Crossbows & Catapults

[whitebeard]

I grabbed the two full sets and various expansions for Crossbows & Catapults which my brother and I amassed as children out of my mother's attic a few months back. And thirty years later, this game is still the absolute best thing for a rainy afternoon with my 8 year old!

The Castles:
I'm the Barbarians

photo 1.JPG

He's the Vikings

photo 2.JPG

Here's my layout (actually I moved one of the kings to the left before the game started).

photo 3.JPG

You can't see his until the battle is over.

Since we have two sets, we each have two king's caroms (AKA thrones) and the objective is to knock out your opponent's king (who stands on the carom) by launching caroms at the opponent's castle using the crossbow (ballista) and/or catapult . When the kings are knocked down (you only really need one), another figure must take it's place until you are out of men.

Here was the result

Victory?!

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Defeat!

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Hard fought match!

[Pitbullsandaks]

Love it. Weapons and warriors was also a fun game based on c&c

[ampersand]

damn i used to have that. loved it!
i had the cyclops and minotaur for it too (giant monsters throwing the tokens)
nice find

[whitebeard]

damn i used to have that. loved it!
i had the cyclops and minotaur for it too (giant monsters throwing the tokens)
nice find

Yeah, the cyclops is missing, no doubt broken and thrown away. We have the minotaur but the mechanism in his back is broken. These guys never threw the caroms very well anyway! One of the Dragon's legs is broken, but fixable. The shield (you can see integrated with my son's castle) is only slightly broken.

The Trojan horse however is good as new! I used that far off to the right (not in the picture) and it drew a lot of fire in the first few minutes. He thought one of my kings was in there, and this is why I won the match.

Basically we only use the crossbows and catapults to attack. All of the other pieces do not throw the caroms as hard / far. And how would you use the outpost catapult (2 integrated in each castle) if you have men standing on it and hiding behind it? None of this stuff was ever really compatible with our house rules, which are way more fun than the rule book. I had not even read the rule book until a few months ago. Interesting read… rules which are obvious to children all over the world are far better!

[mitchiemasha]

In the UK we have a newer game heavily stealing from this, Horrible histories battle game. It adds cards and a few other mechanics. The extra game pieces were sold off cheap in Home Bargains stores.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCyM9C71UdMM8deZi8GCJRBw

Great fun for kids.

[torilen]

Man, bringing back memories there. I would love to have this for me and my son - I may have to try and find
some.

[cynthialee]

I never saw this game before. Looks fun.

[StratosVX]

My brother had this game. We had quite a bit of fun with it. And we were in our late teens at the time.

[Redav]

Nice work. One of the guys at primary school had this (think 25+ years ago) and I played it once and thought it was fun. A few years back I saw one come up on eBay for an alright price so I picked it up. It was still a bit of fun (although it wasn't the exact version as there's been a few). I should crack it out again.

[mitchiemasha]

In a similar vain of knocking things over... There is also a futuristic game, IMPACT! Marines V Dinosaurs, with rockets!!! This goes for super cheap on ebay as the kids who played it haven't reached that nostalgia age yet or got kids of there own to buy it for.

http://www.drumondpark.com/rules/impactwolfridge.php