Now you finally have a use for all those LEGOs that you've had tucked away in your closet. LEGO figures are ideally suited for miniature war games. They are the appropriate size, and have plenty of weapons and gadgets to be used in battle.

To play LEGO combat, you will need several things. Obviously, you're going to need LEGOs. A minimum of 10 LEGO figures per player is recommended. Each army should begin with an equal number of LEGO blocks, which can be arranged in any fashion desired (usually into castle walls and buildings, which are explained in detail later). Besides that, you're going to need some other players. Of all the players, at least one should be gullible enough to allow everyone else over its house. You'll need some 6-sided dice, maybe 1 or 2 for each player. And you'll need a few rulers and protractors for tracking movement.

All players should remain on their knees during play, and should not be allowed to move farther than their farthest unit. Thus, the ideal room would have a wide-open space somewhere in the middle, with plenty of places to hide around the walls.

Natural "terrain"-couches, shelves, etc., can be used by the units to their maximum advantage. Troops can rain down arrows from atop a rocking chair; wizards can hide behind table legs, etc. However, some terrain is not possible to reproduce naturally. Water is a good example. Someone with a LEGO Pirates kit will want to use the ship, so rivers and oceans will need to be added. Sometimes it can automatically be designated (for example, assuming that the sink is a lake), but if not, masking tape can be used to form an enclosed figure. The area inside the figure can be considered a body of water.

The goal of a LEGO battle can vary. The most common is Capture the Flag. In this scenario, each army has a flag, which it must defend. The goal of the other army is to get the enemy flag and take it back to their base. Alternatively, the goal can be to capture the flag, and then hold it for a certain number of rounds, maybe 5 or 10.

Another common scenario is the Full Siege. In this scenario, only one army has a castle; the other lays siege to it with the intent to hold the flag for a certain number of rounds, or move it out of the city walls. In this situation, there should be twice the number of units in the attacking army than in the defending army.

The simplest scenario is the Carnage scenario. The goal is simply to butcher everyone in the enemy army.

In the Common Goal scenario, both of the armies have a single goal. This is often an object, preferably in some distant place. Good possibilities are out on an abandoned pirate ship, in the middle of a maze, or most popular, atop some high objects that the units must scale. Each army will try to stop the other (by throwing them back down the mountain, etc.), while at the same time using other units to get where they need to go.

The terrain is also very important. A room can be neatly bisected by a broad river, forcing attackers to swim across it, and boats must be used to transport cannons and catapults. Alternatively, blocks can be moved from the castles to build a bridge (which will probably end up being destroyed after the first cannon volley).

Height differences are important to consider. A single 10" step can present a considerable obstacle to invading troops. The army on the bottom of the stair should be given half-again as many troops to make up for the difficulty. With large stairs, it is fair to think of the wall of the bottom stair as a sort of teleport pad. Anyone touching the wall is teleported to the top of the stairs (although a unit cannot fire missile weapons or spells through it).

Optionally, certain objects (like television screens and mirrors) can be used as teleporters with all the players' consent. If all the players agree that they want to make things completely zany and confusing, coins can be used as teleporters. A unit touching a nickel can transport to any nickel; a unit touching a penny can transport to any penny, etc. Please don't litter the ground with coinage, though.