Xbox Life has pulled the Halo Wars trailer we mentioned recently – probably because the bandwidth demands got too great. De Laal pointed out a re-encoded version (they cropped out the black bars that contained no info except the Xbox Life watermark)… but we think it’s a little fairer to the original host to put up the branded version; after all, this seems to have been exclusive to them. You can watch it here. (Louis Wu 18:28:00 UTC)

Pete Cooper is back with MORE concept art for the upcoming Halo Fan-created film, Operation Chastity. If the quality of the film comes anywhere NEAR the quality of the concept art, Hollywood’s gonna be jealous. (Louis Wu 18:26:37 UTC)

We’re a touch late to the party, but GameDaily’s John Lichman let us know that they’re premiering the Halo Wars soundtrack at AOL Radio today. It’s streaming only, and you get one song played at the top of every hour – so swing by and listen! (Apologies for posting this late enough that you’ve already missed a couple.)(Louis Wu 18:25:33 UTC)

Hawty McBloggy noticed that Kroden35 is creating new Halo-related 3D pictures… this time, the subject is Halo Wars. Swing by her site for details! (Louis Wu 18:24:37 UTC)

TTL Demag0gue informed us that Reclaimer 147 is up – and a new player gives Ferial pause. (Louis Wu 18:21:31 UTC)

Davis Beutler stopped in to announce that he’d won one of five spots given out by Kotaku AU to a Halo Wars preview this week; the winners will get to play the whole game through, and write a review. He’s offering to ask questions, if anyone there is answering – swing by with your suggestions! (If you’re in the Sydney area, there are still chances to get in on this event; atomic, for example, is giving away 5 slots, as well, starting today. Read the rules page for full details.) (Louis Wu 18:17:53 UTC)

Over at Blast Magazine, there’s another Halo Wars Hands-on, this time from a non-RTS player; give it a read if you’d like to see how a beginner in the genre views it all.(Louis Wu 18:17:21 UTC)

2900d4u was the first of many to let us know about a new Halo Wars cinematic montage that can be seen at a Taiwanese Xbox site. (If you’re having trouble there, there’s a lower-res version at Gametrailers.com.) This is FULL of spoilers for the Halo Wars story (mostly inferred, but pretty clear)… but if you check that thread on our forum, you’ll see a whole lot of people who WERE on the fence about buying Halo Wars now firmly in the ‘preordering now‘ category. Some are saying they’re buying it for the cutscenes alone. Make of this what you will.(Louis Wu 02:20:10 UTC)

smick6 auctioned off a Brute Spiker replica last September – if you were interested then, but missed it, you’ve got another chance. He’s put up another one – starting bid is $275, close is just under 7 days. If you’re curious about what you’d be getting, we put together a gallery last August, showing his progress.(Louis Wu 02:18:18 UTC)

gender bombs (or Swimmer, or Solomon) sent us word that he’d posted an album of music for Halo 3 and the graphic novels over at B.net; It’s electronic, and he’s titled the pieces rather vaguely, so that you can decide for yourselves what tidbit of Halo inspired each one. It’s free, and the full download (including album art) is 23 mb… what have you got to lose? (If the first download link doesn’t work any more, there’s another one a few posts down.)(Louis Wu 02:15:01 UTC)