Call Of Duty: Ranking Every Game Mode From Worst To Best

The first of four 'wager/party' games that debuted in the original Black Ops was Sticks And Stones. In a nutshell, it serves as a Free For All variant seemingly designed as a showcase for three non-gun (but non-melee) weapons that the game brought to the table - the crossbow, the ballistic knife and the tomahawk combat axe. Given that none of these three are 'sticks' or fire 'stones', the name is somewhat nonsensical, though its premise was a simple one.

Points are earned from kills, which come thick and fast given that one successful shot from any of the three weapons (or a death by explosion if one of the crossbow's explosive tips is aimed at a combustible piece of scenery such as a car) results in the target's death. The major twist is that kills with the combat axe 'bankrupt' their victims and reset their scores to zero.

This mechanic can frequently result in the outcome of games changing at the last minute, as the three leading players (considered the winners by the game) could be set back to nothingness in an instant. The provision of just one axe per player limits the threat somewhat, but there's always somebody who can seemingly pull a cross-map kill out of the bag at random...