Choosing the best thing out of a pile of really good things is always a tough decision, but hey, we're used to it. You too can participate in the careful choicemaking by voting for your favorite mod and indie game of the year over at Mod DB and Indie DB, where the top 100 nominations were just plucked from a gargantuan pool of over 9,000 mods and 5,500 indies.

With friendly vote buttons large and in charge until December 21, each database's 100 selections are sorted by genre and game for easy perusal. Numerous strong contenders vie for your mouse-click's thumbs-up, including noteworthy entries DayZ, The Dark Mod, Chivalry: Medieval Warfare, and Natural Selection 2.

Current favorites leading the pack are Half-Life 2's powerful mod lineup—among which Black Mesa and our own 2011 Mod of the Year No More Room in Hell count themselves among the ranks—and role-playing indie games. You'll find Legend of Grimrock, Dear Esther, Mount & Blade: Warband, and others in the latter category. But like everyone's slowly expanding backlog of shame, plenty of other potentials yearn for your attention. Head to both award pages for the full lists.

You might remember developers Flying Squirrel from their work on the multiplayer Mount & Blade expansion Napoleonic Wars, but one look at their first standalone project, the brilliantly ambitious Battle Cry of Freedom, and that short sulky Frenchman will be forever banished from your mind. Like Assassin's Creed 3, it's set during the American Civil War, but not the American Civil War as imagined by a grumpy bartender lying in a sci-fi sunbed. Read on for details, including mention of the 500-player(!) battles.

Here it is: whoa, there's going to be 500-player battles. Actually, there's a '+' in there too, so the game may be capable of supporting even more. Other things we can expect: historically accurate maps, uniforms and weapons, a "completely destructible environment", 3D voice chat, 5X5 km big maps and, perhaps best of all, "special musician units with drums, fifes, fiddles or trumpets, able to play historically accurate tunes." It appears as if combat will be largely similar to that seen in Mount & Blade, but with a bigger focus on muskets, obviously.

Flying Squirrel are taking donations on their homepage via their own form of Kickstarter, and at the time of writing they've raised just over a grand of their surprisingly low 60,000 Euros goal. 20 Euros is the minimum donation needed to bag a digital copy on release (plus early beta access), though if you have a spare million, the developers promise to "personally fly over to you and host the most awesome party you have ever had in your life". Hey now - I've been to a roller disco. I'm not sure anything will ever compete with that.

Taleworlds are working on a sequel to Mount and Blade subtitled "Bannerlord" according to the teaser trailer posted on the Mount and Blade site. There are no screenshots or details at all yet, but this is excellent news nonetheless. Mount and Blade 2 promises to once again "take players on a journey into a fictional world of up-close and personal medieval combat on a huge scale, bigger, bloodier and more intense than ever before" and include "highly requested new features." Oooh, what could those be?

There is a teaser trailer, but I don't want to get your hopes up. It is just a series of dramatic statements layered over some mist. LET THE LAND BURN AND THE BLOOD FLOW.

The latest update to Mount and Blade: Warband's Napoleonic Wars DLC releases the full source code into the wild, which should give Mount and Blade modders plenty to get their gnashers into. Warband's been a great platform for modders, and the extra units and features added by Napoleonic Wars has only put more muskets in the toolbox. The addition of new units, more swords, longer swords and better saddle textures can only help. The ten most popular maps from a recent community map contest have joined the rotation, and there are a bunch of balance fixes to boot.

The full update notes follow, plucked from Steam.

New features:

Added “Litovskiy Ulanskiy Polk”, Lithuanian Lancer Regiment, to Russia.
Added new swords for British Musicians and 95th Rifles, Austrian Infantry and Jägers.
Added new wall scene props for mappers - in desert and wood styles.
Added more destruction stages for some walls (that are commonly used in custom siege maps) and improved their textures.
Added new French Officers pants.
Pioneer earthworks can now be removed by using the shovel in alternate mode (accessible by press X).
Added the top ten community maps from the mapping contest.
Released full source code for modders.

 
General Changes

Remade all equipment for Russia: Cartridge bags, belts, etc.
Remade Austrian battle flags.
Players are now forced to walk when surrendering.
Improved textures of British and Austrian saddles.

 
Balance changes
Reduced the length of the bayonet slightly.
Increased the length of all cavalry swords.
Made the readying animation for the upper stab slower.
Upper stab chamber attacks are now not blockable anymore just like the lower stab.
People getting bumped by a horse now stay on the ground a bit longer before getting up.
Removed the damage a rider would receive when his horse dies.
Horses don’t rear up anymore when hit by a bayonet to their front.
Reduced the amount of bullets and damage of the Musketoon.

 
Bug Fixes
Fixed an exploit that allowed players to spawn objects on the map.
Fixed an exploit that allowed players to spawn with multiple firearms.
Fixed an exploit that allowed players to spawn naked.
Fixed a bug that made upper stabs unblockable when in crouch-mode
Fixed a bug that when a rocket launcher is picked up whilst someone is using it the player using it would get stuck.
Fixed small historical errors on Russian uniforms.
Fixed the mirrored banners above players.
Fixed stones not spawning near the walls that got destroyed.
Fixed some upside down texture errors on roofs.
Fixed some cases where you would not be able to spawn explosion crates.
Removed riding skill from pioneers.
Fixed several specular and normal map issues.