This version of BrikWars was completed in September 2001, but its release was delayed for several months, to the frustration of players across the globe.  What was the reason?  Did the authors simply wish to torture their fans?  The surprising answer is yes - for one fan in particular, who very nearly had a brain meltdown during the process of failing to obtain the rules.  We're preparing a full summary of the sordid series of events for your enjoyment; expect to see it in a few weeks.

Once he finally received the rules as promised (although too late to salvage what scraps remained of his sanity), we stalled a few more weeks to let him savor his victory and to give him time to launch his retaliatory strike.  But now the waiting is over!  Now available for download is the much-anticipated text of BrikWars 2001.

Summer 2000 brought the HTML version of the text that had been released in the Spring.  Along with the new format came an additional series of revisions and improvements, making the Spring release obsolete after only a few months.

The Summer revision became well-known for being perpetually incomplete and in fact any hopes of finishing the thing were dashed when all workers were pulled off the 2000 project in order to develop the 2001 update.  Chapters Eight through Ten, as well as the SP Supplement, didn't survive the transition from the Spring text files.

Following an upsurge in BrikWars interest following the NELUG games in February, this update introduced a wealth of new material, including the now-infamous Death Sling and the tragically flawed Supernatural Powers supplement.

Wayne McCaul has been almost suspiciously generous in donating his time and expertise in designing, formatting, and producing the first-ever version of BrikWars in the .pdf format.  You may need to download Adobe's free Acrobat Reader in order to view and print it.

On Halloween 1998, we released the first HTML version of BrikWars, hand-illustrated in 16-color pixelated glory.  This achievement, the creation of a complete HTML version of BrikWars, was never duplicated before or since.

Lego Wars (1991) and Lego Wars II (1995), written by two geniuses by the names of Eric O'Dell and R. Todd Ogrin, are not BrikWars editions.  The LEGO Group did not give permission to use their registered and trademarked word "LEGO®" in the title (see our legal disclaimer).  Misters O'Dell and Ogrin did not give any kind of permission to post their work here.  So what possible reason could we have to do so?

BrikWars, in its earliest beginnings, drew so heavily from these sources that it would be no exaggeration to call it a direct plagiarism.  This was a lot more innocent than it sounds - for the first few years of its existence BrikWars was not intended as a separate entity but rather a quick-fix edit.  In those days the LEGO legal department was particularly rabid and swore grim oaths to destroy any product that used the word "LEGO®" without their permission.  In order to keep hope alive, a plan was conceived in which the rulebook would continue under a different name ("Butthead-Toy-Company Wars" was suggested at one point).  The original authors were somehow prevented from carrying out their plan, so we took it upon ourselves, replacing each instance of the offending L-word with the more innocuous "Brik."  As time progressed (and new cool pieces and themes were released by the Butthead Toy Company), we made a few idle additions and modifications here and there, but it was long before we really thought to think of BrikWars as having an identity of its own.

And so we are obligated to include Lego Wars and Lego Wars II in our little wargame geneaology, for completeness if nothing else.