Car Wars: Test Play

Well, I finally got around to putting the Car Wars reprint I bought last year into use.  With kids in the house I've got Matchbox/Hot Wheels to spare, so we played at triple scale and tripled all distances in the game.

I've got three cars currently being repainted - one with flames running from the front, one with a lightning paint job, and one working toward having a shark's mouth on the front end like a World War II fighter plane.  We'll call them Inferno, Lightning, and Barracuda for now.  I took Barracuda and the boys controlled the other two cars.

I gave them all stats for a Stingray (compact car with 2 x machine guns linked on the front) and the boys and I squared off.  I intentionally kept the cars simple and wanted to just re-learn the physics of the game I forgot 20 years ago.  I grew up on this game, and it started to come back pretty quickly.

I set up three gates between pillars (sippy cups without the lids and plastic bowls - sorry, I haven't put time into Car Wars terrain yet) and the stated goal was to get a car through all three gates or kill off the competition.

And they're off!

Inferno starts off facing Stingray as the latter prepares to take his first gate.

Lightning maneuvers through his first gate easily.

Inferno and Barracuda exchanged fire and mostly lost their front armor before Barracuda peeled off.

Barracuda runs through his second gate after exchanging some fire with Lightning.  Note the dice kept by each car - Handling Class marked with a d6, 2d10 show current speed.  The dice on the top of the bowls show the turn (second) and phase (fifth of a second).

After passing each other, Barracuda turns to chase down Lightning.  Lightning takes a few hits and sheds armor during the process.

Barracuda peels right, giving Lightning some respite, changing targets to fire a few rounds at Inferno.

The two cars pass each other after punching a bit through each other's front armor.

Lightning heads left to right across the autoduel arena to make his next gate as Barracuda wheels around to close the deal with Inferno.

Inferno and Lightning have a near miss as Barracuda continues to wheel behind Inferno.

Barracuda closes the distance with Inferno, unloading with his linked MGs and managing to do only 3 points of damage to Inferno's rear armor.

I accelerated Barracuda and rammed Inferno.  The small difference between their speeds (40 mph vs 30 mph) meant that this wasn't very damaging.

Stingray decelerates at this point - I was afraid that if I didn't, we'd hit a pillar together and die.  This was entirely motivated by self-interest - I used the extreme proximity to unload with both barrels into Inferno's rear armor, slicing through and killing the driver.

With the driver dead, Inferno raced into a side wall and lived up to his name.  Ha!

With one car out, Barracuda maneuvered around as Lightning was turning to face him.  They made one last run at each other (think jousting, with machine guns), and Barracuda's weakened front armor let Lightning's fire wreck the machine guns and damage the engine.

The two cars barely miss each other.  With Barracuda's guns out of commission, I conceded the round to Lightning's driver.

The cars are coming along, terrain will soon be constructed.  Look forward to more Car Wars on the blog!