YeeHaww! This is one hell of a boxed set containing Car Wars rules and the Car Wars Compendium. If you haven't played Car Wars before let's say that it is a fast and fun game of vehicular combat. The deluxe Car Wars expands greatly upon the original while keeping the price low for a boxed set.

What's New

Deluxe Car wars adds rules for beefing up your autoduelist to the point that it's a full fledged character as in other rpgs. To go along with the rpg capabilities a wonderful bunch of rules for taking combat out of the arena and rules for combat with all sorts of vehicles. Have you ever wanted dune buggy popping beach combers with rocket launchers taking on surfboard commandos with uzis? I didn't until this game made it an option for me!

What's Old

Classic arena battles are here with lots of carboard chits for cars. Ignore the chits. Double the size and use matchbox cars. If you have a lot of room get some of those Monogram snap together kits.

Mechanics

The entire thing uses d6s as befits a game done by Steve Jackson. Everything is really smooth. Damage locations are fairly intuituve. Rules are given for all sorts of manoevers. Car chases take a bit of work since that's not the focus, but pulling stunts is okay. Don't expect to reenact the Blue Brothers' shopping mall and you probably won't be let down.

Setting

It's a huge parody of post apocolyptic stuff. Lots of silly organizations have silly acronyms and the sport of choice is autoduelling. It's pretty funny actually but not the main draw.

The Art

Ouch. Steve Jackson Games often don't have great artwork. This one didn't. Empty sidebars made me feel like I was paying for more than I got. Images that stand out are the ads for weapons and vehicle upgrades that accompany some of the entries in the compendium. Otherwise think of how GURPS Lite looked.

Style: 3 (Average)
Substance: 5 (Excellent!)