Here's another example of the instancer. But I doubt that some of these particles are not lying on top of each other. EDIT: Whoops, forgot the link. [ame] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHxZY2gfqpA[/ame]
Instancer lets you select one or more polygon meshes which you connect to a partileShape (if I'm not mistaking). You can then have the meshes controlled in any manner you can control particles. The smaller shards are 3 or 4 different chunks which are controlled by dynamic fields.[ame=…