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Crossbows & Catapults

PostPosted: March 21st, 2015, 11:22 pm
by 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?!
photo 4.JPG


Defeat!
photo 5.JPG


Hard fought match!

Re: Crossbows & Catapults

PostPosted: March 22nd, 2015, 1:00 am
by Pitbullsandaks
Love it. Weapons and warriors was also a fun game based on c&c

Re: Crossbows & Catapults

PostPosted: March 22nd, 2015, 6:21 am
by 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

Re: Crossbows & Catapults

PostPosted: March 22nd, 2015, 7:50 am
by whitebeard
ampersand wrote: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!

Re: Crossbows & Catapults

PostPosted: March 22nd, 2015, 8:14 am
by 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.

Re: Crossbows & Catapults

PostPosted: March 22nd, 2015, 1:10 pm
by 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. :)

Re: Crossbows & Catapults

PostPosted: March 22nd, 2015, 1:18 pm
by cynthialee
I never saw this game before. Looks fun.

Re: Crossbows & Catapults

PostPosted: March 22nd, 2015, 2:01 pm
by 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.

Re: Crossbows & Catapults

PostPosted: March 22nd, 2015, 11:52 pm
by 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.

Re: Crossbows & Catapults

PostPosted: March 23rd, 2015, 8:50 am
by 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