Literally decades ago - probably almost 30 years ago now - I introduced a few of my gamers to Car Wars, Deluxe Edition. We played a game. Afterward, I left my whole countermix out on a table on top of the folded-up board from the Dungeon boardgame in the basement. Sometime later - the next day, maybe? - I went down to sort out my counters instead of having them all in one big pile.
They were gone. Nowhere to be found. I searched high and low, and found the Dungeon board on the table, but no counters. All gone.
I searched for quite a while, but assumed they'd been accidentally thrown out during some other cleanup in the basement.
So I literally replaced my entire collection to get a countermix. I found a Car Wars lot on Noble Knight and bought it. Deluxe Car Wars, Dueltrack, etc. I replaced a few map-and-counter supplements, too.
Flash forward to yesterday. I was cleaning out my comics collection, and one by one pulling bags from the comic long boxes and seeing what collection was in each. In one bag, along with a mix of comics, was a weird lumpy mass at the bottom of the oversized bag.
In it was my old countermix.
How it got there, I have no idea. Did someone in my family pour it into the bag and I didn't notice as I put comics in it?
We had cats. Was it possible one sat on the board, dumped the contents into the comics box and therefore the open bag? I used to keep my bagged comics right near my gaming table.
Did I put them away in that bag and complete forgot about it right away?
I have no idea.
But now, decades after my last game of DCW, I have two full countermixes. It's definitely my old countermix - I'd glued wrecks to the back of their unwrecked cars, colored a few favorite black and white counters with colored pencils, and otherwise customized things. And here it is.
Weird.
My replacement mix, sorted, and my old, unsorted mix:
Er, anyone for DCW-era Car Wars?