Other info about the MDD

The Mini Demolition Derby Micro Edition.
Pdf files are freely downloadable from this web site, to print and paste on paperboard all the material needed to make a smaller, but complete and handy version of the MDD:
MDD Micro Edition
By following the below suggestions, anyway, you can make a copy with "real" toy cars, that children will like more.

How to find the material for the Mini Demolition Derby.

• The 25 toy cars.
  Many children already own toy cars and they will like to have their own cars in the race. Most common toy cars are 5 to 8 cm long and 2.5 to 3.5 cm wide: these are suitable for playing the Mini Demolition Derby. It's useful, but not mandatory, to have toy cars of 5 different colors, to form 5 teams of 5 toy cars each.
• The lives.
  You can collect 25 coins of 5 euro cents and 60 coins of 1 euro cent. It happened that some grandfather thought that I was gambling with the children... but the misunderstanding was always cleared soon. Maybe washers or wooden or cardboard counters are better, but the coins, with their fives and ones, are very nice, too.
• The 6 walls.
  You can use anything that is about 6 x 3 x 1 cm wide. I cut 6 wood pieces, but I also used big dice, Lego, match boxes.
• The 25 bombs.
  For these, too, you have many options: other coins, Risk's tanks, pasta, beans...
• The die.
  It's not difficult to find one from other games. It can be useful to have 2 of them: the game is a little faster. And sometimes it happened to me to lose my only die and be forced to use the 1 to 6 cards from a deck.
• Game board: the track.
  See next section for hints about how to draw the track. You can even play without it. For at least 5 years the MDD was played on chequered table-cloths, floors with small tiles, parquet, balconies... everywhere 3 to 6 cm wide "cells" could be identified. Later I found the ideal solution: drawing the track on fabric. A piece of fabric of at least 50 x 120 cm is needed. For example you can obtain 3 or 4 tracks from an old sheet. It's very handy: once folded you can easily carry it, for example in your pouch. You can play everywhere, also on the ground, any plain and clean area is suitable. Never mind if it gets wet or dirty: with soap and water it's renewed. I don't understand boardgames editors don't choose more often fabric boards: they have a lot of advantages compared with cardboad.

How to draw the track
Here is the track you have to draw on fabric to play the Mini Demolition Derby:

Some hints to draw it. You'll need a 50 cm ruler and a 30 cm square; a red ink pen and a black or blue one. Lay down the fabric sheet on a flat and hard surface, for example a table withouth cloth. It's not important to stretch the fabric: the drawing will come out better if you simply lay down the fabric without stretching it.
Each cell is 3.5 x 3.5 cm. The whole track is 38.5 cm wide and 105 cm long (11 x 30 cells). Split the task in 3 parts: draw the first 11 rows, then the next 11 rows, finally the last 8 ones.
Start by drawing 4 dots at the corners of the first span: they must be the corners of a 38.5 cm side square. Lay the ruler on the fabric and draw a dot at 0 cm and another at 38.5 cm, then, with the square, find the position of the other two corners. Verify that they, too, are 38.5 cm far from each other: if the distance is correct (on fabric it's not as simple as on paper), join the 4 dots. Then mark on each of the 4 sides one dot every 3.5 cm (3.5; 7; 10.5; 14; 17.5; 21; 24.5; 28; 31.5; 35) and join them to get a grid of 11 x 11 cells. Draw two more dots at a distance of 38.5 cm from the first span's corners and make sure they are at 38.5 cm from each other, too. Join them and draw the second span as you did with the first one. The last span is similar, just a little shorter: 8 cells instead of 11.
Draw the 10 red rectangles for the finals starting positions without the aid of the ruler.

Mean duration
Usually a match takes about 1 hour and 15 minutes, including the preparation:

• 15 minutes for the preparation
• 45 minutes for the qualification
• 15 minutes for the finals

Following info are less important for the purpose of playing the game.

it was called GDM
In the first versions of the game we payed it on the floor, with toy cars or Lego. The game did not have a name: we were just saying "the toy cars game". Lego did not require coins or tokens for the lives: after each hit a Lego brick was taken away, a hat or sword first, then hands, arms, until the poor Lego fellow was completely [...unmounted?...]. There were knights, wizards, workers, pirates, astronauts, [...martians..], so we started calling it "War of the worlds [...]". It was not suitable for the toy cars, but in Italian "gioco delle macchinine" (toy cars game) and "guerra dei mondi" ("War of the worlds [...]") both have the same initials, GDM, and it began the game's name. Mini Demolition Derby came later and is more suitable for toy cars and more international, but sometimes we still refer to the game as toy cars game or also GDM.

Mini Demolition Derby's history (until 2005)
At the time I am writing these words, I think less than 10 MDD matches have been played without me. The game, though, is already very well play-tested: I played about 250 matches over the last 10 years, plus some other before, when I was 11 to 13 years old. About 50 were interrupted before we could end them.
Here are the MDD statistics: 250 matches played by 150 childrens, usually always with toy cars from the same set of about 100 (plus some Lego fellow). So I can say that the track, measures, rules, material, as they are described here, are thoroughly play-tested and ensure funny matches.
I think I first had the idea of the MDD when I was 11... I played with pieces from a puzzle, on the tiled tablecloth of the kitchen: I divided the puzzle image in 4 pieces parts and I removed a piece after each bump. Then I switched to bottle cups and coins, but always alone. Then, for years, I did not play it anymore. Only much later, in 1995, I showed a version of the game to some, already with coins and walls, but using a bedroom's parquet as the track. I also wrote a software to maintain a ranking, both for individual toy cars and teams, based on the arrival order in each match. Each championship lasted one year, with 25 matches. The computer randomly generated the starting grid of each match, in a way that each toy car was given all of the 25 starting positions over the 25 matches. There have been 3 championships (plus a fourth one never terminated), in Meda, where I live, plus 2 championships in Berbenno (were I spent summer holydays).
In 2000, I had the idea of drawing the track on a piece of fabric: so I began to play in various places, with different children: at the oratory, on trips, at birthday parties, at the town park.
Some occasions: sometimes I took a walk to Monastero: some of the boys living there became friends of mine and I always carried the toy cars in my backpack. Though we met just once every 3 or 4 months, as soon as they saw me they asked if I had the toy cars with me. Once or twice per year I visit Tartano valley. For some year I met a child there, that by now is a teenager... Though I spent less than 10 afternoons with him, he is for sure one of my best friends. And in the last 3 or 4 occasions there has always been a MDD match. At the oratory I played a lot of matches. Very often there are one or two children that never played the Mini Demolition Derby before. Among the best matches there were three ones we played one afternoon, during the 24 hours basket match they play every year. We started playing the MDD in a corner, near the outdoor basket field. That afternoon 4 or 5 teams of children were going to play: they alternated on the basket field, on the bench, and many... also around the MDD's track. At the town park I sometimes start a MDD match with some children that are already friends of mine, then some new ones get close, intrigued.

... and after 2006
Since 2007 I started taking pictures of all the MDD matches I played. Many of the pictures (the ones I took in some luding fairs and conventions I joined) are on my web site, here. Many others are in my PC, and describe better than any words the amazing hours I had the luck to spend together with so many children and the MDD: maybe one day I'll organize and publish those ones also.