A lot of pictures do not follow the rules:
* use only cuboid shapes, you can scale them to long sticks, or squash them to flat boards, just keep them rectangular(or square) .
* use 10 or less cubes.
* the ground plane is free
* you can rotate them any way you'd like, but they cannot intersect each other.
* default grey materials only.
* keep the lighting generic, AO and soft lights are fine.
Here is mine: http://blenderartists.org/forum/attachm ... 1210571418