Models on the Car Wars Workbench

Back in November 2019, I saw that Steve Jackson Games were going to “release” a revised sixth edition of Car Wars, using 1/64th scale models though Kickstarter. I took the plunge and ordered Car Wars 6th Edition on Kickstarter. Here we are in June 2022 and the box has finally arrived.

Car Wars Logo

North America, A.D. 2070. It’s a new American frontier. The collapse of the U.S. government plunged the country back into the good old days — days of wilderness lawlessness, banditry, regional dictators, and of the men and women who combat them. Modern-day knights and gunslingers are in demand; but the automobile has replaced the horse, and the machine-gun and recoilless rifle have made the sword and Winchester obsolete. Car Wars is the game of autoduelling; futuristic vehicular combat where the right of way goes to the biggest guns. Players design their cars — complete with weapons, accessories, and crew — and then take them into the arena where one emerges victorious . . . and the others are annihilated.

In the core set I got there are two boxes each with six cars. These are really nice sharp castings and have a lot of detail. I really like all the vehicles. They are 1/64th scale models.

These are the six cars in Miniatures Box A.

Scarab
Scarab
Warhawk
Warhawk
Hotshot
Hotshot
Hammer
Butcher
Typhoon
Typhoon

These are the six cars in Miniatures Box B.

Dragon
Dragon
Slipstream
Jackrabbit
Superflash
Goblin
Boomerang

The next step will be a white undercoat.

I have started workbench features on all twelve cars to record progress.

Windscreening

So this model started off with an old Hot Wheels New Beetle that I “found” in a box in the garage…

I wanted to try out some painting techniques, weathering powders and transfers, before I started painting not only my other Gaslands cars, but also my Forge World Ork models.

rusty beetle

Having added some transfers and done some weathering I started thinking about enhancing the model, so decided to paint the windscreen.

This went through a range of techniques, but I’m not too happy about the end result. I wanted a dark blue look to the windscreen with lighter highlights. I also used some contrast and inks to make it look like glass. I don’ think it worked,  but that’s the point of this model it’s a testbed for techniques.

Preparing for Gaslands

Gaslands Logo

Last month I tweeted the following about creating some 1/64th scale models for Car Wars and also Gaslands, using toy cars as the base model and then converting them.

Since then I have purchased the new edition of Gaslands Refuelled which I think is an improvement on the existing set of rules, and I like the hardback format as well. Some great photographs in there too.

Gaslands Refulled

I also re-discovered Car Wars and found that the rules were freely available online, and I have been enjoying reading the rules that I used for many autodials back in the 1980s.

Car Wars Rules

I also saw that Steve Jackson Games were going to “release” a revised sixth edition of Car Wars, using 1/64th scale models though Kickstarter. However this won’t be available or launched until the end of 2020 (or for international people like me, early 2012).

I went out and got some toy cars to convert for games in the meantime. My local branch of the Entertainer had some interesting cars from Matchbox and Hot Wheels on sale. So I got five cars for less than five pounds!

I got a couple of Jurassic World branded vehicles that I thought would work in the world of Car Wars, with appropriate modifications.

This is a Mercedes Benz G Wagon, which is used by the military in some countries, but I think it would make a good truck.

This Jurassic World vehicle is already armoured and almost ready for Car Wars or Gaslands. Just need to add some vehicular weaponry.

I am intending to purchase the Gaslands plastic sprue for additional weapons and defensive bits. I am also thinking of using some of the spare parts I have from my Flames of War models.

From the Hot Wheels range I got a 1978 Dodge pick-up truck, as for Car Wars, you really need to have a pick-up truck.

I also got this muscle car with super-charger.

And this sports car, well one should have a Mustang on the table at some point. One of the reasons I chose these two models, was they were white, so hopefully a little easier to paint.

What I don’t know yet is if I should strip the models first, or just undercoat them and then paint them.

Car Wars Sixth Edition Preview

I have been wondering about the new edition of Car Wars, so it was interesting to watch this preview of the new rules.

Car Wars Sixth Edition is a complete redesign of the original game of autoduelling. It plays faster and includes new plastic miniatures.

So it captures the spirit of the original game, but loses a lot of the complexity. Sounds like it will be interesting to see it in the flesh.

Car Wars 6th Edition Kickstarter

So having started looking again at Car Wars, and seeing what is out there, I was intrigued to read on the Daily Illuminator that there will be a Black Friday Kickstarter launch for the sixth edition of Car Wars…

Work continues on Car Wars Sixth Edition, with lots of energy going into the construction of the Kickstarter campaign page. Building a page is never easy, but creating an attractive, information-packed page for our biggest game of 2020 is more challenging than you may realize. Getting all of the graphic assets in place, the manufacturing costs nailed down, the stretch goals ready, and the near-endless other details prepped consumes a lot more bandwidth than any other Kickstarter campaign we have run this year.

Still, we’re on track for a November 29 launch! For those who join us on that very first day of the project, we have a Black Friday special reward level coming. You are planning to join us on Day One, right? You won’t want to miss out on Uncle Albert’s Black Friday special. This is gonna be epic!

There was also a picture of some new models for Car Wars…

Car Wars Miniatures

I’ve not done a Kickstarter before, though have heard some good things (and some bad things) about them. This time I may take the plunge…

The cars look very “modern” and “futuristic”, kind of expect from the future world of Car Wars. My own thinking for Car Wars is more akin the “Chassis and  Crossbow” or Gaslands style, a little more Mad Max kind of look.

Add-on bits for toy cars for 20mm Car Wars

After my most recent blog post about Car Wars, I was reading my most recent copy of Wargames Illustrated when I noticed that in the Northstar Figures advert was this…

Implements of Carnage

It’s a plastic sprue of 20mm scale parts for toy cars for the game Gaslands Refueled.

You get two sprues for £10 from Northstar Figures, which though expensive for a couple of plastic sprues, isn’t really that bad I guess. These days it seems really easy to design and sell plastic models, it hasn’t always been like that. Since thinking about converting some toy cars, I did wonder what I could use for weapons, well this makes things much easier.

Car Wars Rules

I recently on Twitter mentioned how I was looking at converting some toy cars for Car Wars.

I have been inspired back into automobile combat after reading the Gaslands rules.

Back in the 1980s I played a lot of Car Wars and has bought most of the rules back then, but I have no idea where they are now. I had most of the supplements and lots of the ADQ (AutoDuel Quarterly) magazine. I did subscribe to the magazine and it always use to confuse the Royal Mail as Steve Jackson Games sent the magazine from the USA, as is, no envelope, no plastic bag. At least one got damaged I think in the post, but most arrived okay.

I like the fact, that though the rules are out of print Steve Jackson Games have made them into PDFs you can buy.

I was also really pleased to see on an official Steve Jackson Games web site I have found a link to a free PDF of the original Car Wars rules. 

Skimming through the rules was like a blast from the past, bringing back happy memories of many games of Car Wars from over thirty years ago.

I think though I might splash out on some of the PDFs of ADQ and Uncle Albert’s Catalog.

Gaslands

Gaslands

One of the things I saw recently published was Gaslands.

Gaslands RulesFor Christmas I received a copy of Gaslands, the post-apocalyptic vehicle combat game from Osprey.

Gaslands is a tabletop game of post-apocalyptic vehicular mayhem. With fast and cinematic rules, it is designed to be played with toy cars, allowing players to ram, skid and race their way through the wreckage of a burnt-out Earth.

Back in the day I was introduced to vehicular combat playing Games Workshop’s Battlecars and very quickly moved onto Car Wars.
I really liked Battlecars, the combination of templates, tokens and a game board. The game mechanics were simple, but it was a fun game and really created the right experience of car combat.

Though we continued to play Battlecars, we moved to Car Wars mainly as the lack of vehicle design rules was frustrating and Car Wars had them in abundance. As well as the core design rules I really liked The Uncle Albert’s™ Auto Stop and Gunnery Shop catalogues, which were always fun to read.

The Uncle Albert's™ Auto Stop and Gunnery Shop catalogues

Car Wars though more complex than Battlecars was still able to create fun and exciting games of vehicular mayhem.

I had many games of Car Wars and Battlecars. I even had articles published in Autoduel Quartely. These were great games and a lot of fun.

Interestingly I never played Games Workshop’s Dark Future vehicle combat game.

So as you cam imagine I approached Gaslands with a combination of expectation, anticipation and a little hesitancy. So far I have only read the background and the rules.

First impressions of the rules was positive and I liked the use of templates, which did remind me slightly of Dark Future. I liked the relatively simplicity of the rules which for means they will be easy to pick up and result in fast fun games.

For me the biggest shock was the background. I knew that the game was set in a post apocalyptic future, the surprise was that the apocalypse was caused by an alien invasion!

I do need to make some models, and now I wished I had played Dark Future as I would then have models I could use.

Time to find some toy cars…

Dystopian Wars

I don’t know about you, but occasionally I find a game that I think just makes me go “woah!” and I just have to have it.

I remember playing Talisman (1st Edition) for the first time and thinking what an amazing boardgame. I had before playing Talisman only played boardgames like Monopoly, and Talisman was so very different. That was nearly thirty years ago…

Since then other games that have had a similar impact include Car Wars, Twilight 2000 and Space 1889. I really enjoyed playing Car Wars and spent many hours designing vehicles and playing it back in the 1980s. I loved the concept behind Twilight 2000 and though I never really got a chance to play it for a lengthy campaign, I did enjoy reading articles and scenarios for it. Space 1889 was one of those ideas that I hadn’t really considered before and was my first introduction to Victorian Science Fiction (well the First Men in the Moon aside). Since then I have really enjoyed VSF and steampunk, I really liked the Difference Engine and even wrote an article on wargaming in the world of the Difference Engine.

So a few months back when I was a gaming shop in Birmingham and noticed the Dystopian Wars, I was like a moth to a candle! This was one of those games that I just had to have and would have to play.

Imagine a world similar to our own, but subtly different. Now imagine the year is 1870 and the Industrial Revolution occurred decades earlier than in our own world. Technology is far advanced, and in many cases, unrecognisable, which has led to the development of fantastic naval vessels, hulking land ships and terror from the skies in the form of airships and war balloons.

Looking at the models, unfortunately the rules had sold out, there was one model that caught my eye and that was the model I had to have and would set me down the path of the Dystopian Wars. It was the Prussian Sky Fortress.


Having decided that this was a definite purchase, I realised that I would also need an opponent and looking at the boxed sets, I decided to go with the Kingdom of Britannia.

A few weeks later I managed to get hold of the rulebook and was very impressed with the content and production values.

So time to get painting.