CAR WARS COUNTERS

 

 

I have been dual posting about my Mad Max Car Wars project on this blog and also on the Steve Jackson Car Wars forum and have had a few requests to post some of my other car counters that I have squeezed out of photoshop for use at home with my Car Wars game, so as a response I thought I would make a quick post to exhibit some of the different vehicles I have made in the past, there are others but this should be a good lot of samples, since printing them I have noticed a few areas that can be improved on, for example some of the colours are not quite right, glass glare going over vehicle roofs and even car proportions are a little out, anyway all this can be fixed, please enjoy, all comments are welcomed and if you would like to see a specific vehicle as a Car Wars counter please post it in the comments section, if my skill is upto it I'll have a crack at it. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I almost forgot to post some of the basic Car Wars arenas I made for the Vassal mod, good solid arenas for straight forward beginners style battles in a nice open area.

 

 

 

 

 

MAD MAX CAR COUNTERS

"I am the Nightrider. I'm a fuel injected suicide machine. I am the rocker, I am the roller, I am the out-of-controller!" - Nightrider

 

 

 

Well, I have been working feverishly on these Mad Max Car counters, going back and forth from my dvd movie copy making sure that the representation was as acurate as possible, adding as much detail as was worth adding, I think I like redesigned them like four times or something lol, it was fun trying to recreate them as Car Wars counters and trying to make them as acurate as I could, I think they turned out alright, I did a test print of them and placed an actual Car Wars counter next to them and couldn't tell the difference quality wise, I think I impressed my self Hahaha.

So basically I desgined all the MFP vehicles, Big Bopper, March Hare, Max's MFP Interceptor and the Nightrider's Pursuit Special, for the rest of the vehicles that will play a role in the scenario I will use standard Car Wars counters, this includes Gosling 1 and all of Toecutters motorcycle gang, truth be told I actually started these counters a couple of years ago, so most of the foundational work in photoshop had already been done, I  just made them better graphically, and added some more authentic detail, redid the colours a bit so they printed a little more vibrant (they were a little dark before) and I touched up some of the striping, so yeah, there you have it. FYI I based the MFP vehicles off some actual Ford Falcon blueprints, can you get anymore authentic than that ? Hahaha I think not.
  

 

From left to right we have Mad Max's MFP Interceptor, Big Bopper Pursuit Vehicle, March Hare Interceptor and the Nightrider's Stolen Pursuit Special.

SECTOR TWENTY SIX HIGHWAY NINE

 

Scenario: Sector 26 Highway Nine S26H9 (Mad Max Opening chase scene)

A motorcycle gang member nick named "Nightrider" kills a Main Force Patrol (MFP) officer while escaping police custody and attempts to outrun pursuing MFP officers in a stolen Pursuit Special.

World Setting:
 In the near future the Earth's oil supplies are nearly exhausted, world economies are nonexistent and  law and order has begun to break down due to energy shortages, a poorly-funded national police unit called the Main Force Patrol (MFP, derogatorily called "The Bronze" by their enemies), struggle to protect the local townspeople from violent motorcycle gangs.

Rules Used:
Car Wars Compendium Second Edition  (CWC 2.5) ,
Chassis and Crossbow: Low Tech-Autoduelling ADQ Vol1,No3
House Rules

Scenario starts with the March Hare chasing the Nightrider, after 2 turns the Big Bopper joins the chase from an intersecting road, after 3 turns Gosling 1 catches up to the pursuit from behind and after 4 turns Mad Max appears ahead in the horizon, if the Nightrider is still running he must engage Max in a game of chicken, after 6 turns if the Nightrider is still alive Toecutters gang catches up with the pursuit (from behind), it’s going to be a blood bath...

Scenario Objectives:
MFP must apprehend (not likely) or terminate the Nightrider.
Nightrider must survive 10 turns (no Chance).

Location:
Sector 26, Near the Anarchie rd Intersection along Highway Nine.

Notes:
All MFP officers are armed with pistols and all MFP cars have shotguns as standard issue, the Big Bopper is also carrying a rifle, Max also carries his signature sawn off shotgun.
4 out ten gang members are armed with pistols the rest have melee weapons.
2 gang members are also carrying molotov cocktails.
Melee weapons count as a D1 hazard, when they hit a car windscreen.
Gangers can only use one armed melee weapons while riding their bikes.

Teams:
Main Force Police (MFP)
2 x marked Ford Interceptors, 1 x marked Ford Pursuit,
1 x marked MFP KZ1000 motorcycle.

Toecutters Gang
1 x stolen unmarked Holden Pursuit Special, 10 x Kawasakai KZ1000 motorcycles.



So as you can see I have nutted out the scenario details and rule sets to be used, now I must be off, need to re-read  the rule sets and make a start on the Car counters and continue working on the terrain tiles.... rule the roads !

HIGHWAY NINE

Continuing on with my Mad Max themed Car Wars Project, I made a start on the terrain, after much deliberation I decided to make a mixture of both paper terrain and actual modeling terrain, traditionally, Car Wars is played on grided paper that was originally supplied within a boxed set or as part of an expansion set that you could buy in addition to a boxed set, this is how I remember Car Wars and for me this holds a certain romance, so I wanted to incorporate it into this project but also wanted to give it a modern vibe, I dont know If it will work the way I want it too, but I am willing to give it a go, fingers crossed.

 

 

 



So, the way I thought that it would work best was that I would set it up in a modular tile fashion, as they progress up the highway you take the last tile and flip it to the front kinda like 'leap frogin' this would go on until the scenario was resolved, being happy with the mechanics of it, I went to a hardware store and purchased eight 300 x 300mm MDF tiles, 6mm thick to keep away any bowing or flexing, this next bit was fairly easy, I centered the paper roads then glued them down flat, using wood glue, pretty simple but I think it looks effective so far, the next part is going to be the fun part, detailing the terrain, I will report back when I have done some more, thats all for now.  

 

 

 



CAR WARS MAD MAX STYLE

 

Hello everyone, its been fairly quiet around here, so I thought I would just make a quick

mention of some facts, as some of you know, I live in a two storey apartment, this combined with record temperatures here in Melbourne, Australia, of continual 30+ degree (86+ fahrenheit) days have contributed to me doing very little to no painting of miniatures, its warm up here most of the time but when you throw in continual heat day after day, painting becomes very difficult, even with the air con on I find that the paint still drys very quickly, pretty much not even worth doing, painting will resume when it cools down.   

 

 



 

 

So, what does a fella like me do when its too hot to paint? Breakout my fave Board game of course! Car Wars, published by Steve Jackson Games all the way back in the eighty's (where is that Hot tub time machine gone ?), it is a game based sometime in the future where civilization as we know it has kinda broken down and Auto duelling is a way of life, you may or may not remember this game, but either way it was my favorite board game as I was growing up, getting back to this game was always on the cards but fortune smiles on me once more, because that time has arrived. 

 

 



 

As the title of this post suggests I will be doing Car Wars with a Mad Max theme, infact, my first game of Car Wars will be based on the car chase scene from the first Mad Max movie, rules wise I will be using a combination of the Car Wars Compendium 2.5 rules and the rules found in an article of the 'Autoduel Quarterly' the official Car Wars Magazine, the article was called 'Chassis and Crossbow : Low-Tech Autoduelling, they are a classic set of rules that were almost made for Mad Max gaming (with minimal modifying), I will design some game counters and terrain and report back to this blog regularly with updates, eventually culminating in a battle report, this should not take me long to put together (I've heard those words before...).