Stats:
No. of players: 2
Amount of time to play: 60-120 min
Age requirements: 10+
Set-up time: 5-10 min

Car Wars Sixth Edition came out in 2021 and the Orange Purple Starter Set has everything you and a friend need to play and enjoy this game. You’ll get two cars, turning keys, and dashboards plus a bunch of dice and tokens. There are also cards to let you customize your car and crew.

Car Wars 6e Rules Description:

The Car Wars tagline is “Where the right of way goes to the biggest guns.” and in this game you will build a car to face-off against a friend to see who can eliminate their opponent first.

First you need to decide the size match you want to play. This will give you the points you have to build your car and crew. You use build points to add weapons, armor, and other accessories to your car. To load out your car, you place the items around your dashboard. Items above your dashboard are on the front of your car, items on the left side of your dashboard are on the left side of your car, items below your dashboard are on the rear of your car and (you guessed it) items on the right side of your dashboard are on the right side of your car. Crew points are used to get a driver and gunner.

Your dashboard not only helps you know where items are on your car. It also contains lots of information like your current speed, amount of armor on each side of your car, the rubber remaining on your tires, and the damage you’ve taken to your power core. You also use it to gain control tokens which help you maintain control of your car.

Each turn the first player moves their car and then their opponent moves. Before you move your car, you have the option to speed up or down by one. Your speed represents the number of car lengths you will move this turn. You may turn or slide using the turning key. Anything more than driving straight or slightly turning is called a maneuver. Each time you make a maneuver you gain an ace token and must roll dice equal to your speed plays a certain number based on the degree of the turn. You must pay one control token for each skid result and take one tire damage for each wrench result. For each control token you are unable to pay you take one tire damage, spin out, and are out of control. If you ever get five skid result that you cannot pay control for you flip over and are eliminated.

After both players have completed their movement, you get to attack. Both your driver and gunner may attack but each weapon may only be fired once per turn. You may only fire weapons that are in the arc that your target is in. And you hit them in the arc that you are in from their car. So if you are parallel to your opponent heading the same direction on their left, you could fire weapons on the right side of your dashboard and hit the left side of their car. Weapon cards tell you which dice to roll and you count the number of hits. The defender rolls dice equal to their speed plus any cards that add dice. They can spend ace tokens to re-roll defense results too. Any shield results negate a hit and remaining hits get applied to your armor. If you have no armor on the targeted side of your car you take internal damage. This is resolved by drawing a card and it lists areas of your car that you must place damage tokens on. Your weapons and armor have durability points and can be destroyed this way. This is also how you take power core damage.

If you flip over or your power core is reduced to zero, you lose. These are just the basics of the rules. There are rules for collisions, pile ups, terrain, cover, and catching opponents on fire (and putting out said fires). This is an excellent video to watch while learning the game.

Quick Review of the Car Wars Orange / Purple Starter Set:

This Car Wars Starter Set does exactly what it should, gets you started playing Car Wars. The Orange / Purple part of the name comes into play on the dashboards and the car’s bases. But there are enough build cards for you to play from 4 up to 48 build point games. I should state up front that I have not played earlier editions of the game. So I can only speak to the sixth edition rules and components.

Speaking of components, the components for this game are great. The cars are unpainted, but the models themselves look good. There are lots of bright dice, tokens and other chits too. All of them are durable and easy to identify. The rulebook is good but not great. It is pretty well organized with lots of examples, but some important rules are not well highlighted and you can miss them or have trouble finding them when looking.

The dashboard is excellent. It gives you all the info you need and tracks your different stats and the tokens you gain easily. The build cards’ position to the dashboard and how that relates to their position on your car is intuitive and helps when attacking and defending. I do wish the armor tracking sliders were notched or were harder to move as sometimes they are easy to jostle. But that is more of a nitpick than anything.

I like how easy it is to build cars and add a crew. The build points system is straightforward and there is even a sample car build in the rule book. The contents of the Orange / Purple Two Player Starter Set lets you try out all the different game sizes.

As I said this is a starter set. Over time you will probably want more build options and more cars. There are several small expansions you can buy to add more weapons, accessories, crew, and more to your Car Wars collection. This will extend the replay value of the game and let you create even more vehicular death machines.

This set comes with some terrain cards and mentions scenario play. Though the terrain cards are too easily moved when pushing your car across the table. As a first time player I would have liked a sample first game map, similar to the prebuilt car in the rules. Then after playing a few times it would have been nice to have a few scenarios to mix things up a bit.

I enjoy the game with two players, but would like to try it with four. It seems the best way to do that is get another starter set with different color bases, more turning keys and dashboards.

If you are interested in Car Wars the Orange / Purple Two Player Starter Set is a great place to jump in. If you enjoy it and want to add more expansions and cars there are lots of additional sets you could down the road.

Score and synopsis: (Click here for an explanation of these review categories.)
Strategy 3 out of 6
Luck 5 out of 6
Player Interaction 6 of 6
Replay Value 4 out of 6
Complexity 4 out of 6
Fun 4 out of 6
Overall 4 out of 6