Destruct 3

There's something primal about Destruct 3. My wife says it's a boy thing. If it is, it's a primal boy thing. Build. Destroy. Build again.

There are 12 small wooden blocks: three T-shape blocks, four L-shape, four longish rectangles, and one shortish. You can use any two of these for a base, upon which the remain ten are to be built. You assemble your construct somewhere in the center of the designated platform. After you've created your version of a stable structure, the enemy (all right, the other players), take turns trying to destroy it.

The are three destruction mechanisms, which one might call, respectively: the Ramp of Doom, the Pendulum of Destiny, and the Catapult of Catastrophe. Each of these is a large wooden structure, to which a ball-and-cord is attached. Which of these devices you get to use is determined by the roll a die. You take the appointed mechanism, position it in any of the 12 mechanism mounts, and do your best/worst.

The scoring is equally ingenious. You get two points for each block you've knocked over, as long as it rests in the center square of the building platform. You get one point for the blocks that remain on the periphery. And no points for blocks that are knocked completely and entirely off the platform all together. Thus, you must temper your destructive impulse, else you will knock the blocks too far from the high-scoring center of the building platform. And, as builder, you get to be both constructively artful and strategically cunning in devising structures that are prone to wide dispersal upon impact.

Destruct 3 is a maturely crafted, all-wooden, eco-sensitive, heirloom-type, self-contained, hinge-boxed play tool, made of rubber tree wood, because "rubber-tree wood is a by-product of rubber harvests and is a sustainable resource." You're kids are going to want to play with it, and you're just going to have to let them - as they are old enough to be clear about who owns what and why.