Siege the Day!

We were cleaning up for for Lawrence's upcoming birthday party. After vacuuming the floor, Lawrence wanted to play the castle game. Well, a nice, clean and uncluttered floor makes getting out the Siege! game so much easier. And a nice, thickish carpet makes for great slowing terrain, meaning errant shots don't roll too far away from the play area.

So we set it up, I did the fiddly castle-building while Lawrence set up the trees - his favourite part, next to shooting the siege weapons. We don't play the full rules, he gets tired of them too quickly, so we just set up some dudes and start firing.

The enemy siege works from the tower.

Some of the plastic soldiers were snapped off of their bases the last time they battled - the fight was unsupervised, I only saw the aftermath. I think the two sides must have resorted to the use of feet. Thus we can't fully staff the castle complement and invading army. In fact, some mercenaries were spotted...

The view from the invaders' side. Note time-travelling mercenary (centre).

I'm liking the catapults more for long range firing each time I pull this out. There's one on the right of the above image. I  seem to be more successful with them than with the cannon or the ballista, which are more deadly up close. But I seldom get so close. Of course, because of their coolness factor, I seldom get to use the cannon or ballista. There is a measure of control with the catapults: they have little adjustable bumpers to restrict how far back the flinging arm can go, so you can use that to set the general range and you ad least won't overshoot the target so often. The cannon only has one firing power: super hard. It does have a height adjustment, but that rarely seems to make a difference over the shots. I do like the ballista, which again allows more control over the power of the shot and so seems to allow the shooter to be more accurate. 

We never do figure out a winner. Lawrence has a hard time hitting any of my guys unless he is up close and then his guys start to respawn after a certain loss threshold is reached. 

Anyway, this game is bit nostalgic since I basically played the same thing with my brothers. We would divide dominoes and army men to build up our armies, then flick a marble at each other's forces. I remember seeing this game in the Sears Christmas catalogue or something and wanting it in order to upgrade the way we played at home.

Always fun though. Who doesn't want to to use catapults and cannons to fling marbles at an "exploding" castle.