My hubby gave me this for Christmas last year, but with a young kid we only got to use it recently when friends came over. We all agreed that it added an extra rather silly, but fun, dimension to our caracsonne exploits, but purists would probably NOT appreciate it as it rather disrupts 'strategy'. It is possible in time one could learn to direct ones catapulting more strategically and thus use it as a weapon, but for us, it just brought more random chance into the game (both in terms of drawing the appropriate card, and in terms of the chaos that ensued when we attempted to use the actual catapault)... which amused us no end but might not go down so well with more serious players of the game!! the catapault itself is rather flimsy, so i probably wouldn't advise letting younger kids (under 9 say) play with it, but on the plus side, if broken it would be easy enough to fashion a replacement... the more important thing is the concept - plus the cards of course... all in all, fun.