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Dodge City is the second supplement for Bang!, da Vinci and Mayfair's spaghetti Western card game.
Players: 3-8
Playing Time: 20-40 minutes
Difficulty: 2 (of 10)
The Components
Dodge City comes with:
The Cards: The cards include: 40 playing cards; 15 character cards; 8 role cards; and 1 summary card.
The 40 playing cards are a fairly exact match for the original set of cards, printed on linen-textured cardstock with rounded corners, and all the good stuff. The artwork & iconography is likewise exactly the same, with the same comments I had then: nice, period color artwork; plain black line art on the weapons; and icons that are too terse at first but start to make sense as you play.
There are only a couple of new graphical elements in the game.
First, there's a new card color, "green", which means, "play to the table, then use on a later round". It's pretty clearly differentiated from the other colors. There is also one new icon, a pair of cards, which means "discard this and one other card to use the power". It's likewise intuitive.
The 15 character cards are produced exactly like the characters card in the original game.
The extra role cards are a really nice add; one more renegade was needed so that you could play with an eighth player, but daVinci instead include extra copies of every card so that if your originals are worn you won't be able to pick out the renegade by that criteria. Kudos for that decision. (And, if you wanted, you could now play with more than 8 players because there are 15 role cards between the two sets.)
Every one of these "in-game" cards has a bison at the top right to make it easy to remove the Dodge City cards from the game, another nice element.
Finally, there's also another summary card listing all the icons, though it disappointingly doesn't list the new "discard" icon, and thus is incomplete.
Rulebook: Like the original, the rulebook is a long sheet of folded paper. It's English on one side and Italian on the other; it was fairly easy to follow, and also includes a good list of explanations of all the characters.
Box: The game comes in another one of those nice lift-off top boxes that daVinci has been using, which make it really easy to get the cards in and out.
Overall, the game has the same high-quality components as the original, with the only minor problem being usability issues related to the icons. Dodge City isn't as good of a value as the original, since it's the same price for slightly more than half as many cards--but on the whole I thought that the components of Bang! were in excess of what I expected for the price, so I've decided to give Dodge City the same rating: "4" out of "5" for Style.
The Gameplay
Dodge City introduces some rules for play with variable numbers of players as well as a bunch of new cards.
Bang! with Three: In the three-player game each player gets a face-up role: Deputy, Outlaw, and Renegade. Each player's goal is to kill one other player (Deputy kills Renegade; Renegade kills Outlaw; and Outlaw kills Deputy), but you must deliver the killing blow. If you don't, you must instead be the last man standing.
This variant loses all of the gameplay that comes from Bang!'s hidden roles, but isn't a bad alternative if you just have three people to play.
Bang! with Eight: As noted above, this supplement extends Bang! to eight by including a second Renegade. Now, each Renegade must be the last man standing, which means they have to kill each other before the Sheriff, else the Outlaws win.
New Cards: Besides the repeated role cards, this set introduces: 15 new character cards; 19 additional brown cards; 7 additional blue cards; and 14 cards in the new green color.
Character Cards. The new characters are all either 3 or 4 life, and each has a brand new power. As with the original game, most of the powers are related to drawing cards (draw when you play a card out of turn; draw 2 cards by paying 1 life; draw from face-up cards; etc), with another few that relate to character deaths (one character gets free cards when someone dies; another free life).
The most new and innovative cards are probably: Belle Star (4: no effect from face-up cards in front of other people on her turn); Apache Kid (3: diamonds played on him have no effect); and Vera Custer (3: gets to use one other player's ability each turn).
Brown Cards. A number of the brown cards are repeats, with additional Bang!s, Missed!s, Panic!s, Beers, Cat Balous, Indians, and General Stores entering the deck. There's also a brand new Punch card, a bang to someone at distance 1.
We also have two new mechanics: a number of cards now allow a card draw after the card is played; among the brown cards this includes a Dodge, which is essentially a Missed! plus a card draw.
There are also new "Discard Another Card" cards, which force you to discard a second card when you play, but have a more powerful effect. These include: Brawl (everyone else discards a card); Tequila (a beer for any one player); Springfield (a bang against any player); Whiskey (two beer); and Rag Time (take a card from any player).
Blue Cards. These are entirely repeats of cards from the basic set, though some now have new names (e.g., Silver which is a -1 and Hideout which is a +1). There's a new Dynamite among these cards, which is fun.
Green Cards. These cards represent a new mechanic: you put them out in front of you, can't use them during the turn you played them, and then later get to use them just once. They serve a number of purposes: as a deterrant; as a way to get useful cards out of your hand; and as a new target for stealing.
The cards generally mimic bown cards. There's a Pony Express (draw three cards); a couple of Iron Plates (Missed!); a Can Can (take a card from a player); etc. A few of the green cards are also one-use weapons: the Buffalo Rifle (a bang against any player); the Pepper Box (a bang against any player in range); the Knife (a bang at range 1); and the Howitzer (a bang against everyone).
Finally, a couple of the green cards also have the "take a card after you play" mechanism. It looks like you actually get your free card when you activate the green card, though it's not obvious from the rules.
Relationships to Other Games
Dodge City is a supplement to the Bang! card game. There's also one other supplement out, a little 13 card set of "events" called High Noon.
The Game Design
Here's some thoughts on how the various additions add to the original game:
The New Player Numbers: The 8-player game is a very natural extension of the game. The 3-player game misses out on the crucial hidden role aspect of the game, so you shouldn't expect as interesting of a game, but it's still a nice compromise.
The New Character Cards: There's nothing in these new cards that really change the base nature of the game. Overall, they just add variability, and thus replayability, to the game.
The Repeated Cards: A lot of card games come out with a supplement and end up watering down their original game by making the original (sometimes crucial) cards too rare, just because they're a smaller percentage of the new deck. Though it's a bit boring, Dodge City's decision to replicate core cards from the game was a very, very good one. Other publishers take note.
The Cards with Changed Names: Though the color is nice, these are a bit annoying because there are inconsistent rules for their use. All the cards with the Missed! icon, for example, let you avoid anything; conversely the new cards with the beer icon (Whiskey, Canteen, etc.) don't act like Beer in that you can't use them out of turn. And, we already know that cards with the bang icon which don't say Bang! don't act like bang cards, in that you can play multiple ones in a turn. In a game where the cards don't have text, just icons, applying special rules to the card names rather than the icons is probably a bad idea because players have to memorize that much more. I think the game would have been much clearer if all the bang, missed, and beer icons worked exactly the same rather than some of the cards from the original set being special cases.
The Green Cards: Finally we come to the green cards, which are the only real notable change to the game. I like them. They don't differ far from the core mechanics that make up the game, but they do actually provide some interesting new elements of decision making. Sometimes they're more advantageous because they're a deterrant or because you can "save" a card, while sometimes they're less advantageous because you're putting up a big target when you put a good green card out, for use on a future turn.
Overall, I think Dodge City is a pretty good example of how to make a succcessful supplement for a card game. Yes, it's somewhat staid. It repeats cards and retreads much of the same ground. But, it also introduces some incremental changes which are true to the original system yet still original. And, finally, there's enough new stuff here that it'll definitely increase the replayability of the original game. Thus I've given it the same Substance rating I gave the original game: "4" out of "5".
Conclusion
Dodge City is a well-designed supplement to the Bang! card game; it's recommended for just about anyone who owns and plays the original.
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