Who wants to starve out the enemy? Break down his defenses! Mmmmm… a 300 pounder! Watching this show on siege engines reminds me of two favorite things from my life.

The first, and best was the week my aunt and uncle let us come stay for a week in England. By far, that was my favorite vacation. Castles, museums, and trains filled our days there.

The second memory is the many hours spent playing Dungeons & Dragons. Towards the end, I doscovered a kind Risk variant calle Greyhawk Wars that was awesome. I never really got a chance to integrate it into our normal game. 🙁

NOVA Online | Secrets of Lost Empires | Medieval Siege | NOVA Builds a Trebuchet

Like medieval military engineers did before them, the NOVA crew fine-tunes its attack using trial-and-error. Neel believes that if the sling is shortened, it will add arc to the stone’s flight and give it more distance.

His hypothesis proves right: The next launch travels the right distance but lands a few feet to the wall’s right. They shift the giant trebuchet just one inch to the left. This time they are on line but just overshoot the wall. They pull the sling in six inches and this time, it hits its mark.