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Car Wars box art
1981 Ranked #3,183

Car Wars

Vehicular combat game where drivers customize armed cars and battle on future freeways for survival and fame. Weapons, armor, and driving skill improve with survival, so every road fight must destroy opponents without turning your own vehicle into wreckage.

Thematic Games Fighting Miniatures Grid Movement Impulse Movement

Players

2-8

Play time

Not listed

Age

10+

Complexity

3.11/5

Rating

6.43

Harder to teach Highly interactive Deep strategy

Overview

At a glance

Is this game right for my group?

ABG editorial scores on a 1–5 scale.

Teachability 2.3/5

Harder to teach

Replay value 3.9/5

High replayability

Interaction 3.6/5

Highly interactive

Player scaling 4.0/5

Scales well

Strategic depth 4.5/5

Deep strategy

See all 5 specifications

How it plays

How does it play?

Drive Offensively! Car Wars is a game featuring freeways of the future in which the right of way goes to those with the biggest guns.

Core mechanisms

Key systems that shape the decisions players make.

Read the full game description

Drive Offensively! Car Wars is a game featuring freeways of the future in which the right of way goes to those with the biggest guns. Players choose their vehicle — complete with weapons, armor, power plants, suspension, and even body style — then they take them out on the road, either to come home as "aces" or to crash and burn. If a driver survives, his abilities improve and he can earn money to buy bigger and better cars. Advanced rules let players design their own customized cars, trucks, and cycles. This entry covers Car Wars and Car Wars Deluxe, the first two editions of the rules. See also: Car Wars Compendium, a.k.a. CWC and CWCII, for the third and fourth editions of the rules Car Wars (Fifth Edition) for the revised and simplified edition of the game Mini Car Wars, an introductory version of Car Wars originally printed on a single sheet of paper, requiring only a pencil and six-sided dice. Car Wars Series for a complete list of expansions and supplements (including Autoduel Quarterly, the forty-issue Car Wars magazine)

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Editions

Language and publisher variants currently recorded in the catalog.

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Player resources

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Game and edition data

All specifications (5)

Play and group

Players
2–8
Best with
2–8
Play time
45 min
Age
10+
Complexity
3.1/5
Credits and catalog connections

Credits

Designers

2
Chad Irby Steve Jackson (I)

Artists

4
David R. Deitrick John Dismukes Denis Loubet George "Speed" Webber

Publishers

1
Steve Jackson Games