Car Wars (fifth edition) (2002)

The 5th Edition release of Car Wars. The combat rules have been simplified for faster play, and the scale has been increased to 1/60th making a lot of the calculations and movements easier.

Part of the Car Wars Series, 5th Edition is not a single book, but rather a collection of comic-book sized books. Any of the Division sets (see below) is enough to get started. As of early 2009 there are still not official construction rules for 5th Edition, rather each book in the series has a number or pre-designed cars. However, in the online Car Wars forums at Steve Jackson Games' website, there are un-official but reliable vehicle construction rules posted and available for those who wish "make their own" autoduel cars.

Expanded by:

• Division 5, Set 1: Killer Kart vs. Shrimp
• Division 5, Set 2: Stinger vs. Firecracker
• Division 5, Set 3: Dagger vs. Napalm
• Division 5 Vehicle Guide (with 24 new cars)
• Division 10, Set 1: Firedemon vs. Hammer
• Division 10, Set 2: Joseph Special vs. Scrambler
• Division 10, Set 3: Eradiator vs. Blitz
• Division 15, Set 1: Hotshot vs. Piranha (with Div. 20 variants)
• Division 15, Set 2: Lightstrike vs. Banshee
• Division 15, Set 3: Vindicator vs. Dragon
• Arena Book 1 (with four Div. 15 cars)

Home Page: Car Wars at Steve Jackson Games

I have owned stupidly huge amounts of Car Wars products throughout my gaming life and have sold off those collections twice. My current collection is easily as large as my previous two collections combined. Yeah, I can remember the black box games hanging on pegs. I never did play a whole lot of face-to-face games until recently, but I've always loved the game. Now that I have kids, I want to get them into the arena, so I started wondering about "upgrading" to the most-recent 5th edition. So I went to the source - fellow autoduellists on the SJG Car Wars forum. I asked:

What are my must-buy bits? I'm trying to maximize my coverage and minimize my investment. Here's what I'm thinking:

Arenas book
Div 15 #1
Div 5 vehicle guide

That would get me 24 Div5 cars, 6? Div15 cars (4 in the Arena book & 2? in the 15/1 book), and the Div20 variants in the 15/1 book. Mebbe I should add a Div10 book? But that'd give me a ton of vehicles in a wide range with just three books.

Thanks to Chaoticsyst3m:

Six 5e rulebooks will get you ALL weapons and ALL accessories.

THE ESSENTIAL 5E:

Arena Book 1 (VFRP, Surge Rocket)
Division 10 Set 2 (Oil Jet)
Division 15 Set 1 (Blast Cannon, Paint Spray)
Division 15 Set 2 (Heavy Laser, Sonic Cannon)
Division 15 Set 3 (Vulcan MG, Extra Magazine)
Division 5 Vehicle Guide (Dischargers and everything else still missing)