Let's Talk: Star Wars Games

craniac wrote: I wish someone would come up with a Car Wars game with the playability and collectability of the Star Wars mini game. You could have weapons you could pop onto the little cars. Burning wreckage markers. And rules that didn't bloat up like a dead cow in the desert sun.

This exists, sort of, but without the collectible aspect because you need to build them out of the box, or buy them from certain vendors and spruce them up yourself. Seriously, though, there's a LOT of post-apoc car games out there, some of which rock and some of which suck, like anything else. I love Wastelands 3: Meltdown myself...I think it's actually the best miniatures game ever made: s1.zetaboards.com/Post_Apoc_Wargames/topic/4759552/1/
The car rules begin on page 30. I actually had this printed and bound.

Warlands is OK. Well, to be fair, better than OK, but just a little on the tedious side but not too bad. They sell their own car line:


Nuclear Renaissance is really great with a strong focus on car combat. Still not the best, but good. They also sell some cars (or bikes, rather):


Axles and Alloys is a decent, simple, fast, pretty good car game. Played it once with hot wheels. Worked pretty well, and it's SIMPLE SIMPLE SIMPLE.
www.wolfegames.com/AxlesAndAlloys/AxlesAndAlloys.htm

Two Hour game out with Machinas, which I've never played, but it's 100% car battle shit. Supposed to be fast.
www.twohourwargames.com/maderainwa.html

And of course, OUTRIDER, which I reviewed. No cars for sale, but the rules are tight and it's absolutely the simplest/but/effective-est car game I've played:
superflycircus.com/2014/11/outrider-ks-p...nd-johnny-lightning/

If you lived closer, or wanted to pay for shipping, I'd send you Outrider for free. I think I still have it..?

Another choice is Combat Zone. It's a very clean, simple system, but again, you're making your own shit:
www.combatzonechronicles.net/cozo2/xcars.htm (Rules for cars)
combatzonechronicles.net/cozo8/auto.htm (Simplified version from above)

Road Rage exists, haven't played, only read about it.
www.stanjohansenminiatures.com/Road%20Rage%20Rules.htm
(Stan sells bad ass cars, which is how I know about it)

I think Queen's Gambit and X-Wing are great games and do a great job of capturing some of the "feel" of the Star Wars movies.

I love Epic Duels, but I really don't think it captures the movies at all. It actually captures and game-ifies the nostalgia of being a kid and playing with my Kenner Star Wars action figures.

I was actually working on a car combat game inspired by X-Wing last year but gave up as the prospects of getting such a game published seems impossible.

Used maneuver templates but you set your speed and movement direction (left/right/straight) as opposed to a dial with all of the maneuvers. You could only increase speed by 1 each turn but you could drop it as much as you'd like.

Instead of specific upgrade slots cars had a number of generic hard points which allowed them to mount auxiliary weapons. All cars had default weapons (MGs) firing out front arc.

Each car also had a specific crew value as well, which allowed you to buy a certain number of crew upgrades too.

So you could buy an auxiliary mine layer which took up 1 hard point. Or a mounted .30-Cal on the roof that took up 1 hard point and 1 crew. Also could buy a passenger that could fire out the window for cheap and take up 1 crew slot. Even had a guy who could throw Molotov cocktails/explosives from the backseat.

You could perform one action before or after you move instead of just after. Instead of stress you basically had to perform a handling test if you took a risky maneuver. You could give up your action to automatically pass the test.

Defense was based on the speed and size of the car so it incentivized you to drive fast to avoid taking hits. Armor of course helps absorb damage.

Didn't have the damage system all the way worked out because I was trying to differentiate it from X-Wing. Definitely need a deck with named effects but wanted to interact with it slightly differently than just generating some critical hits.

Epic Duels is my favorite. I can't defend why, except maybe the quality of the components. It's too light, and the restrictive gameplay make it difficult to execute even rudimentary tactics, but still somehow fun. We played a really big game of this one time, with four players on each side, and it was a blast.

I'd be highly skeptical that an x-wing type game isn't in the works using the Mad Max license, and it's likely going to be by Battlefront. New Zealand is right there in the region, and there's nobody that does better movie tie-ins than them.

Even though Thunder Road is super simple, the one thing that other designers need to crib is the "endless driving" aspect of the game board. If a Mad Max game is just a bunch of cars pummeling each other in a static arena then I'm not interested, AT ALL.

Video Game: Knights of the Old Republic wins easily.

RPG: Edge of the Empire from FFG has a sweet mechanic and custom dice to foster narrative storytelling and the obligation mechanic is fun.

Boardgame: Epic Duels gets the nod.

Take the Queen's Gambit and set it in the climax to Return of the Jedi and you've just made my new favourite game.

I've liked all the FFG stuff that I've spent time with (so everything excluding Armada and the LCG). There's really nothing I can say that hasn't been said about X-Wing and I _LOVE_ Imperial Assault.

Best Star Wars game though? I'm going to have to go with FFG's new RPG stuff. I've played a bunch of Edge of the Empire and it totally nails that aspect of the universe. I think the published adventures are a little lacking, but the core mechanics are brilliant enough to elevate the most mediocre of stories. Starting to get the itch to check out Age of Rebellion.

I also really love that Rebellion vs Empire game FFG put out. Just played it the other night.

Never had the chance to play Queen's Gambit or OT Risk. Someday.

Video game? Not KOTOR. It might be the best Star Wars story ever told, but damn is that gameplay not aging well. No, I believe the best video game has to go to either TIE Fighter or Jedi Outcast.

XWing is the best and I can't really add much more.

Second would be Imperial Assault. I feel every step made from the original Doom system has been in the right direction. And what I think is a great asset is that it isn't just porting scenes from the movies. As I'm not into video games, books, RPG's, comic, cartoon series or whatever other medias are out there...Basically for Star Wars my exposure desire is limited to boardgames...So IA is showing me what else is in the Star Wars universe which is something I appreciate.

FFG has a new Raider preview up... X-wing is by far my favorite SW game, if not my favorite minis game of all time.

I played Armada the other night and enjoyed it, didn't like the done in 6 turns thing, but whatever.

Have not played Imperial Assault, played Descent once and it went on and on and on and on. I like long games, but it was just really repetitive. I seem to recall dying and then starting over again and again. IS that how Decent works. Anyway left a bad taste and I have avoided Imperial Assault. Also I have never played Queens Gambit or Epic duels. I played the old Wizkids mini games a few times and the one where you made plastic models out of cards (like Pirates of the Spanish Maine) Both were not very good.