August 4, 2019: Autoduel Weekly: 1/64 Scale

This is the first installment of a new sub-blog that will run here in the Illuminator, at least once a week, to talk about Car Wars as it enters the final phase of development. Most of the entries will be written by me (SJ) – except when they're not. We will try to provide photos, and maybe the occasional video, to go along with the words, so you can share our excitement as this project barrels down the road to completion.

I'll continue this blog until the Kickstarter begins. At that point, the Kickstarter updates will take over the job. Maybe someday, if the blog posts are any good, we can collect them in a book or something.

1/64 Scale

    We had a four-hour CW development meeting last week. Some was just review and direction-check, but a lot of things came out of it, including:

• An awesome new artist who we'll introduce soon;
• Rules that we can call 98% finished, because they include diagrams and layout;
• And a change in scale, from HO to 1/64.

That's a big change to make so late in development, but it is straight from your feedback. It was the one suggestion that came up at nearly every playtest: "Why don't you go up to Hot Wheels scale?" Well, there were reasons for HO, the biggest of which was that you could use all that neat model-railroad terrain for scenery. But we hashed over it, and decided to make the change. The illustration shows an HO-scale car and base (red) beside a 1/64 car and base (white).

This will cost us a bit of money. Not only will the plastic models be twice as massive, but the bases, turning key, wreck markers, and so on will get bigger. But there are advantages.

• Bigger vehicles will show off the detail already in the designs and make that detail more paintable.
• A lot of modelers really like the idea of modifying their toy cars and putting them straight in the game.
• Trashed toy cars will make really great 3D wrecks!
• We don't have to increase the arena size, just modify the setup rules a bit.
• And you can still use model-RR scenery for buildings. It's a bit small (1/87 vs. 1/64), but as Randy said, "Buildings come in all sizes!"

Next time, a report on our Gen Con games. Come by our booth and play Car Wars! Who knows . . . you might get your picture in the Illuminator!

-- Steve Jackson

NOTE: To receive email notification when the project goes live, please follow both the Steve Jackson Games and Warehouse 23 pages on Kickstarter.