In this video we are going to review JMBricklayer 30001 3 In 1 Medieval Weapon Kit. This consists of the Catapult, Ballista and Bombard. We will start with an unboxing of the set and then look at the features of the 3 builds, and any other items of note. Following this we will then review the set overall in terms of Build Experience, Value for Money, Displayability, and Playability, and finishing off with an overall score for this set.
This was provided to us by the manufacturer but the opinions and review scores will be our own. There may also be an affiliate link around the video for which we may receive something (which helps the channel continue to make videos such as these). So let’s get into it.
JMBricklayer Website
https://www.jmbricklayer.com/?wpam_id=15
Order Medieval Weapon Kit 3 in 1 Catapult/Bombard/Ballistic from: https://www.jmbricklayer.com/product/3-in-1-medieval-weapon-30001/?wpam_id=15
Time codes to the Video:
0:00 Introduction
0:39 Unboxing
1:53 Instructions Overview
2:45 Catapult
5:42 Target
6:25 Ballista
8:41 Bombard
12:28 Bombard Design
17:41 Bombard Instructions
20:26 How to Loop Elastic
21:10 Overview Review Scores
22:59 Summing Up
Transcript from the Show
G’day everyone Matt Elder of family bricks here and in this video we’re going to review the JM bricklayer 3001 three-in-one medieval weapon kit this consists of a catapult blister and a bombard we will start with an unboxing of the set and then look at the features of the three builds and any other items of note following this we will then review the set overall in terms of build experience value for money displayability playability and then finishing off with an overall score for this set this was provided to us by the manufacturer but the opinions and review scores will be our own there may also be an affiliate link around the video for which we may receive something which helps the channel to keep making videos such as these so let’s get into it.
Unboxing
So this is how it arrives to me I have an outer mailer and then the actual box inside bubble wrapped so I’ll just crack this open here it is I’m packaging here it looks like it’s got some of the parts of it are shiny and then just the black background and it’s the remarkable ancient machines thirty thousand one 568 pieces three in one so you can see the three different ones there having a look over on the back back is just straight up and down details uh a few little other bits and pieces there again the three different models on the side and your general details and one of them on the other side there looks like it’s got a little Target as well so overall a relatively nice presentation I would shame the boxes a little banged up let’s open it up and see what’s inside.
Box Contents
So with everything laid out you have the box there and then we have the seven numbered bags instruction book four wheels and the additional bag with the rubber bands and elastics so having a look at the instruction book it’s got a nice weight to it nice glossy finish it looks like it just uh general information and then straight into the building looks like some pretty standard instructions what’s that showing you how to fire that one and then I guess this is then the start of the next one so it’s interesting 116 and 117 starts the next build and 230 from looks at you build the last one build the target on the back so it all looks nice clear concise and no sort of Frills with it.
Catapult
Here we have the Catapult design which is really cool and it’s pretty solid and chunky each of these main three pillars here you got the two on the angle and the one there all solid really supporting the structure and the mechanism you’ve got the spiky Wheels which you can imagine during the day if that’s rolling along and you’re here it’s going to slice you up on the front you’ve got another sort of aggressive spiky design as well and this is common dual three models so if you are building between them just take that piece off and don’t take it completely apart because you can use it on the other one.
Color Scheme
The color scheme is this sort of earthy retro sort of style so you have these types of sand blues for the metallics and then you’ve got sort of the the Browns and the greens and the desaturated oranges for more sort of like woods and then your elastics and rubber bands are generally in the black here.
Elastics / Rubber Bands
Speaking of elastics we’ll just come over here I’ll show you the mechanism in a moment you’ve got the main one is here which is really really taut and stretched so the only thing I’d be a little concerned with is the longevity of the rubber bands if you leave this sitting on a shelf for a long time I know with other ones I’ve had they can break down or really stretch in that and in this case here this one is actually you don’t have to take half of this apart to have it like lying loose so as at least the ones in the back here controlling that sort of mechanism you can just roll them straight off and they wouldn’t be too much of a problem to keep in a relatively loose state so you don’t lose stretchiness over time. I’ve got this on a pretty frictionless type surface so it does move pretty well easily.
Firing Mechanism
So let’s have a look at the main functioning mechanism you’ve got the arm here which is going to go up and down you can sort of see that rubber band in there moving about as you do that and then in the back you have these sort of go up and down and that’s going to be your catch mechanism for it being ready to fire so we’ll just try to get this down in here that drops down try to lift both sides make sure it catches there so it’s there ready to be fired let’s move it over and then to fire it just press down and off it goes now to go find that thing.
Projectile
Found that thing down behind the radiator which was fun and it’s actually a crisscross of these rubber pieces probably a good thing it’s rubber because when the Catapult fires it’s got a fair bit of kick to it so if that was solid and that kept on hitting anything I could imagine that that’s going to make a mess of things or at least this is somewhat a little bit safer and this is the leftover pieces for the set which feels to be about another third again so it feels like they haven’t really compromised the model and just made sure that they’ve had the appropriate number of pieces and types for each model to get it to work.
Target
This is a cool little Target simple straightforward build but just adds a little bit of extra Dimension to it so if you were getting good at these things you could go through and try to hit it and practice doing that and this is the brick separator which comes with the model which is kind of interesting a little bit different and not really sure what this for but it’s got a little bit of flex and opens and closes so imagine just to grab onto something the only downside is doesn’t really have anything if you’re trying to get Studs off studs so if you’re trying to get these off nothing really sits in there not like one of these ones where you just put it on and get it off there.
Ballistic / Ballista
Here is the ballistic or what you might think of as a giant crossbow on Wheels and the bass structure similar sort of design to the others so again you’ve sort of got the wheels with the blades some nasty little spikes and blades at the front there and then the main differences up here although this base is built in a different way too the overall top superstructure mechanism is relatively straightforward just a couple of rubber bands elastic bands in there you’re able to slide that main part back which we’ll walk in here when that flips up like that and then just pushing down here is the release mechanism and the firing works pretty consistent and it’s pretty good your missile as such is just a Long Rod with a cone type piece on the end and that just slides straight in and the firing mechanism is pretty straightforward to be this PC sliding along when that lifts up.
Building Quirk
The only slight building Quirk I would say is when you’re putting on these elastic bands again they want you on page 308 when you do the step to basically thread it in and around through the pile on there which there’s just not enough clearance in there to actually do it so I think again it’s one of those things where it sounds like a good idea to do it digitally but it’s not until you actually do it so let’s say back a couple of steps about 295-ish when you’re doing this here you should be threading that elastic band around there so then when you put it in there you can then get it I had built the whole thing and then had to come back and pull this apart that was just a pain.
It’s not the end of the world but it’s just more of a hassle to have to come back and do that otherwise everything else is pretty straightforward as you’d expect and again this is just one of the ones where you wrap it around and then you pull this through and just connect it straight onto it and it’s pretty good to be able to hit the target and it’s pretty consistent and here are all the leftover pieces so you probably use maybe about half but given that that superstructure of sitting on the wheelbase is quite simple it’s not all that surprising.
Bombard
Here we have the bombard which is a good size and it’s nice and Big And Chunky and it’s pretty solid the main mechanism sits on there pretty tight rolls relatively well this is a pretty smooth frictionless surface all around just some nice detailing the spikes chains a little bit of gribbling on the side and the earthy wooden type color scheme of sort of you know the Browns the oranges and the the greens work quite well and they get sort of quite believable as something which is Medieval and this one’s firing mechanism you come in here either side there’s a piece in here you slide back that piece here it moves up and down and we’ll just clip into there and then from the back here you have the release mechanism which you push down and it fires out.
Issue
Now this is probably where this model starts having a few little problems I’m assuming that I built this correctly which I’m pretty sure that I have this is quite rigid in the way that it sits there the way that you go about firing it however it does seem to have some pretty little quirks about it and things just have to be just right on the back here you’ve got a piece here which if it goes down too far it almost seems like it will catch when it goes to slide in so try that again like that so it hit there and it didn’t allow it to slide all the way through and when I’m firing this I’m holding it in a very particular way.
Kids Struggling
When the kids first saw this and they went to fire it it took about eight or nine goes because they could get it out and even then I had to say here don’t hold it there up hold it here sort of thing because a lot of the sliding mechanisms there it seems to have very tight tolerances and if it’s not just spot on it won’t fire properly so again if we just go through you can sort of see as I lifted that up that slid back in didn’t do that again that locks down if you have that all the way sort of down like that when it goes to fire you’ll see that it’ll get caught again and then if I lift that piece up at the back it then slides the rest of the way in so with that one there it seems to be there.
You’ve got to have that kicked up a bit but not too much because then it seems like it’ll hit that part there so probably about 135 degree angle so you can sort of see that in there try that and again something got caught it almost seems like when you push this down you can’t push it down too much otherwise when that slides in it will get hit and caught again so let’s just try that again that might help if that goes all the way back in slightly up still having an issue so I’m just going to make sure this time too that when you slide it in you put it in as the way the instructions suggests so maybe there’s a bit too much friction if you do it one way as opposed to the other of that push this mechanism all the way back down to the catch make sure that’s going all the way in that’s up a little bit let’s push down.
Partial Solution
I’m still having issues okay let’s give this another try and what I’m going to try to do this time is actually with my fingers there be lifting up when I push down just so that it gives just the marginal bit of extra clearance for the mechanism to slide in so push this down here I’ll lift this up a bit and then at the same time push down on that and that seems to fire out much better so I think that’s where the design issue might be with this again I’m pretty sure that this is built correctly because
Further Examination
When you put these pieces in here there’s only certain ways for that to go but I did notice and I’ll take the wheels off to show this these side pieces when they attach on they seem to just slightly change the angle so if I just detach these a little bit because there’s one on either side so you can sort of see how all that is sitting in there lift that up a little bit okay so that should be more at rest there so these positions seem fixed these are pretty solid in there now what I find is if you just put these straight on this little Edge bed here will catch here so if we just try to put that on there the natural tendency is for that not to be cleared like it’s just a fraction of a millimeter and then to put that on all the way you kind of just got to lift it up ever so subtly and that really seems to lock that into position so there’s no other ways particularly when you put the other side on as well again same sort of issue I know it’s not 100 aligned because the pins are not always in but that’s where you can I assume get this in here just in there.
When I first put that on, it made an indent into that piece so that’s in there and that’s sort of holding that whole piece in place and firm and rigid and as I sort of going through before just when this mechanism slides in here there’s not a great deal of clearance in this back piece here when that comes out let’s get that to catch so you just got what you’ve got on this Square rectangular piece here there’s a few studs I know it’s difficult to see but this actually slides over the cross of those studs and that’s going to be providing friction which is going to be slowing down this release mechanism here’s that bit I was talking about before and that’s how it releases again it could be encountering problems because I just haven’t built this correctly but if this is a way that it’s meant to be it just seems like the tolerances are just slightly off which really slows down that mechanism and as I said you’ve got to be you know lifting this up and pushing that down at the same time so.
Real vs Digital ?!
You can sort of see how these pieces here are touching and even if you move it around you can kind of always see in there there’s no sort of daylight or clearance through to the back and even on the other side again the same sort of thing there it’s it’s touching it but then if you look at the instructions or at least one of the pictures of it you know this is generally the only thing you can really see I don’t know whether this is a digital render but you can just see it looks like there’s a bit of Gap in there so that makes me I wonder if this is digital it’s very easy to miss those tolerances or if I built it wrong that might explain it so they could be just a slight little issue there and there’s no all the real I suppose that’s the other angle that you can see in there and again it looks like you can see through it so has me a little stumped
Rubber Bands / Elastics
The other thing from experience is that these rubber bands or elastics here are really really taut so I think if you’re storing this um you’d probably want to do it so that those are just released like that because certainly I’ve had on other mocks that I’ve built elastics which have been stretched for a long time and you know after a couple months of course when they’re taught the whole time they’re going to lose their elasticity and eventually they will just snap so I mean that’s relatively easy to get on and off there because certainly when I built this it was late at night and then I’m filming this in the next morning so overnight I’d taken both of these off because the last thing I’d want is for them to sort of snap but you know that might just be something to be aware of the longevity of those if you leave them in that place.
For the most part this is pretty solid again I think the problems you’ll find is when you’re trying to use this mechanism here and you’re grabbing onto it in weird places in particular these front bits here if you just move your fingers on them slightly they will come off relatively easy but these are just minor and then on this one here the ones on the edge you’re only attached by one stud so it’s just a shame they probably couldn’t have figured out a way to attach that there but given that angle and things maybe it wasn’t possible and of course with these spikes sticking out you know too much vigorous action and they’re going to pop off but they’re locked in there pretty tightly and when you’re putting these rubber bands elastics on it’s not really clear in the instructions how you sort of do it so the way that I found is you go through there once you bring it back over and you pass one end through the other and then that will give it that tightness there and then once you’ve had it sat on here for a while that then really locks in there and also to notice how I’ve got it on the upper side because originally I had it down on the undersign like that and it was further down and again because that’s lining mechanism is an extra bit of friction and that won’t slide back properly so you need to be paying attention to that.
Instructions
The instructions for this one are pretty good for the most part but it does feel like you are doing a lot of steps and you’re being quite dense in them and there are a few little quirky ones and it’s not a hundred percent clear so you can sort of see with this one here when you’re putting the plates on it’s good that it sort of points out where these red ones are but you don’t ever get to see it all together so you can’t really double check because when you go on to the next step you’ve then put on two of these long pieces here so you can’t see well where’s it meant to line up and there’s a few little ones like that throughout this set of instructions so you are taking your sort of best guess but a lot of times depending upon where the pins lie and just checking that your pins are all right you can sort of do it by process of elimination.
How to Loop Rubber Band?
The other quirky little step I found is around 179 they don’t actually show you how to Loop these over which I’ll go through in a separate one and show you but this can be a real pain because it took me a while to figure out how to actually get this to work because it’s just like here oh it goes in there but it’s not that straightforward and simple so certainly for your younger hands and things like that you can see people going to run into this and go well how do I deal with this and there’s no sort of other place in the instructions which show you how to do these little loops and Knots which I think is really really needed like I understand when you’re building instructions showing these flexible sort of pieces and things has always been a challenge but this being such a critical part and step and if you can’t get this it’s going to drive you a little bit insane.
Awhile to Connect In
The other thing is when you do this assembly it’s like 179 but then these pieces don’t actually Connect into anything for quite a number of steps so they’re still floating there then you’re going off and building this whole other assembly while these pieces are still just floating so you know this whole other assembly you’re joining the assembly together they’re still floating there still floating there it’s at step 202 that they actually then go through and attach to something now this might seem overtly critical but the thing that I found when you put these pins in through that elastic for the first time they have a tendency to fall out pretty quickly so you need to be able to get them in there and make them taut and everything so I think this is one of the things where they’ve built it and then probably just digital instructions and then not really tested it because for mine you’d almost be want to be building this whole sub assembly first before you put in that elastic on step 179 but again that’s just something which is really nuanced but something to be aware of if you are building it so when you finish the build for this these are the leftover pieces so you can see probably used on two thirds three quarters of them this model does seem to use a lot of the bits.
Rubber Band Tying Trick
now I just wanted to go through and give you a quick demonstration and show you how you get this sort of knot here on step 179 so I’ll have that just as the pin piece there you have your elastic what you do is you grab one end of it and roll it over so then you get these two Loops here forming and then you rotate the two Loops in on themselves so it comes over like that have your PIN put it in the middle there and then you just gradually pull on this other end here and that is how you get that in there
Overview Review Scoring
Now to give an overall review for the set we’re looking at the JM bricklayer 30001 medieval three in one set released in 2022 and it consists of the Catapult bombard and the ballistic it has a price of 39.99 us which is about 35 pounds and about the same in Euros the set consists of 568 pieces this comes in at about 6.2 P per piece or about 7 cents per piece which anytime you’re getting these days under 10 cents per piece on average you’re doing quite well each of the models will take about an hour hour and a half to build the build experience we go 75 because we took a few points off for critical points in the instructions either just not being there or really not clear the builds are nice and challenging but the instructions would benefit from just having a final polish to really smooth things out value for money we gave 90 because for what you get in the price you pay we find it to be great value you are getting three distinct models with three distinct firing mechanisms the brick quality is on par with any other major brand
Playability
For playability we gave this 75 because it is kind playable once you get beyond the firing mechanism and rolling it around it doesn’t really offer too much beyond that
Displayability
For displayability we gave it a solid 80 the models display quite well and got some nice details in them but nothing that really knocks your socks off.
General Comments
The target market would appear to be those who like these sort of medieval type weaponry and Military fans it may also appeal to those people who like the beam and pin type Building Systems the pros of the set is that it’s a great value with three functioning models which are completely different from one another there are a variety of building techniques which are used in it and it’s generally a quality product the cons would be that some of the instructions are not clear in key steps there’s no sort of little figures that come along with them and it’s very much what you see is what you get so in summary it’s a great value three in one functioning set if you’re into this sort of subject matter and builds then you’re really going to enjoy this so the overall score comes in at a solid and respectable 80 percent
Summing Up
what are your thoughts is this something you’d be interested in purchasing let us know in the comments below or just type the word “JM” and we’ll know you’ve watched the complete video. If you’ve enjoyed don’t be afraid hit that thumbs up button and it will be super awesome and subscribe and share link around the video to where this can be purchased if you’d like to see how my custom Sonic the Hedgehog mock Compares with the official set check out this video otherwise here are some other videos you might be interested in thanks very much for watching this family bricks video and we’ll see you in the next one
