Meikyu Gunfighters is a "spinoff" game from the universe of the Japanese RPG Meikyu Kingdom. Meikyu means dungeon in Japanese. The RPG also has a kingdom building phase, so it's a play on words since it sounds like "Make you". But that's just a bit of background, as the card game has neither dungeons or "Make You" kingdoms. The author states that he liked watching gunfighter movies and it inspired this game.
The game is played as so: First, each player is dealt five cards from the gunfighter deck. Each card has one of five locations printed on it. Your hand represents your posse and each location is where one of your gunfighters is hiding. The last card is dealt face-up, so every player knows where one gunfighter for each player is.
Second, starting with one player, each player takes an action in turn. There are three possible actions. a) Move - The player discard one gunfighter card and draw another from the gunfighter deck. b) Shoot - The player shows a gunfighter card from his hand and picks a player. His gunfighter shoots the other player from the location on the showed card. If the selected player has any gunfighter cards with that location, they must discard ALL copies. If any of the discarded cards have a money icon on them, the shooting player gains coins equal to the number of icons on the cards. c) Draw a Story Card - The player pays one coin and draws from the story deck. A Story Card has numerous effects, ranging from giving you extra gunfighters to forcing everyone to show a certain location card from their hands.
This continues until only one player remains or one player has nine coins.
Climax Cards If a player's hand is at one card, the player may draw a Climax Card. This card gives the player a special ability until the player is eliminated or gains additional gunfighter cards. An example Climax Cards are the Horse, which lets shoot, then move, keeping your location hidden.
Extended Rules There are two rules in the extended game. 1) The Plaza - The plaza of town is a dangerous place, but you can see most of the town from there! A shooting player may show a Plaza card and then pick any town location except Cliff to shoot at. But any other player may show any location, except Cliff, and shoot into the Plaza. 2) Control the Town - If you have X of the same location cards, you may discard them and take control of that location in town. Then draw X new cards. If you control X of the 5 locations in town, you win.
Strategy You want a diverse hand. Not only does it give you the ability to shoot anywhere in town, it stops you from losing most of your hand to one shot. Town control is neat, but really one comes into play when you get a huge hand from a story card.
Production Cards are standard sized. Each has color art. The main characters of Gunfighters are the Ogrekin, small goblin-like creatures from the RPG. The art is comical and light hearted. My favorite card is "Gun Goes Off", which has an ogrekin suffering an unfortunate weapon misfire. The game comes with rules in Japanese, German, and English.
Rating Meikyu Kingdom is a light game. It doesn't have many rules and a game doesn't take very long. But the game doesn't have a lot of depth. It's a simple matching game with some risk involved. It's no Bang!, but fun nevertheless.
