If you've ever played Car Wars, the pen-and-paper game of post-apocalyptic vehicular combat, chances are that you probably love it despite all its flaws. Now, imagine playing it on a 12' by 8' 3D city block filled with skyscrapers, ramps, an overpass and carnage, not to mention 15 other psychotic drivers. Scared yet? Drop your flaming oil and warm up the missile launchers - this is Car Wars: Rogue Arena.

I had a chance to talk with one of the Rogue Judges at Origins Game Fair this weekend; they're a gaming club based loosely in Chicago and Indianapolis, and they put on dozens of events at game conventions across the U.S. purely for the love of the games - These guys and girls are gamers who simply enjoy putting on events for others, and Rogue Arena is definitely their most famous event.

It takes about four hours to play (about two minutes in Car Wars time) and inevitably ends in a blazing, glorious crash of some kind. Using a slightly modified Car Wars ruleset, with movement templates scaled up to Hot Wheels size, the cars themselves have weapons and armor modded onto them, and various weapon effects like smokescreens (cotton balls) and oil slicks add to the overall mayhem. The judges goad and heckle the players, mocking anyone who dares apply brakes with comments like, "the management is not at fault if you forgot to take your anti-convulsants before getting into your car."

Rogue Arena is such a popular event at Origins that there was a line of people hoping to gain entry, even though all 16 seats had sold out four days earlier. This is the 8th year that Rogue Arena has been run at Origins, and the Rogue Judges plan on running many more. For next year, they're even considering expanding the city block, so be warned: Even more carnage is definitely on the way.

Car Wars, Steve Jackson Games. Yes, the rules are flawed. It can take two hours to play through two minutes of action. And the "miniatures" were really 2D paper cars. But you can't beat the concept: Road Warrior style running battles between heavily armed and armored cars and trucks. If you've ever gone to a car dealership and asked which options package includes "Autocannon," this is the game for you. Photo by: Steve Jackson Games.

Star Wars Miniatures, Wizards of the Coast. Another game where the concept outshines the rules themselves, which were shoehorned into the Star Wars setting from Wizards' D&D miniatures game. They aren't bad rules, just a little dry. But anything that allows you to recreate the Battle of Hoth is a sure winner. Bonus: you can own your own Stormtrooper army. Photo by yowzer.

Heroclix, Wizkids. If you're looking for a comic book themed miniatures game, Heroclix is pretty much your only option. Luckily, it's a great game. You can choose between both Marvel and DC universes (or mix and match), and unless your tastes run to the impossibly obscure, a version of your favorite character already exists. Heroclix is a quick-playing game that captures the action of a good comic book fight scene.

Warhammer 40,000, Games Workshop. I'm going to confess that I've never played Warhammer 40K, so I can't speak to the rules. The minis are gorgeously sculpted, and the game's near ubiquity means that it will never be hard to find an opponent. Line up your Space Marines against your buddy's Tyranids and make your own "What if Earth waged all-out war against the aliens from Aliens?" scenario. Photo by: Games Workshop.

BattleTech/Mechwarrior, FASA/Wizkids. Whichever flavor you prefer, this classic game of warring giant robots is the godfather of sci-fi minis games. Old-school BattleTech featured metal minis you painted yourself, an intricate and detailed combat system, and the occasional hour-long turn. Bolstered by a rich backstory of galactic politics and conquest, the franchise was revitalized when Wizkids released a clix version. The larger-scale, prepainted miniatures negate the need for paperwork, and the game itself presents a compelling version of combined arms sci-fi warfare.

Top photo by: Catalyst Game Lab.

In Car Wars, scarce resources lead the U.S. government to nationalize oil production, causing a second American Civil War. Three "Free Oil States" spring up with their own oil production — Texas, Oklahoma and Louisiana. Famine and plagues also hit the world hard, and then the U.S. and the Soviet Union launch World War III. In the wasteland that remains, a bitchin car is a necessity for travel, but people also duel cars for sport. (And the game explains away that you can come back from being destroyed because of advances in cloning and memory "backups.")

The original Car Wars came in a ziploc bag full of rules and information, in 1981. You'd have a certain amount of "money" to spend on your car, and you could allocate it to armor, weapons, engine enhancements, and so on. Here's one fan's explanation of the problems with this points allocation system, which later banned tank guns.

(The game's maker, Steve Jackson Games, claims that a Swedish bus company's recent development of a bus with mini-electric engines in each wheel, fed by a central generator, may have been inspired by one of the enhancements you could add to your car, back in the early 1980s.)

Eventually Car Wars came out with a version for tanks and boats, and even allowed you to add airplanes to the mix. You roll dice to simulate combat, and each player gets to make ten moves per second, including moving, turning, and firing weapons. The more complicated your set of manoeuvres, the higher a score you'd have to roll on a six-sided die to pull off the whole shebang. You would need a rulebook (and a lot of brainpower) to figure out if someone sideswiped you or T-boned you, according to the game's FAQ. It could take hours to play out a few seconds of car-crashing action.

Depending on the size of the map you were playing on, you could use little game counters, Hot Wheels toys, or 1/25th scale miniatures to represent your super-cars.

The game spawned a lousy imitation, Batlecars, as well as a card game version and a computer game, Autoduel.

In the 2002 reissue of the game (which went nowhere), Steve Jackson reduced the amount of moves per second from ten to three, in an attempt to speed up the gameplay and make it less calculated. (And maybe a tad more realistic. Most people don't sit there and go, "Yeah, this second I'm going to honk my horn, and fire my rocket launcher, and turn 15 degrees to the left, and, uh...") The 2002 revision also tried to become quicker because you can only take four hits before your car is toast. But it was too late to bring people back to a dice-based game with mini-cars bashing the hell out of each other. Sadly.