Between rounds you spend your winnings in the shop. What you buy is the whole game. Below are the items that matter in league play, what they do, and what the office thinks of them. Verdicts were reached by discussion at lunch and are final, unless DEAD LOAD disagrees, in which case they are revised.

We don't list prices, because the prices depend on how you've set the game up, and because REBAR would argue with every one.

BABY MISSILE
The smallest shot there is, and the one you'll fire most. Small blast, small crater, and if you hit, it does real damage.
VERDICT: Approved. The two-by-four of the arsenal. Nobody ever lost a lunch for owning too many of them.

MISSILE
A bigger blast. Same flight as the baby.
VERDICT: Approved. Specify where the baby is marginal.

BABY NUKE
Now we're talking. A big round blast that takes a bowl out of the hillside, and anybody in the bowl.
VERDICT: Approved, with a note that a near miss is still a hit.

NUKE
A very big blast. Half the hill goes away. Sometimes your own tank is on the half that goes away.
VERDICT: Over-designed. We approve of it anyway. Check your own clearance before firing.

FUNKY BOMB
Hits, then throws a spray of little colored bombs off in every direction, each with its own blast. Where they land is anybody's guess.
VERDICT: Rejected for unpredictable load distribution. Used constantly anyway. Responsible, by our count, for most of the 95 rounds this year in which nobody survived.

MIRV
Splits into several warheads at the top of its arc, and they come down spread out across the landscape. Fire it high and over the target, not at it.
VERDICT: Approved for distributed loads.

DEATH'S HEAD
A MIRV whose warheads are each the size of a nuke. When it comes down, the landscape is rewritten.
VERDICT: Not permitted before round five (Rule 3). After round five, permitted, and you should expect to be the next target.

NAPALM
Lands and spills burning liquid, which runs downhill and pools in the low spots. A tank sitting in a valley has a problem.
VERDICT: Approved. It flows to the low point, like water, and like blame. CANTILEVER once sat at the bottom of a valley in round two of every lunch for a month. He has since learned about drainage.

LEAPFROG
Three warheads. The first one blows up, the second one hops forward and blows up, then the third. Good for a tank that's dug in behind a ridge.
VERDICT: Approved. Progressive collapse, but on purpose.

ROLLER
Lands and rolls downhill until it hits a tank or comes to rest, and then goes off. You don't have to hit anybody, you just have to be above them.
VERDICT: Gravity load. Approved. The best weapon in the game against SHEAR WALL, who always parks downhill.

DIGGER
Doesn't explode. It tunnels into the ground where it lands. Fire one under a tank on a slope and the tank drops into the hole.
VERDICT: Approved. Excavation under an existing structure without shoring. We see this in the field and we don't like it there either. See Rule 4 and "The Basement."

DIRT CLOD
Drops a ball of dirt where it lands. Bury a tank and it can't shoot until it gets out. Bury your own tank and you're behind a wall.
VERDICT: Fill. Not structural. Approved for both offense and pouting.

SHIELDS
A shield takes damage for you until it's used up. The better ones take more, and some of them knock incoming shots away instead of absorbing them.
VERDICT: Approved. SHEAR WALL buys nothing else. He lasts into the final two of a lot of rounds, and then loses a lot of final duels, because he can't afford anything to shoot with. There may be a lesson in there.

PARACHUTES
When somebody digs or blasts the ground out from under you and you fall, a parachute brings you down without the fall damage.
VERDICT: Required by code. Not by our code, but it should be. Every rookie who skips parachutes learns about Rule 4 the hard way.

GUIDANCE
The guidance systems steer a shot in toward a tank instead of leaving it to ballistics and the wind.
VERDICT: Legal. Also, frankly, a little sad. The league has a long-standing tradition that a man who wins a round on guidance does not get to describe the shot afterwards.

TRACERS
Show the path of a shot and do no damage. They still use your turn.
VERDICT: Approved for preliminary design only. DEAD LOAD has never bought one.

A STANDARD LEAGUE SHOPPING LIST, as recommended by the commissioner (me), for the first few rounds: plenty of baby missiles, a couple of baby nukes, parachutes, one shield. Save the rest. Money left over carries forward, and by round five, somebody is going to buy a Death's Head, and you want to have something better to do that round than watch.