Car Wars Unboxing

On our first day of Gen Con, one of the things Kyle was anxious for was the new release (or re-release?) of Car Wars Classic. No, this is not the pocket box - this is an actual "box" about the size of Munchkin.

Anyone who knows me knows that growing up Car Wars was my favorite game. I still run PBEM games of it - current one is at http://mh42-madhatpbem.blogspot.com    And for about 10 episodes I published a Car Wars Podcast. Thanks to the wayback machine and another Car Wars fan, I have collected all of these old episodes and am planning to resurrect the show. I'm trying to decide if I want to republish the old episodes "as is" (in a "classic" move) or incorporate the content into new shows first. This will preserve the classic content but let me take out ads for podcasts that are no longer around as well as links that are no longer good. :-)

Anyway, I was excited that Kyle was excited about it and gladly bought it for him. We did an unboxing, but played X-Wing miniatures instead. :-) I was impressed that the counters were "punched" (in the old days we had to take scissors to them) and that it even had a turning key! The map was a VERY nice addition as I expected no map or at the very most road sections.

I had some response from some Twitter posts, so before we left town I took pics of the contents. This blog post includes them all...

This was a pic I posted on Twitter and had some responses.

And this one as well.

The rest, below, are an official "unboxing." :-)

Box Top...

Box Bottom...

Close up of the name of that side of the map.

Pretty sure the website wasn't there in 1990... ;-)

Reminded me of the Muskogee Expansion, just smaller.

The arena side.

This reminded me of one I found a long time ago and called it "Wall to Wall." The solid black lines are tall walls that block movement AND line of sight. The While ones block movement only.

This was referred to on the forums as the "floppy disk arena." Can you guess why? :-)

Larger shot...

The rulebook. I verified that it's 5 phase movement and the crash tables looked like 2.5.

The "bits." This was one of the most impressive parts! Remember how we had to cut these out in the old days? Everything was just like you see it here, including the turning key!

Some blank record sheets were included.

Weapons list had the basic stuff, but NOT all of the various "nickel and dime" stuff.

Notice the MG and VMG, but NOT the LMG, MMG or HMG.

All in all, a good opening, and VERY refreshing after seeing Version 5 a few years ago... This is the old game, but not boats and such. It's the game as it was meant to be played.