Game: Car Wars: The Card Game

Thread: Re: Car Wars - The Card Game Session/Review

leprejuan — 2008-01-18T21:54:54+00:00

spartax wrote:
Don't let the card game sour you on the real thing, though. Car Wars is a tremendously fun game.

Car Wars is a fun game.

This is not Car Wars.

I recommend this only for people who love Munchkin and other similar "take that" games. It is very big with early teens in my school game group, but tends to be quickly dropped in favor of Bang or other games with a bit more game to them.

Thread: Re: Car Wars - The Card Game Session/Review

spartax — 2008-01-18T21:42:05+00:00

Don't let the card game sour you on the real thing, though. Car Wars is a tremendously fun game.

Thread: Re: Car Wars - The Card Game Session/Review

asm_zero — 2008-01-18T18:50:31+00:00

Still doesn't really solve the problem as the first person eliminated from Guitar hero (would be me) must wait for at least one other person.

I think a better solution would be that the first person eliminated from either game gets to go drink some beer and grumble about how between Wii and boardgaming there wasn't a decent game to play.

Thread: Re: Car Wars - The Card Game Session/Review

coffeedream — 2008-01-18T18:22:11+00:00

You should have played the reverse...

Players who get eliminated in Guitar Hero are forced to play Car Wars...

Thread: Car Wars - The Card Game Session/Review

asm_zero — 2008-01-18T14:40:38+00:00

...or How we learned to stop worrying and just play the Wii.

Wednesday night three of us collected at a friends for some gaming. We began the evening with some Magic: TCG while our host put his kid to bed. 1) I won for a change, 2) I used his deck, 3) He's a jerk.

Child sleeping. What to play? Our host suggests we try Car Wars: The Card Game. Heavily armoured sports cars shooting missles and machine guns at each other, how can you go wrong? So we tear it open. While opening the box we have the obligatory conversation about when we are actually going to play Car Wars. No decision made.

Inside the box we find 6 large cards representing the cars. We each select one. Warhawk, Piranha, and Banzai. Red, Black, and Yellow. On these large cards is a depiction of the car we are assumed to be racing. Around the edges of the card arre listed the pertinent statistics for the car. To note, all of the cars are identical except for thweir colour. A further to note, there are two red cars. So back to the stats on the sheets. Each side of the card lists the number of damage points that need to be inflicted on that side of the car to penetrate the armour. In all cases it is 12 (Front, Rear, Left, and Right). The bottom left corner of the card indicates the amount of tire damage the car can take, 9 in all cases. In the middle of the card is printed the word driver and the number 5 indicating that the driver can take an additional 5 points of damage, once at leat one side of the vehicle has been destroyed, before being eliminated completely. And finally, the bottom right is where special cards are placed as they come into play. Two decks of cards (one of which had an almost matte back, the other glossy!?!). The art on the cards was respectable and the different coloured backs only noticable upon relatively close inspection. The decks included a number of different cards with various functions. The two most common being Attack and Armour cards. Attack cards indicate the type of attack being made, the location of the attcak, and the number of damage points being dealt. The armour cards indicate the location of the (spontaneously appearing) armour as well as the number of damage points that the armour prevents (which, I beleive, is always 3). The other cards in the deck were special cards that allowed for various counter attacks, special defences, and dirty tricks. Some examples follow; Spin: Allowing the holder to redirect damage currently targetting one section to any adjacent section, Swerve: Allowing the holder to prevent any damge card by inflicting a point of damage to their tires, Autocannon Backfires: Allowing the holder to counter a damage card where the type of attack is from an autocannon and also inflict the amount of damage prevented back on the attacker. There are a bunch of other special cards that all do similar things.

The two decks were shuffled together prior to realizing that 1) there were two Battle Cattle promo cards in the deck, and 2) in a three player game we needed to remove one each of three different kinds of special cards. So, cards removed, and we continued.

Each player was dealt a hand of 5 cards. And we began. Our host started.

The actual game play is very very simple. Draw a card. Play a card. So on each players turn the draw up to 6 cards and then played an attack card on one of their opponents. If they do not have an attack card, or do not wish to play an attack card from their hand, they must discard one card. This is so that they are always drawing up on the beginning of their turn. There are several exceptions to how cards are played. Armour cards are played in response to an opponent attacking your car, therefore they may be played out of your hand on an opponents turn. They must be played "immediately" or they do not count. Straight out of the rulebook. Not sure specifically what the means but I presume players are only given a second or so to play an armour card before the next player draws up. Also, special cards can be played at any time (at least the ones I saw could) so they can be play preventativly, in response to an attack, or, as one opponent decided to do, before the round had even started. Another thing to note is that you can play two armour cards that list the same location to prevent all damage from an attack. The maximum attack value is 6 (the flamethrower) and each armour card prevents 3.

The first game was quick (at least for me). Euro player take head, this card game has player elimination. I was eliminated early in the round and had to sit and watch for 5 or so minutes while my two other opponents barraged each other with machine gun fire. Now in a fast game player elimination is not a big deal but there are circumstances where this game could drag on, and on, and on. In our second match our host was eliminated early, and through poor draws my opponent and I just couldn't defeat each other. Finally the last card of the deck was damage enough to end the round but it tooko close to 10 minutes for a one on one duel. I can not imagine a six player game. The first player eliminated could have more than an hour to wait. If you are going to play this game with that many people I suggest you force eliminated players to sit out a couple rounds and then come back in with a fresh car. Keep a pool of kill counters in the center of the table for the player who dealt a killing blow. End the game at a predetermined number of kill counters.

In summary: the game is fast and fun, the art and card quality is fine, it is a decent time killer but nothing more. If you play normally expect eliminated players to leave the table and play Guitar Hero.

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Fantas — 2007-12-18T13:57:27+00:00

Some cards with the second edition graphics

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broken_halo20575 — 2007-12-08T07:28:12+00:00

Thread: Optional Rules

keeper0 — 2007-11-26T17:05:44+00:00

Like the folks who did the reviewing, I thought this game was enjoyable.

The lack of any real strategy and the "pick on the weak" aspect kept it from being a good replayable game.

Here are my ideas for additional rules:
- When attacked, you may spin without the SPIN card, but it causes two points of damage to your tires. You are still vulnerable to the SKID INTO THE WALL card. You cannot do this if your tires are blown. (It takes four damage to the tires to spin the damage to the opposite side of the car)
- When attacked, you may swerve without the SWERVE card but it causes five points of damage to your times. You are still vulnerable to the SKID INTO THE WALL card. You cannot do this if your tires are blown.
- If you discard all six cards (and do not unjam your machine gun) you may perform an emergency repair. You may move one damage card (along with any armor that was played on it at the time of the hit) from one side of the car to any other. You may NOT move damage to or from your tires.

What I was looking for here was a way to let you distribute damage around the car more. In our games, once one side of a player's car was hit for six or more damage, nobody would shoot him anywhere else. That meant there was no point for that player to have armor for any other side.

Also, after the first couple rounds, nobody was shooting at anyone's tires. It wasn't worth the 2-3 shots it would take to knock them out. But if the player self inflicted five or six points on their own tires, it would be worth a missile or machine gun to take them out.

I would also like some "Robo Rally" like options so that each car is different, but I haven't thought those through yet.

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MartinStever — 2007-07-17T05:22:45+00:00

Front cover

Thread: More Cards For More Chaos!

GothPunkGeek — 2007-06-17T22:26:24+00:00

I'm planning to get a second set to add more cards for each weapon and even creating brand-new weapons to add to the chaotic ~~evil~~ fun!

I'll edit this post when I finalize these ideas.

Thread: Re: Car Wars: The Card Game and Multiple Intelligences

UnluckyNumber — 2007-05-28T01:21:22+00:00

My father was once friends with a gentleman who used to act as scoutmaster for a local boyscout troop, and he began "volunteering" me to the fellow for the troop's yearly summer camping trip since their safety rules required a certain quota of adults, either parents or volunteers, to go along. So of course I took along some games, and Car Wars: tCG was definitely a success. After a long, hard day of earning merit badges and dodging mosquitos, the scouts were generally more than ready to shoot some cars up. Great game.

Although I did find that, when 5 or more of the kids were playing, I needed to institute a rule that no one could attack anyone in the first round. Prior to that house rule, it was not uncommon for the scout going last to find himself dead before even drawing his first card of the game. That didn't sit quite right with me; everyone should at least get one turn of play before being destroyed. All in all though, they loved this game. I think I may even have donated one of my extra copies to the troop when I was no longer able to volunteer.

Another game I used to take along with that the scouts couldn't get enough of was "Wrasslin'", a card game of professional wrestling.
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/1579
It's gameplay is similar to Car Wars: tCG, but a little more complicated. And since it's about professional wrestlers mixing it up in the ring rather than about road warriors shooting each other's cars up, you don't have to worry so much about complaints of the violence from parents. (Not to say that Wrasslin' isn't darn violent too.)

Both games go over with kids really, really well. And, as you say, with many adults too.

Thread: Car Wars: The Card Game and Multiple Intelligences

sdonohue — 2007-05-06T14:37:11+00:00

Car Wars: The Card Game is a pretty good example of well-themed “take that” game. It is not deeply strategic, nor is it particularly tactical. It is a lot of fun though.

Components
The game comes with 6 large cards to represent the cars and a 110 card deck of assorted attacks, defenses, and special abilities.
The layout of the cards is very good and does a great job of helping with the bookkeeping in the game.

Gameplay
The gameplay is pretty simple. Each turn you draw back up to six cards. You may then either attack, play a special or discard at least one card.
If you attack, then you choose another player to hit with your attack. That player can then respond with either armor or specials in order to negate, redirect, or reduce the effect of your attack.
Each vehicle has 12 points of armor on each side – typical attacks do 3-6 points. Once a side is breached (by taking 12 points of damage) additional shots on that side affect the driver who is killed when he takes 5 points.
The winner is the last player who remains alive.

Intelligences
This review is part of a series of reviews I’m doing as I evaluate games my wife may use in her classroom or that I’m using with my Boy Scouts. Apart from the normal review, I try to identify the kinds of intelligence that the game will use. For an explanation of multiple intelligences, see: my blog post at: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/article/786097

Linguistic Intelligence
There is quite a bit of text on some of the cards, so reading and comprehending is helpful, but not strictly an advantage.

Logical-Mathematical Intelligence
You definitely need to be able to add the numbers up in order to do 12 and then 5 points of damage.

Interpersonal
This is a “take that” game and it lends itself to an “attack the wounded” strategy. Being able to convince other players not to attack you when you are the most wounded is a valuable skill and relies heavily on interpersonal intelligence.

Intrapersonal
Like all “take that” games this one can lead to bullying and the feeling of being picked on. Having enough maturity to realize this is not personal is mandatory

Age Appropriateness
The theme is obviously troublesome for some, since it is basically “kill the other guy”. The “take that” element compounds this and makes it a game best played by children who are at least 10 in my experience. Even so, I have seen allegedly mature gamers become very angry during this game.

Recommendation
I love this game. My scouts really love it. If you don’t mind the shooting theme, this is a great game. The rules are simple and the theme is very appealing to kids in the 10-16 age range (as well as many adults). It is not a huge strategy game, but it makes up for that by being quick, having easy rules, and executing an interesting theme exceptionally well.

Edit - Corrected tags for formatting.

Thread: Re: How I left my tail swingin' in the breeze in 3 quick rou

Rliyen — 2007-04-11T11:02:31+00:00

Krisjohn wrote:
Good question. I pulled out a deck of Fluxx one Friday evening and all I got were cries of how it was too complicated.

Fluxx complicated? Jeez. Granted, the game's not my cup of tea, but it's easy to pick up.

Thread: Re: How I left my tail swingin' in the breeze in 3 quick rou

Rliyen — 2007-04-11T11:00:26+00:00

We play during our lunch hour, away from the office. So, we only get the occasional quizzical looks from passersby at the restaurant we eat at.

Thread: Re: How I left my tail swingin' in the breeze in 3 quick rou

Krisjohn — 2007-04-11T06:00:17+00:00

Good question. I pulled out a deck of Fluxx one Friday evening and all I got were cries of how it was too complicated.

Thread: Re: How I left my tail swingin' in the breeze in 3 quick rou

plutonick — 2007-04-10T21:54:47+00:00

Erm, where do you work?

It would be very strange playing card games with my co-workers, what with working in a large auditing firm and all..

Thread: How I left my tail swingin' in the breeze in 3 quick rounds

Rliyen — 2007-04-10T20:13:26+00:00

As a change of pace from Dark Cults, I introduced my co-worker to yet another card game: CAR WARS.

She was a bit stand offish and whined, "you don't know how to play?" when I was going through the rule book to refresh my memory on how to play. I shushed her and explained the rules to the game. I picked the Banzai car, she picked the "Batman car" (The Pirhana). I dealt each of us six cards and away we went.

Round 1: We spent mostly sniping back and forth on our cars. She kept nailing the rear of my car and breached the armor, whereas I kept trying to nail her left side and she kept swerving and applying armor cards. Once my rear armor was breached, I left the arena. Cyndi: 20. Me: 0. (But alive!)

Round 2: Autocannon backfires were order for the round. She banged up her right side, while my left got blown to pieces. However, I did succeed in taking out her tires and I planned to destroy her like an opportunistic vulture. Alas, she succeeded in breaching my rear armor again. Again, I hauled my exposed butt out of the arena. Cyndi: 40. Me: 0 (I'm cowardly, but scrappy!)

Round 3: I tried destroying her rear armor with missiles, which led to double entendres such as, "Missile to the REAR!" She either swerved or used Dud Missiles to negate them. I shot up the front, right, and rear of her car but I could never gain traction in getting just one particular side. If I did, she usually had armor to mitigate my hits. As in the previous rounds, she completely blew my back armor off. I ran like a whipped pup off the field, broken but unbowed! Cyndi: 60. Me: 0.

Cyndi was the winner, completely shutting me out. I whined that it was the car that gave me bad joss and made a point to switch cars next time.

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Lobo — 2007-01-19T20:51:05+00:00

Box Front

Thread: Re: User Review

_JTM_ — 2006-03-18T08:41:05+00:00

I've recently tried this game and i think it's a good game.
Perhaps it lacks of something to be a great game:
All the cars have the same stats: it would be much more fun if the cars had stats slightly different from each other, with some special and unique abilities, and related card strategy.
Card strategy: cards don't interact with each other very much. I mean, there aren't so much combo to try to do, so there is not so much strategy in the hand management. Just hope to get the right attack card and fire it!
A simple and relaxing game, but in the same genre Cold Naval Wars is better!
Just my two cents...

Thread: Re: Need rules... Must have...

Jocab — 2005-05-21T13:15:39+00:00

Thanks to Francesco and Maluus who both send me the rules within 2 minutes!

I dont need anymore rules! Unless, ofcourse, you have some houserules! But then you can upload them here!

And now for some realistic car-action...

/Jakob

Thread: Need rules... Must have...

Jocab — 2005-05-19T18:27:19+00:00

Hi there,

Resently I found this game at a friends house, but the rules are missing. Can anybody help me? A scan, pure .txt - anything would be usefull!

/Jakob

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brianeikunst — 2005-03-01T21:03:34+00:00

Back of box (newer edition)

Thread: User Review

phoeniix — 2005-02-14T17:41:55+00:00

Bought this game off a second hand shop years ago for the nostalgic fact that I used to own Car Wars.

The Components:
The game comes in a portable box measuring round 12 by 20 cm and included within the box are 6 large coloured "car cards" and 110 playing cards. The various car cards are distinguished by 2 factors - the various basic colours that the cars are painted in and the name. Other than that they all have the same stats. I should not neglect to mention that the large car cards are made of some flimy and lousy card board material hence, it is easily damaged if not taken care of.

The game play:
The game play is simple - kill all other opponents and score 60 points to win the game.

Points are awarded in the following fashion
1) 10 points for each kill
2) 20 points for being the last one standing in each duel

In order to score a kill, players must play attack cards to breach the armour of a car. Once the armour has been breached, the driver would then be attacked. Once the driver had taken 3 hits, he would then be unable to drive the car and thus a "kill" is scored.

Attack cards normally have a value ranging from 3 - 6 and this may be modified either by a special or armour card.

Each duel normally last between 10 - 20mins and an entire game about 30 mins.

My Comments
In all, Car Wars The Card Game is a pretty simple game to play and would act well as a "filler". This game itself is quite a luck based game for the amount of damage one is able to deal depends of the kind of cards that you draw and it goes the same as well for defense. Like I've said, the game acts well as a time killer and nothign more. It does not have the "X factor" that keeps gamers entertained for after a few duels, the game itself grows stale. If you would have to buy it, get it second hand if possible (I got mine at A$15)

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Wisphunter — 2004-09-02T01:08:31+00:00

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Wisphunter — 2004-09-02T01:08:17+00:00

Thread: Session Report

rgtft — 2004-08-09T04:25:03+00:00

Gail and Nathan wanted to play one more game, so we pulled out the Car Wars Card Game which hadn't been played in a while. Car Wars is silly, quick fun. Nathan's bragging made him the early target. The sharks smelling blood in the water quickly eliminated Nathan. Gail and Rob traded pounding until Rob finally died.

Winner: Gail

Nathan being dissapointed at his early ouster in the first game, wanted to play another. Gail and Rob obliged Nathan with a hail of machine guns, missles and auto-cannons. Nathan again had not learned his lesson about drawing attention to himself -- he was again the first one out. This time Rob won the hard fought duel with Gail. Both players had two sides breached before Gail finally sucumbed.

Winner: Rob

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2002-01-01T17:25:58+00:00

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2001-07-08T07:47:49+00:00

Thread: Session Report

PBrennan — 2001-01-01T06:00:00+00:00

11 tee'd off at the PGA, a record, spreading out over three tables (another record) through Arenas 2 and 3.

Present: Andrew, Craig, Fleur, Garth, Iain, Jeff, Kevin, Llyn, Nick, Rick and myself

Games on the tables:

First time out for this shoot 'em up fest. Everyone has a car in a demolition derby where anything goes ... missiles, autocannon, flamethrowers and the like. Each car has 12 points of protection on each of its 4 sides and 9 points for tyres. Players have 6 cards made up of various attack and defense cards. Attack cards say how much damage accrues to which side of a car. As your go, you generally play an attack card on someone else's car. If they don't have a defensive card, they've scored that much damage to the designated side. Once a side has been penetrated (ie 12 points damage), then the driver is at risk. If you can score 5 more points damage through the penetrated side, the driver dies, the player dies. The game continues until there's one car / player left.

The first player picks someone at random and attacks a side of a player's car. If successful, the other players will likely continue the attack if they can (remember the cards designate which side you can attack). Otherwise, attack someone else's car and hope the other players can ram home the advantage there. You get 10 points for landing a killing blow and bonuses for being last standing.

In our game, my right side leaked like a sieve and I was out of the game inside 3 minutes I kid you not. The hole in the dyke exploded. It took maybe 20 minutes for the others to sort themselves out.

Scores: Round 1: Craig 40, Garth 10 (killed), Kevin 0 (escaped the arena like the cowardly dog he is), Pat 0 (killed) Round 2: Craig 70, Garth 30, Kevin 0

A rating of 4 after 1 play for 'not so good, but could be talked into it on occasion'. It's a pus-y, pick on someone and keep hitting them while you can game that has a player elimination mechanic. You'll either get good cards or not so there's little if any skill. The only reason for not marking it lower is that it's certainly flavoursome, is quick enough at 15 minutes so the result doesn't matter much and it can be fun lashing out random destruction in the forms it provides.