The Kickstarter for the long-awaited Sixth Edition of Steve Jackson’s venerable Car Wars game is being pushed back four to six months from its planned December launch, company COO Phil Reed announced in a post on the company’s website today.  The reason given is that the new edition is playing at 90 to 120 minutes in playtests, and the company’s target is 60 minutes.  The game is being redesigned, and will then require playtesting, which accounts for the delay.

This is the second delay announced this year.  Car Wars Sixth Edition was originally slated for 2016 (see "Sales Down in 2015 at Steve Jackson").  Then in August, Reed announced that the company was delaying release until 2017 to give time for the company’s designers to prepare six months of supplements to follow the release of the game.  He also revealed that the company planned two interconnected Kickstarters, a first for fiction in the Car Wars universe, and one for the Sixth Edition itself.

With the Kickstarters now being pushed out of 2016, release of the game will be after Gen Con 2017, Reed wrote.  "Not having Car Wars for Gen Con 2017 will be painful, yes, to both our bottom line and price," Reed said.  "But it would be more painful to proceed with the game at the current average playing time.  It’s better to take the short-term hit to sales and pride than to be stuck with a game length that is twice our goal."

Classic Car Wars returned to active sales in late 2014, with two printings selling through in the first few months.  Since then, Steve Jackson has released Car Wars Arenas and the Car Wars Card Game (see "'Car Wars Arenas' and Card Game").