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Bang!: High Noon is a thirteen-card supplement for Bang!
Players: 4-7
Playing Time: 20-40 minutes
Difficulty: 2 (of 10)
As with the original game, this was produced by Mayfair Games in association with daVinci Games.
The Components
 High Noon comes with a set of 15 cards: 13 High Noon cards, 1 blank card, and 1 rules card.
The cards are all regular card size, printed on card stock with rounded corners. They are not linen-textured like the original Bang! cards are. Though this technically doesn't matter, because the High Noon cards form a new deck, it's still a fairly distracting change, and the cards don't feel "right".
Each card features a name, a picture, and rules text. The text is all bilingual (English and Italian), just as with the original game. Most of the text is self-explanatory, but a few left certain questions open to interpretation, and there's no clarification anywhere. The drawings are simple, muted artwork that generally fits with the theme of the game.
Theoretically you can write your own High Noon card on the blank card; it's got the same back as the rest.
The rules card explains how to use this supplement. It's unfortunately pretty hard to follow. We read it over a number of times and still had to sort of guess at how the rules intended the High Noon deck to be setup. I've seen other similar issues on the 'net.
Overall, the components of High Noon are fairly average. If the rules were more extensive or important, the problems there would drag the overall Style rating down, but as they're fairly simple, and won't be a problem once you figure out the one thing they're saying, I've decided to give High Noon a "3" out of "5" Style rating.
The Gameplay
The High Noon deck is given to the Sheriff. He sets aside the special "High Noon" card and then shuffles the other 12 cards. He places them face-up, so that the top card is visible. The High Noon card is then put at the bottom of the deck.
Each round, starting with his second turn, the Sheriff takes the top (visible) card from the High Noon deck and places it in the middle of the table. It has some global effect for the entire round (until the Sheriff's next turn). Here's the general card effects:
- Only draw 1 card.
- Draw 1 extra card.
- Each player loses 1 blue card.
- +1 Life for players with least Life.
- No Bang! cards can be played.
- Up to 2 Bang! cards/player.
- No Beer cards can be played.
- All cards are hearts.
- All cards are spades.
- Play counter-clockwise.
- No character special abilities can be used.
- Dead players return for one round.
The 13th card, which is called "High Noon", stays out until the game ends. It causes each player to lose 1 life point at the start of each of his turns.
The Game Design
High Noon features game design that's good, bad, and in-between. Here's the good:
Nice Color: The various cards in the set are labeled with appropriate and thematic names such as "Hangover", "Ghost Town", "The Daltons", "Gold Rush", "Curse", etc. These add to the feeling of the Old West in Bang!.
More Variability: There's more difference from game to game due to these new cards, and thus more replayability.
Here's the in-between:
Cards Moderate Game Length: Some of the cards seem to push up the game length, including the Doctor healing people and certain cards which effectively prohibit combat during a round. However, the High Noon card ultimately keeps any games from going on indefinitely, which was possible in the original game, by the fact that every player takes damage every round. I'd suspect that the average game length is pushed up a bit, but you no longer have those long, long games either.
Here's the bad:
Randomness Increased: There's now yet another random factor that can save or harm players. If "Curse" (all cards are spades) comes up, and you're holding the dynamite, you're going to be pretty unhappy, while "The Doctor" (+1 Life to lowest players) can be a real life saver.
Personally, I didn't like the High Noon supplement because it doesn't add any interesting strategic depth to the original Bang! game. However, considering that High Noon is already a beer-and-pretzels game with a high degree of randomness, it probably doesn't do any harm when considering the genre that it's intended for. It could add some color and variability if you play Bang! a lot. (And, the other players in my playtest games generally seemed to like the supplement.)
I thus award High Noon an average "3" out of "5" Substance.
Conclusion
High Noon doesn't do anything very exciting for the core gameplay of Bang!, but it does add some new color and some variability which will let you get some more mileage out of the game.
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