Never ones to rest on their laurels, NELUG is back again with new innovations for battle. In an otherwise standard clash among medieval ruins, they’ve introduced a system to allow units to increase in power as they gain attack experience, and incorporated a further twist on their communally-built modular battlefields.

From Shaun’s article on NELUG.org:

“Six small squads of medieval troops fought amongst crumbling ruins and landowner homes for dominance of the region. Lizardmen battled Ninjas, Knights skirmished against Highwaymen, and Barbarians took up arms against the Strange Men who embrace scorpions as their sea-wives. Advantage on the field of battle shifted with the winds, but in the end the day was carried by our newly-anointed evil Reptilian Overlords.”

	Shaun Sullivan’s article on NELUG.org
	Shaun’s BrickShelf gallery

Inspired by MOCs of the Star Wars Sail Barge, NELUG returned to the battlefield with a fleet of steampunk airships fighting it out over the desert.

Combat raged on for ten hours, with “every form of battle imaginable: gunfire, ramming, boarding actions, hand-to-hand. Even the dreaded Sandworms of Kar’Zuba got into the action, gorging on troopers abaonding their skiffs as they went down.”

	Shaun Sullivan’s post to Lugnet
	Shaun’s Brickshelf gallery

Unruly NELUG hooligans showed up at OurCon 17 at UMass-Amherst to represent the BrikWars in a series of bloody showdowns. Four recent Nelug battles saw successful reprises in convention form: It Takes A Pillage, VersaillesPunk, The Tox Uthat, and NasKart.

	Wayne McCaul’s OurCon 17 article on Nelug.org
	Wayne’s OurCon 17 gallery on BrickShelf.com
	The New England LEGO User’s Group

The Nelug guys have gone in for historical re-enactment, this time taking less dramatic license than they may have earlier with their reinterpretation of such events as the Treaty of Versailles.

Elroy Davis posts on Lugnet to share the tale of forty law-abiding British redcoats, their heroic attempt to march from one end of a road to the other, and of the forty American colonial insurgents who ambushed them from hiding in defiance of all rules of warfare.

	Elroy’s Lugnet post
	Scenario rules for “Battle Road” (PDF, 217k)
	Shaun Sullivan’s photos on BrickShelf (PDF, 217k)

How come it took us ten years to make BrikWars link banners? This thing’s like nine thousand pixels, total, and most of those are just black.

Just a minor update – BrikWars now has link banners, as well as a couple of additional desktop backgrounds. All are available on the Downloads page.

In other news, the Frappr map has been holding steady at just shy of a hundred people, keeping BrikWars well in the lead of other brick-related Frapprs. Thanks to a strong rally by NELUG, the title of BrikWars Capital of the World has been wrested from Southern California and returned to New England where it belongs. Thank goodness!

The Frappr has its own message forum, so I’m going to start pointing people over there when they want to make announcements about organizing games. We’ll see how well that works.

Lastly, with the arrival of the new year, people have been asking about the status of BrikWars 2005. It’s doing just fine, thank you very much! There are still some wrinkles in the new Squads rules and the streamlined Creations rules for vehicles, buildings, and creatures, but we’re ironing them out and the book is starting to look pretty slick. And yes, it’ll still be called BrikWars 2005 when we get around to releasing it.

	Downloads
	The BrikWars Frappr Forum

Christmastime is the busiest time of the year for those of us with jobs in the toy industry, which maybe goes partway to explaining why I’m two months behind in answering e-mails – sorry everybody!

While I’m trying to work my way through the backlog, check out the latest entry in NELUG’s Year of BrikWars – a re-enactment of the Treaty of Versailles, except that this time it’s between the English and French and naturally everything goes horribly wrong.

Also, for everyone writing in about how hard it is to find other BrikWars players in the area, I’ve started up a BrikWars Frappr map. Add a map pin to your location and see who else is around!

	Evil Wayne’s post about BrikWar: VersaillesPunk
	Wayne’s VersaillesPunk BrickShelf gallery
	Shaun’s VersaillesPunk BrickShelf gallery
	BrikWars Frappr

Halloween is always a special time of year for BrikWars. Besides being BrikWars’ birthday, it also means that it’s time for Shaun and Wayne to pull the big reveal on their annual BW:666 game. This year it’s the Pipton Farmstead Terrors, in which otherworldly creatures take a special opportunity to wipe out the last surviving participant from last year’s Brikington Manor Horrors.

Halloween 2005 marks BrikWars’ tenth birthday, so that’ll make our upcoming book a special Tenth Anniversary Edition. Keep your eyes peeled.

	Shaun Sullivan’s “The Pipton Farmstead Horrors” gallery on BrickShelf
	Back where it all began in 1995: BrikWars’ humble origins