BrikWars News
Displaying the 20 most recent headlines.
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January 31st, 2008 - January Wrap-Up
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| Imperial troops fall victim to the Green Sabre Brigade's Snake-A-Pult |
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January's been a busy month on the forums. Battle photos were zipping by left and right faster than I had time to post them. Here are links to some more of this month's highlights:
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January 23rd, 2008 - FjordHammer
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| The drummer as viewed from backstage, powering forth on FjordHammer's mobile Battle Stage |
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Following Evil Tobbacconist's call for the forum community to join together and develop the greatest army ever devised, events took a metalocalyptic turn when resident genius Almighty Benny commandeered the reins.
Skipping the lubricating preamble of an opening act (we can only assume that if there was a lead-in band, it arrived pre-slaughtered by the metalness of what was about to occur), the members of FjordHammer burst forth from their Battle Stage to wreak destruction over all lesser forms of warfare.
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January 16th, 2008 - Leonardo812's BrikWars Trailer
Leonardo812 has posted to the forums to announce his brand new BrikWars trailer. Using brick-based stop-motion animation (and some voice acting help from Moronstudios), he's managed to perfectly capture the fun and adrenaline-packed excitement of an actual BrikWars game in progress.
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January 14th, 2008 - Brickvention and Brickworld conventions
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| Brickvention 2008: just one more reason to be jealous of Australians |
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A couple of big Lego conventions are coming up for their second showings - Brickvention 2008 in Melbourne, Australia is less than two weeks away, and registration has just opened for Brickworld 2008 in Illinois in June.
As usual, Brickvention has both public and demonstration BrikWars events on the program, with prizes this year provided by Aussie Custom Decals, the official distributor of BrickArms in Australia.
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January 14th, 2008 - Saturday Smash Off and Almost Agro Arena
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| As always, military forces take time out to eliminate the janitorial staff |
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| In the heat of battle, proper medical procedures may sometimes be compromised |
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Olothontor and Kidko have found a novel use for the BrikWars forums - they organized a live feed for their Saturday battle, each posting photos and play-by-play commentary during their opponent's turn, allowing the forum audience to watch the battle in progress and comment along the way.
The battle itself is the usual chaotic explosion-packed romp. Although sadly lacking in the obligatory catclysmic world-destroying fireball at the end, the event bodes well for similar exhibitions in the future.
Meanwhile, Moron Studios are back again - this time with a new memeber, Oppo. His inaugral Vikings vs. Skeletons battle, "Almost Agro Arena," saw more intensive use of the Medik than any battle report to date, including a botched operation towards the end with impressive results.
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January 6th, 2008 - BrikWars 2005 PDF
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| Now in all-new PDF format! |
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In a surprise move, Kolja ("Flashhawk" on the forums) e-mails in with a holiday gift to BrikWars fans everywhere: he's ripped the BW2005 rules from the HTML and converted them into easy-printing PDF format. Thanks Kolja!
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January 4th, 2008 - Red Clay Armageddon
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| The Dimmy Army fights true to form, using a frying pan, a buzzsaw, and an oar to retardedly damage themselves |
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Red Clay Studios' debut battle breaks new ground in a number of important areas, while keeping true to the traditions of its classical predecessors. The Dimmy Army led by a Dimmy Mage has been witnessed before in the Battle for Nagateppo, but never used with such power and Dimmy precision, bringing about the Classik BrikWars Ending in perfectly executed form.
This report also marks the first sighting of what will inevitably become BrikWars tradition - the use of peach-colored minifigs for menial slave labor and subsequent execution. It's institutionalized racism at its finest!
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January 1st, 2008 - Happy New Year
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| Two of nature's most dangerous weapons |
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Happy 2008 everybody! To celebrate, here are some optimistic new minifig desktops to welcome the incoming year.
The joyful little fellow in "Moving Target" could not be more pleased to see everybody, and the "Valkyrie" is our own Nike of Samothrace (except better armed). She's happy to offend parents with cartoon anatomy rather than gratuitous violence, making her one of the least crude images on the site.
( further commentary )
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December 30th, 2007 - Mash with Medix
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| Is it really proper to use skulls to mark the death of a skeleton? |
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Continuing to make a name for themselves as BrikWars' fastest-rising war heroes, Moron Studios chalk up yet another battle - this time with Medix!
As always, prepare yourself for photo-edited masterpieces of MS-Paint exposition, as Vikings battle Skeletons, and... more Vikings, eventually.
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December 25th, 2007 - Merry Christmas!
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| Prepare for skullduggery on the BrikWars battle forum! |
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I've been getting some e-mails lately wondering why there haven't been any updates to the Movable Type feed lately; the answer is that the Movable Type software and I have had irreconcilable differences. But fear not! I've been busily moving the newsfeed over to LiveJournal instead, and for those of you who can read this, it must be working right. Updating and editing the newsposts will now be much, much easier, and furthermore, you can now see where all the newsposts of the last six months went.
Hopefully this means that it'll be easier for everyone to participate in the comment threads. While Movable Type relied on a cryptic and byzantine login system that baffled even the most dedicated webfan, a quick look at any random LiveJournal shows that LJ is easy and intuitive enough for even the most retarded semi-pubescent drama-whore.
Whether you consider that to be good news or bad, if the comment threads don't thrill you I've also installed some shiny brand-new discussion forums to back them up, fulfilling a decade-long dream of mine which in the past I had always been too lazy to do anything about. As I type this announcement, the forums are still in their first couple dozen users and couple hundred posts, so there's still time to get in towards the beginning if not actually on the ground floor. Merry Christmas everybody!
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December 9th, 2007 - Battle For Some Magic Jewels
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| Heavy troopers chop off their own heads in a fit of pent-up rage. |
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The Moron Studios brothers are back again, with a new battle outside their main Brikinville storyline. This time it's two armies facing off to destroy each others' Magic Jewel, in a tiny rubble-strewn battlefield on which any fortifications must be built from scratch in the heat of action.
The MS-Paint style arrows and special effects completely make this battle report, more so than any other to date.
Addendum: Although Moron Studios has also created a YouTube version of this battle, I recommend you watch their YouTube video "Didn't See That Coming" instead, as I believe that it's the perfect encapsulation of the BrikWars spirit.
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December 4th, 2007 - NELUGgers Clash Amongst Ruins!
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| Increased ability means increased gore |
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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." |
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November 29th, 2007 - Separated at Birth?
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| Space Marine versus Deadly SpaceMan - who would win? And who would have more fun in the process? |
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Roys over at The Download Munkey draws an interesting parallel between the BrikWars painting and Kev Walker's "Last Stand" art for WH40K. Man I sure hope that our version came first.
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September 25th, 2007 - Gorchek's Solo Mercenary Campaign
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| Two of the greatest sets of the Eighties go toe-to-toe to settle Lego's bitterest theme rivalry. |
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Gorchek has come up with a novel idea: a solo BrikWars campaign, pitting his own mercenary forces against skullduggering pirates, with a couple of custom rules to keep the two sides' deployment and responses unpredictable. His adventures are narrated in the Frappr forum and Flickr photo gallery.
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August 22nd, 2007 - The Battle of Redrock City
IVhorseman's posted to the Frappr forums with news from Redrock City, which has been reduced to a smoldering ruin of crumbling Pepsi-carton buildings and styrofoam rubble by the Galactic Corporate Alliance's bombing campaign. The Galactic Union has moved in to occupy a section of the remains, but GCA forces are moving in to evict them from their positions.
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July 23rd, 2007 - Triple Faction Brikwars Chaos: The Battle of Fleebnork Pass
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| Mini-dragon! Please stop humping the boulder! |
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I don't know who these guys are (apart from all of their names, multiple face shots, and army photos), but they are awesome.
I see a lot more BrikWars photos going up on flickr and mocpages nowadays as opposed to Brickshelf, which works out nicely because adding captions makes everything more hilarious. It's tough to pick the best quote out of so many possibilities offered in this gallery; sober rules clarifications like "Should a hero manage to ascend this tower and drink the contents of the Goblet of Command without getting a brain freeze (skill rating 5), they will gain control of all the natives and monkeys surrounding it" are followed with "Easily deflecting enemy armor, the Baby Dragon growls and humps a rock" and a picture entitled simply "Nerds."
Watch for burning monkeys, the disturbing Axephant, and Prince Klaus Von Awesome jumping a river of lava on the back of a crocodile (did I say awesome already? - because, AWESOME).
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July 17th, 2007 - LegoWar and Blok-Lok
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| Virtual minifigs come apart even easier than the plastic kind. |
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Martin van Haeften and Brenny Pagniello write in with two new brick wargames. I haven't had time to look at either too closely yet, but feel free to poke around their sites.
Martin's LegoWar is an online multiplayer empire-building game that looks to be a web-based callback to Door games of old, for those of you who remember the days of old when we were still celebrating the miraculous advance from 300 to 1200 baud modems. The game seems to have completed several iterations and special in-game events.
Brenny's Blok-Lok is a little closer to the kind of thing we're used to seeing, a quick and easy minifig tabletop combat game pared down to bare essentials.
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July 15th, 2007 - Brickshelf gone for good?
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| With Brickshelf's mysterious disappearance, the hearts and weblinks of Lego fans are broken. |
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Copied over from the Brothers Brick LEGO Blog:
Whether you host your own images there or not, Brickshelf is one of the cornerstones of the online LEGO community. As many of you visiting this blog will have noticed, none of the images hosted on Brickshelf are currently working, and if you've been to Brickshelf.com in the last few hours, you will have seen the following text - and nothing else - on the home page:
"Brickshelf has discontinued operation. We apologize for any inconvenience."
They follow up with links to discussions across the Lego fan community, since this caught even the most insidey of insiders by complete surprise.
Update, July 19: Brickshelf is back online; it turns out the entire panic was part of a questionable publicity stunt to raise awareness of Brickshelf's financial woes. However, this heightening of awareness seems to have been a completely wasted effort, as Brickshelf lacks any obvious method for taking donations.
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July 4th, 2007 - Brik: Tactiks
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| Brik: Tactics battles result in a lot of dismemberments. |
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Jamie Fristrom of GameDevBlog writes in:
"I bet you get a lot of e-mail from annoying people who say, "Hey, look at how I changed BrikWars, because I didn't like it the way it was, and blah blah blah." This is another one of those e-mails. Anyhow, I just posted my mod at www.gamedevblog.com, if you're interested - it's like QuikWars but even Quiker. Once you've set up, anyway." Jamie's "Brik: Tactics" is a cool little mod that bases damage on chopping off minifig limbs, creating a horrific scene of mutilated combatants and discarded body parts strewn across the battlefield. Awesome!
(As an old-school Lego guy, I never took this route - the minifigs of the Eighties could have their shoulders and hips detached, but after a certain number of times they wouldn't go back on again. Minifigs today are manfuactured to be more durable, so battle mutilation is a lot more feasible nowadays, but old habits dies hard.)
Although described as a BrikWars mod, "Brik: Tactiks" is a pretty unique and full-featured game in its own right, with a number of features that make it well worth a look. I especially like the modified initiative rules, and the callouts to influences from other wargames.
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June 30th, 2007 - The Last Man Standing: An Almighty Benny Production
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| Last Man Standing: the commemorative plaque |
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Almighty Benny has cemented his position as BrikWars Genius by turning a good idea for rewarding mayhem into what may very well be the greatest BrikWars YouTube movie created to date. His "Last Man Standing" rule gives powerful bonuses to players who burn through all their excess troops in a hurry.
The rule and the battles that followed are described and discussed in great detail in the Frappr forum thread, and the battlefield adventures of the Imperial Navy, the Castle Guards, and the SWAT Team are immortalized forever in their YouTube epic.
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