Down From The Attic Ep.2 - Crossbows and Catapults
Watch the video review here! https://youtu.be/ystpdRARiAE
There are so many board games that are, with no better way to put it, boring. Lengthy, complex rule books, game play that chugs along, long set up times, sometimes you want a little action. This week, we’re looking at Crossbows and Catapults Master Battle Set from 1992 made by Tomy. This game is anything but boring, this all out table top warfare!
The tatty, battered state of this box that my copy of this game tells you that this was well used and well loved. Look at that artwork on the box, hand painted, I love seeing dedication to a theme like this, the fact that a company would hire on a painter to create epic fantasy artwork… for a children’s board game. Of course the first thing that you notice is the two duelling warlords but look in the background, this poor fella is getting frazzled by this huge fireball! “ Discover an amazing world of warrior heroes, towering castles and brilliant all-action battles to play with your friends” The box proudly boasts “Over 100 pieces!” and they’re not kidding, flipping the box over shows you what you get inside, figures, flags, weapons, bricks, towers, and much more!. On the box is clearly shown the mechanics of the game, and the core game play concept.
Castles, towers, traps, crossbows, catapults, battling warriors, smashing stuff up, firing weapons, epic artwork, what kid would walk past this in the toy shop?! Well, admittedly, this one. To be fair, the game was positioned in the toy shop with the likes of HeroQuest and Dungeons and Dragons and I immediately wrote it off as one of those role playing games. It was my dad who pulled my over to it and said “hey, what about this?” “hmmm, yeah ok, that looks cool I guess”. I had no idea how incredibly fun this game was going to be.
The instruction manual does a lot to introduce the two waring factions and the story leading up to the battle. You take control of either the Impalers of The Clannic Shelf, a barbarian-viking like army who live on a floating rock island above the world, who enjoy throwing their prisoners off the edge onto sharp objects or…unsuspecting passer by. The other faction are The Doomlords of Gulch, squat desert warriors from right under the Clannic Shelf, they’re shorter due to the extra gravitational force of the shelf weighing down on them. The Doomlords want to destroy the Clannic Shelf to enjoy normal gravity and normal seasons, The Impalers want to preserve their homeland. Tempers have reached boiling point, it’s time to wage WAR!
….but not before setting up the battlefield. I’m using the table here as the battlefield, as a kid I’d play this with my friends, my brother or my dad on the carpet and the projectiles would always get caught on the weave of the carpet, it’s far better to play on a smooth surface. On to the pieces! Each side gets a catapult tower, a castle keep, a siege catapult, a crossbow, 12 castle wall blocks, 8 figures, 5 flags, a tent and a ton of projectiles!
The crossbow, catapult and catapult tower all require rubber bands for firing the projectiles, it’s a good idea to use short rubber bands or loop them up. On the back of the catapults are these notches that allow you to adjust how powerful the shot is, this is a pretty neat idea and helps a lot with fine tuning play to your style.
However, the catapult tower requires two rubber bands, not just for the weapon, but for the trap. The platform on the top is spring loaded, a direct shot on the castle door will cause the platform to spring up, hurling the poor warrior on top in the air and down to his demise.
The playing pieces allow you full reign to customise and change up your fortification layout, you can go for wide and expansive, small and compact, have your men upfront or to the back, build your walls tall or have them span your battlements, it’s entirely your choice, which just adds to the fun, no two battles will be alike. Being a wily veteran of this game, i’ve figured a few build styles and item positions that can help, but trick shots can always undo these.
Before starting the game, one of your warriors is selected to be leader and you place these 2 immortality discs underneath him. This effectively gives that figure 3 lives. It’s a good idea to position your leader in a place that’s not directly in the line of fire. I usually pop him behind the catapult tower.
Who goes first is decided by the old “which hand is it in” game, and then, let the battle commence!
You take it turn by turn to fire at your opponent, each turn you can take two shots and you can choose to fire both shots from a single weapon or a mixture. The crossbow is by far and a way the most accurate and most powerful weapon in the game, when we play one of the house rules I implement is if you use both of your shots on the crossbow this turn, next turn you can’t use it. The catapult tower is pretty accurate, and can drop shot onto enemies pretty well. The small catapult is the wild card of the deck, its pretty powerful though can be difficult to aim and fire, it usually takes a few shots off it to get a feel for how strong a shot should be.
The aim of the game is to kill all your opponents figures, you do this, you win the game. So, what’s to stop you from keeping all your figures hidden safely behind the catapult tower? Well, your weapons must have a figure within 4cm of them to fire, that’s where these battle rulers come into to play
The exception to this rule is the catapult tower, a warrior must be stood on top of it in order to fire from it. You’ll need to think carefully about positioning your men, rotating the crossbow or catapult could interfere with them or push them away. So what happens if your warriors are too far away from your weapons? You can sacrifice a shot to move them up to 15 cm. Here’s where you can really be mean with your opponents, if they need to get a figure up to the catapult tower, is it 15cm as the crow flies or 15cm along the ground and up the tower? This really is down to your decision, and how well the battle is going for you.
You may have noticed all the flags around, they’re not just for decoration. Knocking down all five of them will allow you to bring a fallen warrior back to life. Not only that, but your opponent loses a turn. Knock down three flags in one turn (two shots) and you can bring two warriors back to life or take another two shots! The tent does much the same thing, knocking the roof off the tent brings a warrior back to life or gives the player another shot.
Sometimes, bits of castle wall will fall in the way of weapons. Can you move them out the way? No chance! Your only options are to blast them out the way or sacrifice your whole turn by moving the weapon up to 15cm. I almost never move my weapons, the problem is that, fine, you can move your weapon out of debris but more often than not, where you move it to will be too far away from the warriors to operate it. You’d need to move a warrior to it sacrificing yet another shot and this just seems like a waste to me.
Standard projectiles are pretty destructive on their own but are you hankering for something a bit more devastating? This game has you covered! There are three special projectiles, rock, fire and oil. You only get one shot with these, so making them count is crucial. Unlike the standard projectiles, the special ones have a ring you overlay on the projectile once it has landed. Anything caught in the ring is destroyed. That’s right, with these you can destroy weapons, and there is no way of getting them back. The only weapon impervious to these attacks is the catapult tower, but it still kills the warrior stood on the top. Having one of these land on the crossbow is absolutely crushing, your best weapon is taken from you. The oil projectile works differently than the rock and fire, it’s designed to be used to with the fire projectile, it essentially extends the range the fire spreads. It’s a massive gamble and in the twenty plus years that i’ve played this game only once have I ever had the fire ring touch the oil ring. Of course, any warriors caught in the oil on it’s own will die but oil landing on weapons does nothing on it’s own. If it’s a full moon on a leap year and all the planets line up and you have your 4 leaf clover, lucky horse shoe and rabbit’s foot maybe….maybe you’ll get lucky with your shots.
So your battle is going poorly, and you’re getting low on men and desperate for a solution. Fortunately, you have the opportunity to cast two spells during the course of the game. There are three magic spell cards, you select one at random, but hold this doesn’t necessarily mean things will improve things for you. Each spell card has a white spell…and a black spell, and you really really don’t want the black spell. So, how do you make sure you get the white spell? Same way you decided if who plays first, which hand is it in. It’s pure 50/50 chance. White spells give you the option of rebuilding your walls, moving weapons, bringing back multiple fallen warriors to life…..but black spells can also destroy your crossbow, death of your warriors or even your leader, getting the guess right is crucial.
As mentioned before, this is the Master Battle Set, but Tomy released a number of sets before and after this particular one. The line started in 1983, and the master battle set differed in that the catapult tower wasn’t part of the standard set, it was an add on you could buy. I’ve played this version, I picked up a copy years ago from a Blue Peter Bring and Buy sale (remember those?) but if completely honest, I can see why Tomy refined the Master Battle Set, the catapult tower really adds an element of danger and fun to the game, it’s like a bomb you know that’s going to go off at any moment. Released around 1984 was the Chariot Battle Set, the chariots were much like the crossbows in that you could fire from them. Additionally were the trojan horse battle set, battering ram set and battling giants set. These could be used in conjunction with the standard set to really build an enormous army, I can imagine games would last hours!
Released after Master Battle Set was the Dragon Battle Set and the Sea Battle Set. I had both of them, but unfortunately no longer own either. Both of them paled in comparison to the Master Battle Set. Put bluntly, the Sea Battle Set was terrible. Included were four ships, two for each army, that acted much like a crossbow….except that the projectile would invariably get stuck underneath and not fire out properly. There was a rule too regarding shields on the sides of the ship, they were just projectiles draped on little nubs and the slightest movement would send them falling off. I actually wrote to Tomy complaining about this as a kid, and surprisingly, they wrote back AND gave me a brand new set! That was unexpected of them and very decent of them, considering I was complaining about how poor one of their toys were. The Dragon Battle set wasn’t much better, the dragons acted like catapults except the projectiles would go anywhere but where you wanted them to, they’d also fall out of the dragon’s mouths before firing, they were incredibly irritating, awesome to look at, but that was about the strength of them. The fortifications were made of cardboard and compared with the plastic ones from the Master Battle Set, looked feeble and flimsy in comparison, a few good shots to them was enough to put creases and dents into them. Both of these sets now command an absurd amount of money on the second hand market.
Nostalgia can quite easily play into how you perceive a game or how you review it but I can honestly say that this game is still absolutely amazing. I’ve introduced friends to this who have never even heard of it and they’ve said “woah, this is awesome!” Playing this now is just as much fun as it was when I bought it, games will generally last over an hour, and smashing up your friends castle and killing their soldiers just doesn’t get dull, it’s incredibly satisfying to land that one perfect shot on the castle door to send the spring loaded platform into action. This set is quite rare now, and commands a decent price with all it’s components. So, other than laying down some cash for a retro set, what can you do?
Well, the series was reworked again to Battleground in 2007, and these sets are plentiful. A lot of the original concepts remain with some interesting new weapons and scenery pieces too, there’s a number of expansion packs too to really make a massive battle! These are sets that I definitely intend to pick up in the future, but Crossbows and Catapults will always be special to me.
