That must be your friend over there. They didn’t leave much of him.
The high-octane-fuelled shenanigans continue in the second and final part of this exciting Battlecars battle report.
It was great fun getting this old classic back on the table, but I wonder if it wouldn’t benefit from a few rules tweaks now that some thirty years have passed between its original design and the present day. Alternating activations perhaps? A more interesting ‘to hit’ system? A better way of determining which interior component has been hit, thus avoiding the frequent re-rolling?
It’s also inspired me to look at some other car combat games from the past. Wreckage was an unheralded 2003 release from Fantasy Flight Games in their Silver Line range of small-box games, and it was really designed as a Matchbox-car scale miniatures game rather than a boardgame. It would be worth getting to the table. And of course there’s Games Workshop’s other game in this genre, Dark Future, which brings post-apocalyptic car combat to the highways. Gorkamorka was another one by GW, this time featuring Orky trucks and bikes. And of course there’s the grandaddy of them all – Steve Jackson’s Car Wars. I don’t have a copy, but did find it a bit too fiddly (and ugly) for my taste when I played it, way back in 1980 when it was released.
On the lighter side, there’s Rush n’ Crush (incongruously set in Rackham’s AT-43 universe), Z-Mans’s Road Kill Rally (which I have yet to play), and the simple kids’ game Thunder Road.
So many choices for vehicular mayhem. So put the pedal to the metal gamers!
Excellent Battle report UH!! I never saw a playthrough of Battlecars before. It looks like a very cool and fun game!! Could you tell me which car/racing games of the ones you listed in this article that you enjoy the most? I find Rush N Crush interesting, as it is set in the AT-43 world – and people say it is a very underrated game (as i do not think it did so well when it first came out). I just read up on Road Kill Rally and it looks hilariously offensive!! (running over and killing small kids and grandmas with walkers to obtain points to win!!) – definitely not for the faint of heart!
I will – when I’ve played more of them; they’ve all just come out of storage. I remember Rush n’ Crush being fun (though the AT-43 connection is unbelievably tenuous), and Wreckage had potential, but I haven’t played Road Kill Rally yet. It’s been decades since I tried Dark Future but I remember it being a bit too complex, and I never played Gorkamorka.
OK great! I am looking forward to it!