BRIKWARS
(Posted 2010-12-10 14:09:52 by ArchPaladin)

I admit I have never been much of a tabletop wargamer.  There are many
things that I appreciate about it - the look of well-painted miniatures, or
the intricate detail of the figures, or the tactical combat strategy
required to play - but the idea of spending a lot of money and time to do
it is just something that I can't bring myself to do.  I even suppose that
if I had the figures already available, I wouldn't mind hauling everything
down to a local gaming store and playing occasionally, but the initial cost
is entirely prohibitive.  And while the idea of having a standing army of
miniatures is cool, there's a part of my mind that thinks it's far too much
space required for the value returned.

I also found wargame systems that included magic or fantasy elements but
only to a cursory level to be something of a cop-out - but this is a
digression of what I wanted to talk about today.

At any rate, I had been looking at some various gaming sites today when I
came across BrikWars [ http://www.brikwars.com/index.html ] [brikwars.com]
- a wargame system that uses Lego pieces as your miniatures.  As with
anything else on the Internet, I suppose that I shouldn't be surprised
something like this exists, but the idea of using Lego pieces in battle
like this has a particular appeal to it.  I suppose that the reason is that
Lego pieces are rather ubiquitous in toy stores, that they don't take up a
lot of space when compared to other wargaming systems (on a per-miniature
basis), and that they're inexpensive (again, on a per-miniature or
per-terrain basis).

Plus, the fact that you can order individual Lego pieces and sets both new
[ http://shop.lego.com/Default.aspx ] [lego.com] and used [
http://www.bricklink.com/index.asp ] [bricklink.com], and that the plans
for all the old sets you have are available online [
http://peeron.com/inv/theme ] [peeron.com] makes the hurdles to
constructing a standing army very minimal indeed.

I have been keeping a lot of old Lego pieces in my garage, unable to
discard them because they still held a lot of sentimental value.  Notably,
they are all the old medieval and fantasy Lego pieces from the late 1980's
and early to mid 1990's.  I look at all the sites above and I realize that
I _already own_ a standing army, stored away and ready for battle.  I think
to myself, _I knew I had been keeping those around for some reason_.

Now all I need is a foe to vanquish.

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