set, you have to pay it again just to get four more car designs. To that I say, "It's only $6! You could buy all three and STILL be paying half the price of most RPGs today."
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