Chapter One: Gameplay
| "Thus, a prince should have no other object, nor any other thought,nor take any thing else as his art but that of war and its orders and discipline; for that is the only art which is of concern to one who commands." |
| - Niccolo Machiavelli |
|
| Almighty Benny and Major Natalya settle their BrikWars differences over a high-stakes game of Nano-BrikWars, proving themselves to be deadly metagamers. |
| Elements shown: LEGO, Nanoblock, die |
|
The purpose of BrikWars is to provide a safe and comfortable setting
in which groups of like-minded minifigs can gather to mutilate and slaughter
one another for the entertainment of their Humans. Their battles can be large or small, balanced or skewed,
ordered or chaotic; the important thing is that they deliver the mindless
violence that minifig society demands.
1.1: Overview of Play
Setup
| "If our most highly qualified General Staff officers had been told to work out the most nonsensical high level organization for war which they could think of, they could not have produced anything more stupid than that which we have at present." |
| - Claus von Stauffenberg |
|
Human players prepare for a game by building armies, fortifications, scenic landscaping, and whatever else they think might add to their battlefield enjoyment. The only limits are the imagination and construction abilities of the players. It's best if the forces are built from plastic bricks, so that soldiers and structures can be modified to show damage, changes in posture, or equipment loadout, but it's by no means necessary - an army of action figures and stuffed animals can march over a landscape of book-stack mountains and shoebox buildings using the same rules.
Players have the option of imposing a military budget
of Construction Points if they suffer from the notion that
armies should be equal or that battles should be "fair." They might decide on a structured scenario, setting strict guidelines for the combat genre and spending hours crafting formations of
vehicles and infantry, or they might just grab mismatched units at random
out of a bin and start fighting immediately. It’s left to the players to decide how serious
they want to be.
When the battlefield and armies are assembled, players can pick their
starting locations by any combination of mutual agreement and dice-rolling.
If one player designed the battlefield, it’s customary to allow
the other players to have first pick of starting locations, to prevent
unfair advantage. Sometimes the armies' starting locations will be
dictated by a scenario - in a castle siege, for instance, the defenders
take up positions in and around the castle while the besieging force
begins at whichever edges of the battlefield seem most advantageous.
Taking Turns
| "First I kick you in the nuts as hard as I can, then you kick me in the nuts as hard as you can, and we keep going back and forth until somebody falls." |
| - Eric Cartman |
|
Once the armies are in place, the battle can begin. Each player takes
a turn maneuvering forces and making attacks for all of the units
under their control, before passing play to the next player. When all
players have taken their turns, the cycle begins again with the first
player and continues until one side "wins."
| While it's easiest to pick a turn order and stick with it, players can mix the sequence up as they see fit. Some players like to roll dice to randomize the order of each cycle of turns. When forces are allied, or too far apart to interact, it can save time to run them all simultaneously. If forces start far apart at the beginning of a battle, it can help to give them all double or triple turns to get into fighting range more quickly. |
Turns will sometimes come up when a player or his troops aren't ready to take them - his troops may be waiting for the right moment to spring an ambush, or to coordinate movement with allies, or the player is taking a long time in the bathroom, or his girlfriend just kicked him in the groin and he can't come to the table for a few minutes. In cases like these, the player may choose (or other impatient players may choose on his behalf) to Delay his turn for a more opportune time. His turn is skipped, and the other players continue as normal. Once he's ready again, he can un-Delay and take his turn after whomever is the current player, and this becomes his new position in the turn order.
Victory
| "It's never 'just a game' when you're winning." |
| - George Carlin |
|
It's not especially important for any one player or
team to "win" a battle. Dying horribly
in some ridiculous fashion is always funnier than surviving horribly in some ridiculous fashion, and BrikWars
is set up to favor the optimum result of a complete massacre of all
participants, bystanders, and scenery. You should expect
your BrikWars battles to often end with final victory going to
a force of nature or some deadly catastrophe rather than to any player.
'Fire,' 'explosive decompression,' and 'nuclear fission' have winning
records that no Human strategist can hope to match.
The 'classic' conclusion for a BrikWars battle is for the entire battlefield
to be destroyed in a cataclysmic fireball. This is considered a victory
for all sides except those whose objective was to prevent destruction
(e.g., "protect the doughnut factory").
Objectives
The simplest types of battles have no military objectives. Minifigs with weapons don't need any excuse to run around whacking other minifigs with them, and there's no reason not to just send them out on the field and let them go crazy. When the dust and body parts settle, it's irrelevant which side won or lost; success is measured by whether events on the battlefield were more or less crazy than the battle that came before it.
In (marginally) more serious battles, minifigs fight for a higher cause - stealing the enemy's secret taco recipe, assassinating a meddling peace delegation, or heaping the largest pile of skulls for the glory of the Stud God. Objectives work best when they're aggressive and focused - specific targets to destroy, murder, or steal make for exciting battles, whether each side is fighting for targets controlled by the other, or if they're all racing to reach the same neutral target first. Passive goals like defense or escape should only be considered if they're made secondary to a more target-oriented Objective, if they're tolerated at all.
| "Survival" is never a worthwhile goal. Any minifigs saddled with such a lame Objective should kill themselves immediately in protest. |
1.2: Numbers
Units in BrikWars are defined by their physical construction and placement. Players don't need to refer to charts and graphs to see if a policeman has a chainsaw spear in his hand, or if it's long enough to stab a nearby jaywalking civilian, or if the fair and balanced news cameras are in position to catch this patriotic video of justice being served. The plastic figures speak for themselves.
Some attributes aren't obvious from the physical models, however. In-game abilities like a civilian's running speed, a policeman's spear-handling skill, or a chainsaw's jaywalker-stabbing strength are represented by a small handful of abstract numbers. BrikWars relies heavily on mayhem and chaos in the big picture, but the moment-to-moment details are made up of an orderly series of numerical comparisons.
Taking Measurements
In BrikWars, distances are measured in inches. If you don't like inches,
you can use any alternate system of measurement that seems reasonable
- an inch is about three centimeters, the length of three construction brick
studs, or the height of three construction bricks. It's not important
whether or not your conversion is exact, as long as everyone's using
the same system.
| Keychain measuring tapes are great for winding around narrow spaces. |
|
As with most aspects of BrikWars, flexibility is key: bendable measuring
tape is going to be a lot more useful than a rigid ruler, since you'll
often want to measure around corners or in tight spaces. If you haven't
got a measuring tape handy, a simple ribbon or piece of string marked
off in inches will work as well.
Rolling Dice
| "Jacta alea est.” |
| - Julius Caesar |
|
BrikWars uses dice to add an element of randomness into the game.
If a minifig fires a rifle at an opponent, sometimes he'll hit and
sometimes he'll miss; if the enemy minifig is struck by the bullet,
he might survive the damage, or he might not. Die rolls determine
the outcome of actions whose success isn't guaranteed.
For the Core Rules, dice come in two flavors: the d6 and the d10, named according to how many faces are on each die. The
six-sided d6es ("dee-sixes") are regular cube-shaped
dice, much like you might find from raiding any lesser board game, except
that when you call them d6es it sounds 1d100 times as geeky. The ten-sided
d10s ("dee-tens") are a little more unusual; you'll
have to do some shopping at your local gaming store or website to
stock up. The d6es are used for almost all normal action in BrikWars,
while d10s are reserved for certain types of high-powered combat.
| If you don't have any ten-sided dice, you can replace any d10 roll with 2d6-2 - that is, roll two six-sided dice and subtract two from the result. Is this statistically equivalent? Not really. Do we care? Refer to The Law of Fudge, below. |
In BrikWars and most other wargames, die rolls are described according
to the number of each type of dice involved, plus or minus a modifier (if any). 4d6 means a roll of four six-sided dice, all added together. 1d10+2 means you roll one ten-sided die and add two to the
result. 17d6+23d10+0937 means rolling seventeen six-sided dice
and twenty-three ten-sided dice together, and adding nine hundred
thirty-seven to the result, which you will hopefully never have to
do.
| Some people like to refer to dice with a "die" rather than a "dee" prefix. But how, then, do you refer to multiples? With the utilitarian "die-sixes," or the more erudite "dice-six?" The solution is this: whenever someone refers to a die-anything, kick them in whichever shin is most convenient. This will forestall any arguments about proper nomenclature and pluralization. |
No matter how negative a modifier may be, the lowest possible result
for any die roll is zero. A roll of 1d6-100 will almost always
have a simple result of zero, for instance, unless a player's luck
with Critical Rolls defies belief.
Critical Rolls
Rolling dice in BrikWars is never a sure thing. No matter how easy
or how difficult the task, there’s always at least a tiny chance
of failure or success, thanks to a couple of special cases when rolling
dice.
 |
Critical Failure
If the die in any roll comes up ‘1,’ then the
roll is a Critical Failure, regardless of other modifiers. Whatever task a player or unit was
attempting fails completely, no matter how easy it might have
been.
If there are multiple dice in a roll, it's only a Critical Failure if all of the dice come up '1.' |
 |
Critical Success
Luckily, rolls can also turn out unexpectedly well. When rolling
any number of dice, for each die that comes up on its highest-numbered
face (a six on a d6, a ten on a d10), the player may add +1d6
to that roll as a Bonus Die. The same holds true for
the additional dice rolled – any sixes rolled on the Bonus
Dice continue earning additional Bonus Dice. A player may elect
not to roll a Bonus Die that he’s earned, for whatever
reason. |
1.3: Supplies Checklist
| "The very existence of flamethrowers proves that some time, somewhere, someone said to themselves, 'You know, I want to set those people over there on fire, but I'm just not close enough to get the job done.'” |
| - George Carlin |
|
Besides the obvious items like armies, a battlefield, and other players, you should make sure you have the following.
Things You'll Need
- Fun
First and most importantly: fun. It seems obvious,
but this item is so often strangely forgotten by all types
of gamers that it bears repeating: don't play a game
if you don't mean to have fun.
And remember that it's not all about you! Other people may have entirely different ideas than you do about what counts as fun. If you're having a fantastic time but everyone else is bored stiff, then the game is a failure and it's probably your fault. Make sure you know what kind of game everyone else showed up to play, and pay attention to what types of fun they're trying to get out of it.
- Measuring Devices
BrikWars is won or lost by its ranges and measurements, and you'll want enough measuring tools to go around. Flexible measuring tape is best, but in a pinch you can put together brick-built measuring sticks instead, measuring distances at three studs per inch.
- Dice
You'll need a good supply of dice - the more, the better. The Core Rules are written entirely for two types of dice
- regular cube-shaped six-sided dice (d6) for regular units, and the
more unusual ten-sided dice (d10) for siege- and hero-level
units. (In the later section, "MOC Combat," rules are given for using a greater variety of exotic dice, but even these have equivalent d6 conversions.)
- Cameras
By nature, BrikWars games are full of amazing constructions,
crazy action scenes, and hilarious mishaps that you'll
wish you had photos of afterwards. Most impressive of
all to fellow gamers, as verified by over a decade of fan
mail, are the astonishing photos that show BrikWars being played by real live girls.
- Doughnuts and Beer
Pizza, chips, and Mountain Dew are the more traditional
food of wargamers, but the proper BrikWars mindset is
less about "Gary Gygax" and more about "Homer
Simpson." Cheeseburgers are an acceptable compromise.
| Which Bricks Should I Use? |
Most people associate construction bricks with The LEGO Company, but there are any number of other toymakers riding on LEGO's coattails. The knockoff products from these "clone brands" can cost much less than genuine LEGO bricks. This is no coincidence: Regular toymakers use less expensive toy molds to make toy-quality bricks, while LEGO uses super-precise (and super-expensive) engineering to create building elements with accuracy measured in microns.
The difference can be invisible to the naked eye, but it's impossible to miss if you try to build anything. Two clone bricks can often fit together without trouble (depending on the brand), and you can usually find a third that fits onto the first two. But the inconsistencies compound with each brick added, and soon it's a struggle to force additional bricks together at all. With LEGO, by contrast, thousands of parts snap together as a matter of course.
Here, LEGO is the victim of its own excellence - people are so used to bricks that "just work," they assume that any similar-looking brick will function just as well. Ignorant grandparents think the clone bricks give more value for the dollar. The grandkids, frustrated by trying to get the knockoffs to function at all, never want to play with construction toys again, and become drug dealers or politicians instead.
By counterfeiting and betraying the good will built up by LEGO over the course of decades, the parasitic clone brands sabotage the very market they leech off of. To give them a single dollar of support is an act of unmitigated evil, and anyone who knowingly buys a clone set is doomed to burn in Hell in a richly-deserved fiery torment lasting for all eternity.
That being said, clone brands offer specific advantages to the pragmatic BrikWarrior.
Because they aren't limited by LEGO's anti-war ethics, or by the need for each element to earn back the hundreds of thousands of dollars it costs to make a single LEGO mold, their elements and sets can be much more specialized and warlike. Historically, the clone brands' most successful playthemes have looked like they could have come straight out of a traditional wargame.
For minifigs and weapons, this is fantastic, since they don't depend as heavily on buildability. Even the crappy bricks aren't completely useless; by sandwiching them between layers of LEGO, they can often be used to build stable structures while still keeping a lower overall cost. |
|
Things You Probably Won't Need But Might
Want Anyway
If you're not making up bizarre and crazy ad hoc rules on the fly,
you're not really playing BrikWars. As such, you might want to bring
extra gear just on the off chance that you think of funny things to
do with it.
- Pencil and Paper
In case you want to pass love notes to the cute player
on the other team.
- Spare Parts
Not a requirement, but it's often nice to be able
to whip up a costume change for your hero, a crater and
random debris from an explosion, a stand to hold up a
minifig in a precarious position, or any number of other
objects that might appear as the result of unexpected
events.
- Stat Cards
Even if you think you've got all your units' stats memorized,
it's good to keep their stat cards handy, if for no other
reason than to reassure your opponents that you're not
making up numbers off the top of your head.
- Blood and Fire
While not completely necessary, it really adds to the
ambience if you have a healthy supply of little red plates and
flame elements to scatter around whenever it seems like
the battlefield could use more blood or more fire. And
seriously, when could a battlefield not use more blood
and more fire?
- Funny
Dice
 |
Nothing says gaming like funny dice. A Stumble die, for
instance, is easily made by taking a Sharpee and dashing
off a quick arrow on each face of a regular d6; now with
every roll you get both a direction and a number of inches.
Good for ad hoc rulings on wind direction, shrapnel trajectories,
and drunken staggering. |
 Pips
If you've ever played a collectible card game, you've
got piles of these: colored beads or beans or chits or
little pewter brains. Even if you haven't got some counting
pips set aside already, it's easy to improvise some with
a pile of plastic bricks. Pips let you make up conditions
like "everyone remove one blue pip at the end
of your turn - when they run out, the nuke goes off."- Fire Rings
Complicated and arcane-looking gear with no actual purpose
is great for intimidating newbies. More experienced players
may just laugh at you whether the things actually have
a purpose or not, so be careful.
1.4: The Spirit of the Game
Proper Observance of Rules
| "The secret we should never let the gamemasters know is that they don't need any rules." |
| - Gary Gygax |
|
The right answer is the wrong answer if it takes more than thirty seconds to look it up. When checking a rule isn't worth the effort, it's better to axe a stupid question than to get the stupid answer. |
Rules are for the small-minded and weak. Let a little kid loose among
your collection of bricks sometime, and watch the way he plays. In
his hands, those minifigs will have all kinds of crazy battles and
adventures, there'll be all the drama, death, and explosions you could
ever want, and the whole time that kid won't have to crack open a rulebook even once. How is it that he's so much smarter than we are?
The answer is that most of us have had a lot more years of schooling
than he has. Wait until he's eighteen, he'll have become just as slack-jawed
and dull-eyed as the rest of us.
BrikWars has a lot of rules. If the mandatory education system has
had the chance to get its hooks in you, then you'll respect the authority
of those rules, because they're all written down in a book, and some
of them are capitalized. If things went so badly that you ended up
going to college as well, then you'll probably not only shackle yourself
to those rules but also then try to lovingly twist them to your own
ends, weaseling out loopholes and exploits to cleverly frustrate the
other players and ingeniously prevent fun for the entire group.
If you find yourself engaging in that kind of rules-lawyering and
munchkinism, then you have just failed at BrikWars. Stamp a big F
on your report card, schedule a get-together between your face and
the Hammer of Discipline, and see if you can't spend a little time
afterwards with a couple of five-year-olds to remember all the things
you've forgotten about having fun.
| "The more laws and order are made prominent, the more thieves and robbers there will be." |
| - Lao Tzu |
|
The reason BrikWars has so many rules is that it's a lot more fun
to flout a large rules system than a small one. Hopefully you can
use these rules as a springboard for the imagination rather than as
manacles with which to enslave yourself. However, we also recognize
that not everyone is ready to live without the safety net that such a system
provides, especially while in competition with others. So,
before we go any further, here are the two most important rules in
the book.
THE RULE OF FUDGE
Fudge
everything your opponents
will let you get away with. |
| "Hell, there are no rules here - we're trying to accomplish something." |
| - Thomas Edison |
|
|
The power of fudge overrides
all laws.
Elements shown:
LEGO, fudge |
BrikWars provides pages and pages of rules to calculate
events down to the tiniest detail. If a player tries to follow all
of them to the letter, their turns will take hours, everyone will
lose interest, and no one will want to play a second time. This is
for the best. Those people should stop trying to play with construction
bricks and instead give them to someone with an imagination.
Just because you can assign die rolls to every sneeze and determine
landing trajectories for every blown-off body part, doesn't mean you
should. The most probable results are very often the least ridiculous,
and why bust out the calculators only to spend more time having less
fun? Except where your opponents insist otherwise, you should resolve
the bulk of your actions with rough estimates, arbitrary decisions,
and an abundance of vague hand-waving. Given the opportunity, always
fudge in favor of mayhem.
Don't waste time on stuff nobody cares about. Following the rules
and winning are the two lowest priorities on your list. Getting some
good laughs during the battle and having a good story to
tell afterwards are your primary goals.
| Remember that while you're fudging everything your opponents aren't objecting to, they're trusting you to set the limits on their fudging in return. They won't know what level of rule-minding you're most comfortable with if you don't tell them. |
WHAT I SAY GOES
Players
are smarter than rulebooks. Especially the ones with the
highest dice rolls. |
| "Any commander who fails to exceed his authority is not of much use to his subordinates." |
| - Arleigh Burke |
|
|
There
will be many times when players will have a difference of opinion,
when the best course of action isn't clear, or when no one remembers
the details of a rule but they don't care enough to waste time looking
it up. “Can a zombie bite convert dogs into zombie dogs?”
“Can that archer really fire at the petting zoo from where he’s
hiding?” “Is that hot dog stand really within bazooka range?”
If players can’t come to a quick consensus, then it’s time
for a What I Say Goes Roll. Every interested player (and, in some cases, sufficiently opinionated bystanders) states
his position. All participating players roll dice, re-rolling
ties if necessary. The player with the highest roll wins, and What
He Says Goes – as long as he said it before rolling the dice.
There's no changing your position once the dice are cast.
| If one player takes a position that’s an obvious
and deliberate attempt to cheat, his opponents are obligated to beat
the crap out of him. The player should then revise his position, although
you might let him get away with keeping it if the beating
was good enough. |
The first What I Say Goes Roll in most games is to decide the order
of play. The winner decides who goes first and in what order the players
will take their turns.
Spirits of the Game
"O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle - be Thou near them! With them, in spirit, we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe.
O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with their little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it - for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet!
We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen." |
| - Mark Twain |
|
| The BrikWars Pantheon |
Minifigs hold faith in any number of greater and lesser powers that inspire their fear, worship, and adulation.
Some abandon rationality in obeisance to BrikThulhu, the nine-tentacled Ragnoroktopus of chaos.
Others are seduced by the corruption of the Nega-Bloktrix and her promises of cheap Cloan-brik assembly. These blasphemers are opposed by purist orders of Legiti Knights and fraternal legions of BrikMasons who devote themselves to acts of brutal oppression and self-righteous douchebaggery in the name of an unseen Great Builder.
On the fringes, Rainbowistic cultists pursue the ecstatic anti-sentience of the baseball-capped Dimmy swarms, while ascetics at the opposite extreme abandon all hygiene in a quest to harness the forces of deconstruction and rebirth that sustain the poop-worshipping Dungans. Some put their faith in the impossible figure of the Dodekube, ascribing all events to the random dice rolls of disinterested Human gods. There are even rumors of isolated minifig hermits who hold a laughable belief in an omnipotent personal Player who oversees their every move.
|
 |
|
| By longstanding tradition, the customary drink of BrikWars is a black Irish stout. When Spirits are called for, whiskey is the accepted alternative. |
The Almighty Benny
The Spirits of the Game shine their favor on minifigs who are awesome more often than on ones who are merely sub-awesome. The Spirit known to reward the faithful most directly is the Almighty Benny.
The majority of BrikWars is about humiliating your opponents and grinding their forces into scattered plastic debris. When one of them does something awesome that deserves a reward, on the other hand, the Almighty Benny exists to give them a ray of hope and pride before you start heartlessly crushing them underheel once again.
Any time one of your enemies does something cool that makes the game better, you can award him an Almighty Benny. Worthy examples include:
- hosting the battle, especially if they took care of setting up an awesome battlefield
- building awesome models
- doing anything awesome that causes everyone at the table to say "that was awesome" and exchange high-fives
- doing anything awesome that causes everyone at the table to laugh their butts off, especially when it results in self-inflicted casualties
- demonstrating extreme sportsmanship, character, enthusiasm, genius, bloodlust, hospitality, retardedness, brand loyalty, or any other attribute you personally find awesome and would like to see more often
- acts involving beers and/or doughnuts and the awesome distribution of said beers and/or doughnuts
To make an Almighty Benny, grab any pair of construction bricks, attach them together, call it an Almighty Benny, and give it to your enemy. Ideally, you should give it a name commemorating the act that brought it about (e.g., "The Almighty Benny of Heroic Self-Decapitation.") At any moment from that point forward, whenever he thinks he needs it most, your foe can break the two bits apart for a bonus one-time Almighty +1d6 to any standard roll or stat.
The rules governing the Almighty Benny are as follows:
- Each Almighty Benny can be used exactly once to add a one-time +1d6 to any roll or stat, except when rolling for What I Say Goes or a Heroic Feat.
While each individual Benny can be used only once, if a player has multiple distinct Bennies he can spend as many of them in a single roll as he likes.
- You can only give Almighty Bennies to your enemies, knowing that they'll almost certainly use them against you.
Theoretically, the Bennieficiary can use an Almighty Benny against any of his opponents, but it's much more satisfying for everyone if he uses it against the player who gives it to him.
| Don't give Almighty Bennies to one enemy in the hope that he'll use them against another, because that's super lame. |
- You cannot place any conditions on the use of an Almighty Benny. Once it's in your opponent's hands, he can use it however he wants.
It's best if Benny recipients can find a way to save their Almighty Bennies for actions related to whatever the Bennies were awarded for in the first place, but they can really use it for whatever they want (excepting Feats and What I Say Goes rolls, of course).
Instant Bennies
There's a second type of Benny which grants the same Almighty +1d6, but can't be saved for later. Instant Bennies represent a momentary advantage for the armies that posesses them. An Instant Benny can be granted at any time, but if it isn't spent, it disappears at the end of the recipient's turn and the opportunity is lost.
| Instant Bennies can't be saved from turn to turn, so there's no point in trying to earn one if you're not in a position to spend it immediately. |
Unlike regular Almighty Bennies, Instant Bennies are awarded automatically when certain conditions are met, and their use is subject to restrictions.
There are five situations in which Instant Bennies are traditionally awarded automatically: First Blood, Deadly Ground, Inevitable Betrayal, Last Man Standing, and King of the Hill.
-
The Instant Benny of First Blood is awarded to the first player to make a kill, even if it's against his own troops, to encourage bloodthirst.
- The Instant Benny of Deadly Ground is awarded to any army that has at least one unit in enemy territory, to encourage aggressive tactics. Each army can earn this Benny once per turn, and multiple opposing armies can be earning these Bennies at the same time.
In most battlefields, a unit is in enemy territory if it's closer to that enemy's starting position than it is to its own. The boundary can be easily marked by placing monuments or landmarks at the halfway points between players.
In scenario battles, territory is defined in more concrete terms - in a siege, for instance, the territory inside the defensive wall belongs to the defenders, while territory outside belongs to the besiegers.
Only the units that are in enemy territory can use Instant Bennies of Deadly Ground, and they can only use them against the enemy whose territory they're in.
 Instant Bennies of Inevitable Betrayal are awarded to any player who betrays his allies, to encourage mayhem. Once the First Blood Benny has been handed out, all players acting in cooperation with one another, whether agreeing to simple non-agression or committed to a full-blown military alliance, are vulnerable to Inevitable Betrayal's sting.
For each alliance a player is in, he keeps a pile of Betrayal bricks which he can turn into Bennies of Inevitable Betrayal. If he's in more than one alliance, he can have more than one Betrayal pile, preferably color-coded so that everyone can tell which is which.
At the beginning of each of his turns, a player with surviving allies must decide whether or not it's time to Betray them yet. If he decides to remain faithful to the alliance for that turn, then he adds a brick to a Betrayal pile of his choice, and plays as normal. (He only gets one brick per turn, regardless of how many Betrayal piles he's hoarding.)
If he does decide to Betray one or more allies, on the other hand, then all the bricks in the Betrayal piles for those alliances turn into Instant Bennies of Inevitable Betrayal for him to spend against them. The larger the Betrayal pile is, the more tempting it becomes, so players should always keep one eye on their supposed "friends!"
Once the player has Betrayed an alliance, he is no longer part of it and can't be Betrayed in return. If he decides to rejoin the same alliance later in the battle (and if they let him), he must restart his own Betrayal pile for that alliance from scratch, while theirs continue at full strength.
- The Instant Benny of Last Man Standing is awarded to any player who only has one soldier left alive at the beginning of a turn, to encourage recklessness. The soldier can continue to get a new Last Man Standing Benny at the beginning of each following turn until he either dies or receives reinforcements.
- In scenario battles, the Instant Benny of King of the Hill is awarded to units who achieve the scenario's special identified objectives, to encourage territorialism.
The most common objectives are to seize and hold particular critical locations or pieces of equipment, especially those involving flags and the capture thereof. Once per turn, each held objective grants a King of the Hill Benny that can be used by the unit or units with uncontested control over it.
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