Looks like Eisen Feuer has updated his Art of War strategy series at TalkXbox.com – The Art of Deception is a great read. It’ll help you fool your enemies into dying before you do. There’s a hefty writeup, complete with pictures, plus a video, demonstrating the techniques, in two formats. Go read and watch! Thanks to Thomas for the heads-up.

XboxZone, in Australia, has made good use of the early release of the Maptacular Map Pack down under – you can find 5 eight-minute movies (one for each of the new maps, all WMP9 format) showing lan play in the offices. Free registration for download required. Thanks to Rodney Campbell for the heads-up.

Bungie continues its new map overview series with a fantastic writeup of Relic – great pics, great gameplay stories, invaluable strategy tips. What timing on my part – when I posted the Relic flythrough vid earlier, I had no idea they’d be putting this up tonight – read one, watch the other, immerse yourself in Relic goodness! Thanks to all the folks who wrote in about this – looks like Tru7h SeeKer was first.

Apologies for the delay – QuickTime versions of the recent RvB-created Elongation walkthrough (Hi-Res, 26.2 mb | Lo-Res, 12.2 mb) are now available from our server. I meant to get these up a couple of hours ago – family obligations made that impossible. If you’d rather have the WMP9 versions, they are, as they were 3 hours ago, available from Red vs Blue themselves.

As promised, the Hi-Res Film Oasis flythrough/overview of Relic is up for your enjoyment – man, I love the timing in this one. Marty’s music is SO well incorporated… wow. And the imagery and camera work give you a fantastic sense of the epic feel of this map for CTF games. Go grab a copy!

Red vs Blue has released their next map walkthrough – this one is Elongation. Burnie’s walkthrough is much less exciting than the Film Oasis version we released a few hours ago, but it’s far more practical, if what you need is weapon placement and commentary on flow. (Grab ’em both!) We should have QuickTime versions available in a few hours. Thanks to many people – first was Ibeechu.

Briar, the guy we mentioned yesterday making some really nice Master Chief armor, has added a pair of shots for the SMG to go with it. (They’re the first two shots on the page.) Thanks to beetlecrazy12 for the heads-up.

Word came from Bungie – those two posters you can buy on eBay, for potentially inflated prices… you’ll be able to buy them anywhere soon, at standard poster prices (the last batch at the Bungie store were $8.95, if that helps). Here are larger versions: Master Chief on Turf (577×894, 212k) | Arbiter (577×894, 140k)

Some not-so-standard promo vids of the new Maptacular levels have appeared recently – Containment was first, followed by Warlock,then Sanctuary and Turf last week. I’ve been a little unhappy with these releases – some have had encoding problems, others have watermarks or splash screens added by the sites releasing them. I did a little digging, and we’ve gotten permission to release high-quality, watermark-free versions of all of them. We’re starting with one you haven’t seen yet – Elongation. We’ll add Relic later today or tonight, fill out the existing releases in the next couple of days, and then start on the final 3 maps. Thanks to the Xbox.com team, Film Oasis (who made them), and Bungie (whose fantastic work is so beautifully shown off in them) for helping make this happen!

Wow, funky. 7he One found some posters on eBay – they’re listed as ‘fully licensed’, though I haven’t seen them for sale anywhere else yet. Nice looking images!

Overswarm wrote up his impressions of the MLG St. Louis tournament last weekend, complete with pics; you can find it in his Not So Common Sense strategy guide, in the Articles section.

We mentioned the Vertex Weight Injector, a tool created by rec0 to add new bipeds to HaloCE, a few weeks ago. Yesterday, he released a new, less buggy version of the app – you can find a download link and comments in this Gearbox forum thread. Thanks, MasterGrief.

Thanks to the seven thousand people who wrote to point out that the Red vs Blue Season 3 DVD is now on sale in their online store. Season sponsors will get a $10 discount via email (look for the code before you buy) – otherwise, the DVD is $20. (This is a preorder only; the DVD won’t ship until July 6.) While you’re at the store, be sure to hit the ‘New Items‘ link at the top left; there are a bunch of new shirts and some stickers for sale as well.

Wow – THIS is gonna cause problems, I can tell. Looks like EB Games Australia might have made a pretty big mistake; they’re selling the Halo 2 Maptacular Map Pack NOW – you can buy the DVD in stores. (It’s not supposed to be on sale before July 5.) However, they emailed customers with this info:

“…Customers will not be able to access live with this title before the 7th of July. If a customers tries to access live before the 7th of July there account will be disabled. We apologize for the late notice on this information but we have just been notified.”

Ouch – how many Australian accounts do you think will get disabled by folks who didn’t get (or didn’t read) this email? Thanks to BeardedFerret, who wrote to us with the DVD in his hot little hands – and who is looking forward to some lan play with these maps in the next week. Update: I misunderstood BeardedFerret’s first note; the email went only to EB Games stores in Australia, not to customers; it was information for store personnel only. (BeardedFerret works in an EB Games store, which is how he saw it.) His store won’t be displaying the Map Pack on shelves before the 5th, and only selling it to people who ask for it – but he’s guessing that this will NOT be the case in most stores. Buyer beware!

Guardians found an as-yet-unlinked-here image by Greg Horn, an artist who creates pieces for Toyfare magazine (among other places). We mentioned a couple of other pieces of his last year – but the BR shot is new to me, at least. Nice work!

Holy… Webshift just wrote to tip us off to Briar’s Armor, a website devoted to armor replicas of various sci-fi characters. The Halo stuff is amazing. Doesn’t look like it’s for sale (yet) – but keep an eye on it!

Very cool. Over at Red vs Blue, Burnie Burns, who created walkthroughs of the first four downloadable maps a couple of months ago, is repeating the effort with the newer maps. A walkthrough of Backwash (41 mb in hi-res WMP9 format, 19 mb in low-res WMP9) is now available for sponsors (thanks, Sharky) – should be on the main page (for everyone) in the not-too-distant future. And as soon as we can, we’ll have QuickTime versions up for you, as well. Good stuff! Update: The WMP9s are available for everyone now at RvB. Still working on the QTs. Update 2: QuickTimes are now available on our server – Hi-Res (43.3 mb) | Lo-Res (19.7 mb). Enjoy!

Ben Ritter (aka BitMaP) posted a spoof CNN article yesterday – pretty funny jabs at both EA and Bungie. (GameJunkieJim also reposted it over at Bungie.net.) Give it a read!

Aaron Beierle has written a review of Halo 2 for CurrentFilm.com – plot gets a 9/10, the DVD gets 9.5/10, Sound gets 10/10 (go, Marty and co!). Check it out.

Whoa. Very cool. For anyone who didn’t buy Sanctuary and Turf when they came out – it seems they’re available now, for free, in the Content Download section of XBL. Go get ’em! Thanks, Echohammer419.