1. Overnight mail is not permitted. Any other type of mail by any carrier is permitted as long as it is not overnight delivery. Delivery confirmation is always a good idea.

2. When you receive death socks, you are required to mail your assassin your unfinished socks. If you didn’t have a chance to start a pair of socks, you must mail enough yarn to make a pair of socks to your assassin, or return their death socks to them. It is simply not acceptable to receive a pair of death socks and not send your unfinished socks or yarn to your assassin. Sock Wars V starts on January 15, 2010. If you haven't started a pair of socks by January 20, 2010, you should contact the Supreme Commander to withdraw. Sock Wars reports to the Naughty Swappers List on Ravelry. If you do not follow through with participation and don’t contact the Supreme Commander, you will be reported on Ravelry and on the Sock Wars website as a Flake.

3. When you are killed, you must mail your unfinished socks to your assassin as soon as possible. As soon as possible means no more than 2-3 days.

4. Communication is very important. On the 4th week of the war, if you are still alive, you will find your name on the Leaderboard linked into a form. Once a week, starting on the 4th week of the war, you must stop by the leaderboard and click on your name, and click on your status (waiting on unfinished hat, working on hat, dead, retired, etc.) Periodically, I also email everyone for an update on their status. If I email you and don’t receive a response within 4 days, and you have also not checked in for 2 weeks in a row, you will be marked as withdrawn and out of the game.

5. You are expected to work as diligently as possible on your weapon. Your target should expect their death at any time and live in fear of you. If you are not able to kill your target within a reasonable amount of time, please be kind to them and let them and the Supreme Commander know that you have decided to withdrawn.

6. If you are killed, please be kind and send along a note with your unfinished socks to let your assassin know where you left off and which pattern you were using, along with enough yarn to complete the socks.

7. Any modifications of the pattern must be agreed to by the Supreme Commander.

8. Be kind to your fellow warriors and treat them as you wish to be treated. Everyone knits to the best of their ability, and while smack talk is encouraged, unkindness is not. Violations of this rule will result in disqualification.

9. You are dead when you receive a pair of death socks. All Dead. Not Mostly Dead. All Dead. Dead as a doornail. If the socks have issues, such as dropped stitches or are significantly off gauge, you mail them to the Supreme Commander, and you receive a pair of valkyrie socks. If the socks are have significant issues where they should not have been mailed in the first place, such as only partialy knit, the warrior who mailed them will be disqualified. Your expectations should be that your assassin has put their best efforts into creating the weapon they send to kill you, and weapons should be accepted as such even if they are not perfect. This is not a competition about perfection - it is a bloody knitting competition.

10. Pre-knitting is not permitted, and is grounds for disqualification. Pre-knitting means any form of early knitting, including but not limited to, starting a new pair of socks before receiving your dead target’s unfinished socks without receiving prior approval from the Supreme Commander.

11. If an assassin receives an unfinished pair of socks which has issues, it is the assassin’s responsibility to correct the socks before firing them as death socks at a target.

12. The designers supplying the patterns for Sock Wars and Iron Knitter have been kind enough to share their pattern(s) with us, so please respect their intellectual property rights. In other words, there is no sharing of Sock Wars or Iron Knitter patterns without the designer's consent. Violating the intellectual property rights of designers will be dealt with swiftly and severely.

1. When mailing to the United Kingdom, a description and value on the back of the package is needed. A value of £2 or £2.50 can avoid problems with customs and avoid targets paying a fee to collect the package from the postal service. The information on the back of the package can look something like:

Description: Socks
Value: £2.50

2. When mailing within the United States, delivery confirmation is a good idea. Delivery confirmation from the US Postal Service is inexpensive and will indicate when the weapon has been delivered to the target’s home post office. Unfortunately, delivery confirmation from the USPS does not indicate when the package is delivered to the actual destination – just when it is delivered to the post office nearest the destination address.

3. If you want to mail your weapon in a manner which requires a signature by your target, please contact your target first to make sure this is okay. UPS in particular can delay delivery for several days while they try to get a signature.

4. Make sure your target is okay with knowing that you have mailed your weapon before you tell them that you have mailed it. Many warriors enjoy the anticipation of checking the mail every day to see if they are dead or if they live another day, and letting them know ahead of time when you have mailed your weapon can destroy the anxiety and fun of walking to the mailbox not knowing if today is the day.