March 4, 2023: Blowing Up Barrels

5 Barrel is a brewery and taproom in downtown Pensacola. They were good enough to sponsor the PensaCon boardgame room . . . and they also hosted the SJ Games team for an evening demo game of Car Wars 6th Edition.

Two of our players were familiar with older editions of the game. The other two learned quickly. Many dice were rolled, and many things blew up, including (by the time the game had ended) three of the harmless-looking barrels placed around the oval track. We added a special rule just for this game, too. The cars started out at equal intervals around the track, and each starting position was marked. When a car came around and touched its original position, it instantly got a complete out-of-sequence firing phase. That gave the drivers another reason to put the pedal to the metal! In the end, that bonus was only earned once, and I think it was decisive.

This was a great game. 5 Barrel has a fine, comfortable ambience, not so loud that we could not play, not so quiet that we were bothering anybody else. All the players showed great spirit, helping each other with the rules even as they tried to destroy each other on the track. (And everyone had taken an Armored Beer Refrigerator, so it was a very . . . Southern . . . sort of event.)

Vehicle painting, structure painting, photography, and 90% of the refereeing by Irene Zielinski. Mostly I just watched and shared the good time. And it WAS good.

– Steve Jackson

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