Players: 3-8
Time: 20-60 minutes
Difficulty: 2 (of 10)

The Components

A Fistful of Cards comes with a set of 17 cards: 15 game cards, 1 title card, and 1 rules card.

Game Cards: As with the High Noon supplement, these cards are meant to form a new, Sheriff's deck. As a result it doesn't matter that the stock is different from the original. The cards are all medium weight, non-linen textured.

Each of the cards features a name, a picture, and some rules text. They're also all crimson bordered, to keep them separate from all the other Bang cards out there. The cards are bilingual, English and Italian, as all the Bang! cards have been.

The rules text on the cards is, unfortunately, pretty disappointing. Of the 15 cards, 2 have already been errataed due to relatively large problems. Another couple I found largely inarticulate, to the point that I had to continue rereading the card, then check the FAQ before I figured out what was going on. Here's one example, Ricochet, with punctuation & spacing as it appears on the card: "You may discard a BANG! card against a card in play in front of any playereach card is discarded if its owner does not play a Missed! card. You may do this as long as you have BANG! cards." The FAQ helpfully notes that you can play other BANG! cards the same turn because, "the BANG!s used with the Ricochet are 'discarded', not 'played'."

Now, I could eventually figure out what the Ricochet card did, but the text is poorly written, and beyond that Bang! has been slowly digging itself into the CCG-rules-text hole, where words have gained very specific meanings that only the most erudite player can figure out. By this time, Bang! and Bang! card are no longer the same thing, nor are "beer" and Beer Card, nor are "played" and "discarded".

Irrespective of the larger, more systematic problems, someone should have polished up the rules text of these cards considerably.

You'll need the FAQ and errata if you're going to play this game.

Rules Card: The rules card just explains how to set up your Fistful of Cards deck to play. unfortunately, it's very hard to follow too. I didn't realize there was a specific card called "A Fistful of Cards" and that it belonged at the top (bottom) of the deck until I read some comments on BoardGameGeek.

On the whole the quality of A Fistful of Cards is average, but it's unfortuantely marred by poorly written, hard to follow, sometimes incorrect rules--both on the rules card and the individual game cards. I've thus given it a "2" out of "5" rating. It needs work.

The Gameplay

A Fistful of Cards forms a special deck of cards that allow for random events and differing gameplay in Bang! At the start of each round of play, the sheriff turns up a new card, which has an effect for the entire round.

Generally, the card effects are:

• Give someone one life.
• Some randomly loses two life.
• Return a dead player to life.
• Shoot at players' objects.
• Shoot at players extra times.
• Mess with the discard & draw piles.
• Show one of your cards when you draw, and play it if you can.
• Don't draw cards to regain one life.
• Discard cards you don't like & redraw.
• Don't play cards in front of yourself.
• Disregard in-play cards.
• Everyone is at distance 1.
• Draw cards to see if you randomly draw extra cards.
• Randomly draw to take another turn.

There's also a special fifteenth card, "A Fistful of Cards", which hits each player with a number of BANG!s on his turn equal to the number of cards in his hand and stays in play until the end of the game after it comes up. Clearly it's intended to speed the game-end along.

Relationships to Other Games

A Fistful of Cards is a supplement to the beer & pretzels spaghetti western card game, Bang! You only need the original game to play.

This new supplement is very similar to previous supplement, High Noon. Both supplements create a special deck of cards that the sheriff flips in order to cause special events during a round. There are even rules in the FAQ for combining the two decks. (Short answer: mix a random set of 12-14 cards from the two decks, then randomly put either "High Noon" or "A Fistful of Cards" at the end of the deck.)

This new set of cards was based on player submissions at the daVinci website. It's also a bit more chaotic than the original High Noon, which felt more balanced.

The Game Design

A Fistful of Cards has many of the same design advantages as High Noon. It's got some nice color, though not all of the elements feel quite as in-theme as earlier supplements. It also gives the game more variability. Finally, the cards tend to moderate game length, particularly that final "A Fistful of Cards" card, which makes sure that your game will eventually end (or maybe it'll just encourage you not to hold cards, which'll have some of the same effect, as you'll fire off your BANG!s).

Much like High Noon these cards increase randomness. I actually find them even more random than the original, particularly the "Russian Roulette" card which randomly does two points of damage to some player, but also the cards that randomly let you take extra turns or extra cards based upon what you "draw". Still, Bang! is a beer & pretzels game, so I won't complain about randomness.

On whole I think that A Fistful of Cards will be interesting to any avid players of the original Bang!, and I award it an average "3" out of "5" for Substance.

Conclusion

A Fistful of Cards, the newest supplement for Bang!, is somewhat poorly produced with the 15 cards containing a couple of major errors and a lot of rules that are hard to understand as written. Despite its flaws, regular players of Bang! will appreciate the variety that this supplement offers and will probably want to pick it up.