Happy Halloween everybody!

I just got back home from a month of traveling, and what a month! It kicked off with NWBrickCon in Seattle, where BrickArms was showing off their new MP5 and PSG1 sniper rifle. I got a pile of the new items from BrickForge (formerly Red Bean Studio) right at about the same time; I’ll post further news and photos of all of these when I get a spare minute.

Ben Fleskes was up at the con doing demos of his new Lego strategy game – he hasn’t made any public announcement about it yet, but I from my play-through it was pretty cool indeed; I’m keeping an eye on his website for any news. I also had the chance to catch a quick lunch with Stephen Fisher while I was up there, who’s managed to beat me at every BrikWar I’ve played against him in the last five years or more.

Unfortunately anyone in my line of work knows that November’s the heaviest workload of the year, so it may be a little while before I have time to put up posts and photos for everything that’s going on lately – which means there’s also not a lot of hope for a printable PDF by Christmas this year; apologies to everyone who’s been asking. But keep your fingers crossed, you never know when I might suddenly get a free week off for Thanksgiving or something.

	New guns on BrickArms.com
	Lots and lots of new stuff going on at BrickForge
	Ben Fleskes’ site has no info about any new strategy game… yet

Just a few months ago, brickfans looking for modern weaponry for their minifigs were out of luck. Then, in the space of a few weeks, we suddenly had new weapons coming in from all directions – and now we suffer from what is almost an embarrassment of riches.

I’ve just received a shipment of Little Armory’s new military weapons (along with the long-awaited release of their medieval Great Helm), close on the heels of BrickArms’ similar assortment a few weeks earlier. The Little Armory molds are as awesome and detailed as I’ve come to expect, no surprises there; but now that we’ve suddenly got multiple options, which guns are the better buy?

I’ve set the two lines up for photos and side-by-side comparison over on the forum; it’s worth a look if you’re at all interested in staging any kind of modern minifig combat.

	Little Armory Toys Inc.
	BrickArms L.L.C.
	Modern Firearms Review on the BrikWars Frappr Forum

When it comes to pillaging chessboards, Vikings are way better than a bunch of pastel-colored footie-pajamas-wearing crossbowmen.

Looks like LEGO is going for army-builder sets in a big way this year, likely related to the surprise success of last year’s Knights’ Kingdom chess set even despite the replacement of the white team with the somewhat less-inspiring color of Barbie blue.

The medieval lines this year have already shown unabashed nods to the army-builder crowds, with the Knights’ Kingdom “Battle at the Pass” set and the Vikings even more up-front “Army of Vikings,” which is good news for BrikWars fans. But they’ve just also announced the upcoming show-stopper of army-builder sets: this year’s chess set is Vikings themed, and this time they decided to go with both sides being awesome instead of just the one.

	LEGO Vikings Chess Set
	LEGO Army of Vikings with Heavy Artillery Wagon
	LEGO Battle at the Pass

Check out some great work with custom graphics on Fryslayer’s cloaks and banners.

A couple of guys on the Classic-Castle forums have started posting their battle reports comic-book style. Sibley’s using the standard BrikWars rules, while Fryslayer uses a homebrew variant geared to the more serious wargamer entitled, appropriately enough, Fryslayer’s Medieval War Gaming System.

	Fryslayer’s battle galleries
	Sibley’s battle
	Fryslayer’s Medieval War Gaming System, posted to the Classic-Castle forums

This hungry alien will be happy to welcome you to Illusionary Craft.

I haven’t had a lot of time to post lately, so a bunch of links have been piling up in my slush file. Today I was checking out one of them, a freshly-released brick wargame entitled “BATTLE!”

BATTLE! is a pretty straightforward medieval-army game, with a little more realism than most of the other brick games in the genre. I was interested to see that the game is part of a larger site called Illusionary Craft, with LEGO models, battle photos, and an attached blog covering not only questions about the game but also part customizing and reviews of LEGO sets.

The site looks like it’s pretty new, but even in the early stages of development it’s still worth a visit.

	BATTLE!
	Illusionary Craft

These minifigs have been waiting a long time for weapons like this!

There’s been quite a bit going on lately – BrikWars got a full review on All Games Considered a few weeks ago, much to my surprise. Please ignore anything they say about chapter eight. I deny all knowledge of how they might think that it’s missing.

In unrelated news, a new custom-parts shop has opened up to answer the unfilled need for minifig-compatible modern and WWII firearm elements. And they’re high-quality bits, too; I just got a big batch delivered and I’m loving the designs. Check out the new offerings from BrickArms.com.

	All Games Considered
	BrickArms, the Modern Minifig Armory

Those Frappr guys keep coming up with cooler and cooler widgets – the BrikWars Frappr map now has a built-in Flash-based chatroom.

It looks like it’s still a little buggy – I’ve managed to somehow leave multiple copies of myself permanently logged in a couple of times – but it’s a fun little toy nonetheless. It looks like you can embed it just about anywhere, but you’ll need to log in and access it directly through BrikWars’ Frappr map if you don’t want to show up as “Guest3260” or something similar.

I know it’s irresponsible to embed the chat box right on the BrikWars front page, but I thought it’d be funny.

	The BrikWars Frappr page
	The BrikWars Frappr Forums

Mark Sandlin’s Fleebnorks are the bane of Spacemen throughout the galaxy.

Ever since I saw my first Fleebnork, many terrifying years ago, I’ve wanted to make official BrikWars stats for it. But until I got these stat cards going, I didn’t have a good medium with which to deliver them.

So I’ve added a section for Unit Stat Cards to the Downloads page – you can find Fleebnorks along with BrikWars’ more usual combatants summarized in card form there. There are blank cards and Photoshop templates as well, so players can make up whatever new units they like.

Since the Fleebnork art looks so nice, I’ve put it up as a desktop graphic as well.

(Fleebnork and the Fleebnork character are copyright (c)2003 Mark Sandlin.)

	Stat Cards
	Fleebnork Card
	Fleebnork Desktop
	Mark Sandlin’s Fleebnork.com

Why the forbidden love between wargamers and black t-shirts? The answer is simple: black t-shirts kick ass.

In a bout of shameless merchandizing, I tossed a bunch of products up on cafepress.com last year – mostly as a joke, since their clothing selection spans the narrow range from white to a couple of pastels, not exactly the preferred palette for wargamers. I was surprised to see people actually buying them – especially the BrikWars thong, which continues to be the best-selling of the clothing items.

But cafepress is finally trying out some new direct printing methods that allow printing on black cloth, so we can finally get a BrikWars shirt in wargaming colors. Take a peek at the BrikWars Pirate T-Shirt.

In other black news, Shaun Sullivan has pointed out that black versions of Little Armory’s medieval weapons have been spotted for sale on the Sith’s Toy Box BrickLink store.

	Cafepress Shop: BrikWars Fund for Global Domination
	The BrikWars Pirate T-Shirt
	BrickLink shop: Sith’s Toy Box

The pirates were like, “We’re going to explode!” And then they exploded! Just like they predicted!!!

These links have nothing to do with BrikWars. But then again, they have everything to do with BrikWars. It’s a crime that I haven’t posted some of these earlier.

You’ll need Flash for all of them. And, as it turns out, the last one does have a brief cameo by one of Dave Eaton’s BrikWars units, if you watch real close.

	The Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny
	How to Kill a Mockingbird
	Trogday!