Players: 3-8
Playing Time: 1-2 hours
Difficulty: 4 (of 10)
Gangland! appears to be out-of-print, or at least the production company seems to be out-of-business. As far as I can tell the promised supplement--numerous sets of collectible cards beginning with Murder, Inc.--never came out.
The Components
Gangland! comes in a medium-sized box. Within you find just a couple of components: a rulebook, an oversized six-sided die, 180 cards, a tray to hold the cards and dice, and a small piece of foam.
Rule Book: When I first opened up this box and saw the rulebook, I began to question the wisdom of my purchase. It's approximately paperback in its dimensions and 44 pages long. This was a bit larger than I expected for a fun mob-and-mobster game, and in actuality the game set unplayed on my shelf for about 5 years as a result, because I never felt enthused enough to spend the hour or two to read through the rules.
As it turns out, the rulebook is badly written too. It’s divided into two main parts, "Playing Gangland", which is 10 pages long, and "Card Decks", which is 25 pages long. On an initial inspection, it appears that the first section contains the rules proper and the second section is just a card reference.
Unfortunately that's not the case, and in fact rules are spread through the card section in a somewhat haphazard fashion. Some of these rules in the card section are, at least, related to cards--such as the business rules which clearly relate to the business cards (though they would have been better situated in the rules proper due to the importance of business in the game)--but others are not. For example, the rules on "Assassination" are stuck smack dab in the middle of the "Card Decks" section; inexplicably a nearby illustration clearly notes "No card is required to attempt an assassination." Another particularly bad example: the rules for a leader being dead are stuck in the middle of the rules for Massacre (though they're also repeated elsewhere, in a general rules section).
Due to the lack of an index, and the haphazard way that rules are scattered between the various sections of the rules, it's also very difficult to look things up during play.
Die: The red die is "gangster-sized" according to the back of the box copy. We actually placed it to the side and went to my private dice collection during play because it was so heavy that it made a very disharmonious clatter during play. A nice effect meant to simulate machine-gun fire, perhaps?
Cards: The cards are all printed on fairly normative card stock with rounded corners. There are three different types of cards: characters (50), events (122), and reference (8). The backs of the two main decks are clearly differentiated, red and black, so that you can't mix up the two decks. The fronts of the event and character decks are full-color. The character cards have very nice pictures, along with clear, iconic stats for the character. The event cards come in many different flavors, some featuring artwork, some featuring repetitive designs, and some featuring simple iconography on a background. In pretty much all cases, the graphic design and artwork are top notch.
Unfortunately the designers of Gangland! didn't do a good job of making their cards not just beautiful, but also utilitarian. Many of the Event Cards have special rules (those 25 pages of "card" rules that you might recall from the rules). For example, an Informant has 4 different actions he can take: inform on a hit; perform a double cross; seduce a rival gang member; or participate in an extortion. None of these possibilities appear on the card: all that's written there is the word "Informant" and a number "1" through "4". The Judge and Federal Judges are other examples of totally opaque cards: they just say "Judge" and "Federal Judge" respectively. Universally, cards that cost money to use don't list that cost on the card.
Not all the cards are this bad. There is some good use is made of iconography to increase utility of cards, particularly with businesses: business bucks contain icons which show which businesses they can be played on (by matching icons), while certain "Strike" cards also match those icons and show businesses which are shut down. Other cards have short bits of rule text. But, even in these cases the explanations are too brief and/or the rules are too complex, and thus constant reference to the rules was required. (Unfortunately, in some cases the rules on the cards and the rules in the rulebook contradicted too.)
The Quick Reference cards are a laudable attempt to resolve this problem. Each card shows the 15 different actions possible in the game (most reliant on individual, fairly unique event cards), along with die rolls and cost, all in 7 or 8 point Sans Serif fonts. I can't imagine having played the game at all without having these things, so their inclusion was a definitely good thing.
Tray: The tray is cheap plastic, but does a good job of keeping the cards from sliding all over. The foam sets in the tray because there aren't enough cards to fill it.
When I rate the Style of a strategy game, I tend to start off with the physical quality of the components, partially in relation to price, but also include the usability of those components: how easy did the rules and/or pieces make it to play the game? If I wasn't considering usability I would have given the game a Style of "4" or "5", but including that factor in, it just barely ekes out a "3", and only that because I think that in repetitive play the players would eventually figure out all the unmarked complexities of the game.
The Game Play
Gangland! is Family Business with a twist. Instead of just blowing away your opponents, you're instead trying to actually run a mob, extorting money from businesses, hassling with the police, and, yes, engaing in the occasional gunplay. The premise itself is interesting and worthwhile, even if the gameplay doesn't live up to it.
Getting Started: Each player is randomly dealt 5 character cards. A character card will have a name and three ratings: business savvy, muscle, and loyalty. There are also a few special characters: a couple of "+1 Machine Gun Artists"; a "+1 Bomb Carrier"; and Scarface (whose card doesn't denote in any way that he's special, though he should be labeled "+1 Hand Size"). Before starting the game, each player must choose one character to be "boss" and one to be his bodyguard. It turns out that loyal characters with lots of business savvy make the best bosses.
Player's Turn: Each turn the player gets to perform the following actions:
- Draw hand up to 6.
- Play all mandatory events.
- If you didn't play any mandatory events, you may discard, ending your turn.
- Perform any action you desire.
- Update status of jailed or wounded characters and closed businesses.
Mandatory Events: These are random events which must be played immediately. They include: Police Arrest (arrest a gang member); Police Harassment (make a player lose a turn); FBI Harassment (make a player lose a turn; or close a business); IRS (discard a leader and lose a turn); and Union Strike (close certain businesses). They're intended to add color, and unfortunately become much too common the second time through the deck, when they make up a larger percentage of the deck as a whole.
Actions: This is the heart of the game. Unfortunately, it centers around one of the most unclear rules in the game. The rules state "Player performs any action he desires." That's it, no further explanation or examples. Does it mean that each player gets one action a turn, or that each player can play as many actions a turn as he wants, until he runs out of cards and/or money? We played it the first way, and from how mind-numbingly slow the game went, now guess the second way was the intent, but really don't know for sure. Nor do we know if it would have played better with more actions per turn; only one player in our group was willing to give it a second try.
The rulebook lists the following possible actions:
- Open a New Business: Place a business card on a character. A character may have no more business than his Business Savvy (which ranges from 0 to 2). Each business has a value, from about $3000-10000, which will be used later in victory calculations.
- Place Business Income: Place a business bucks card (which is cash, in denominations from $1000-$2000) on a business--if the business type icons between the two cards match.
- Place Pocket Money: Place a pockey money card (which is cash in a denomination of $1000) on a character (typically a character without business savvy, because you want him to have money for hits).
- Attempt an Assasination: Pay $1000 and roll a die to shoot a non-leader member of a gang: 1-2 wounds and 3-6 kills. You must specify a character to carry out this hit, whose muscle has to be greater than the target's and who must have spent the money. Some reaction cards can increase or decrease this roll or cause it to be rerolled.
- Attempt a Massacre: Play a massacre card and $2000 to hit 2 adjacent members of a gang (which can include the leader and his bodyguard, though the leader can only go down if the bodyguard already has). Role to kill as an assasination; the same rules for character assignment, money usage, and relative Muscle apply too.
- Attempt a Drive-by Hit: Play a drive-by card (there's only one) and $2000. You don't assign a character to carry out the attack, but otherwise it acts like a massacre, except it's less reliable (3-4 wounds and 5-6 kills).
- Attempt a Bombing: Yet another type of attack dependent upon a singular card. You play it and pay $2000. You assign a character, but there aren't any Muscle requirements. He can hit two adjacent characters exactly like a Massacre or he can bomb a business (1-2 closes it, 3-6 destroys it).
- Attempt a Defection: Play an Informant card (there are 4) and $1000 (or $1000 time loyalty rating for a leader); unless character rolls his loyalty or less, he joins your gang.
- Attempt an Extortion: Play an informant card and pair it with one of your gang members. Target a business owner whose Muscle is less than or equal to your thug's Muscle; the target must roll his Muscle or less, or else give you a number of Business Bucks (from businesses held by the target) equal to the Informant's number.
- Attempt a Business Seizure: Play a Lawyer card and a Judge card (there are 4 Lawyers and 3 Judges, meaning your chance of having both in your hand are very low). If you roll the Lawyer's value or less, you take a business and its accompanying Bucks.
- Recruit a New Gang Member: If you're lucky enough to draw one of these cards (there are ten), you play it and get a new gang member.
The list of master actions in the rulebook omits two actions which are found later in the rules: you can remove an unwanted leader from your own gang or you can remove an unwanted member from your gang. Why either of these would be particularly desirous, I'm not sure.
Finally, some of the cards allow reactions to other cards, which also don't appear on the above action list. These reactive actions include: foiling the IRS (Lawyer); foiling the Police (Judge); making bail (Lawyer); reversing seizure (Federal Judge); and modifying combat rolls (Tommy Gun, Rabbit's Foot, Lucky Coin, Bulletproof Vest, Oops!).
Most of this does appear on the quick reference card, which just barely kept the game playable.
Updating Statuses: The last thing you do at the end of every turn is update the statuses of various businesses and gang members. Jailed gang members can be freed; wounded gang members can die, stay wounded, or get better; and businesses can be reopened. There's various rules for all of these: wounded gang members roll a die every turn, while the other states either last one or two turns.
Winning the Game: The game continues until either one gang has been eliminated or the Event Deck has been cycled through twice. At that point each player adds up the values of all open businesses and Business Bucks (but not Pocket Money). The player with the highest total wins.
Clearly this makes the whole game center around businesses. You try and play businesses and add bucks to them. The Leader is a particularly good mobster to hold businesses, because he's protected from most assassinations.
You also try and kill any of an opponent's characters who have particularly valuable businesses (or else subvert them by taking over the business or bringing over the character, though because these depend on rare cards, they can't actually be counted on as strategy). Players tend to gang up on leaders, and the player who keeps his businesses intact until the end wins.
The Game Design
I don't really feel like there's much I can say that I liked about this game. It's not well designed and it doesn't play well as a result. I do have some appreciation for the concept: with all these ideas rushing about--including informants and business seizures and sabotage and all the rest--I can really see the potential for a nice genre game. Unfortunately this particular game didn't fulfill that promise.
Here's some of the game design I didn't like:
Random Characters Will Make or Break the Game: Based on what characters you get, you're either doing great, or totally out of luck. If you have characters with no Business Savvy or without decent Muscle, you're not going to be able to win the game. Period. I found it funny that the rules say: "At first glance, the random generation of the gangs may seem unfair at times, but thorough play testing demonstrates that a well rounded game balance is achieved in short order." Frankly, this is totally untrue. Yes, you can usually depend on players to leap upon someone who's clearly ahead because of random generation; planning for this isn't a bad game design principle. But, people won't help out the players who are clearly behind because of the same random generation, and so those players just won't have a fun game.
Random Draws Will Make or Break the Game: This flawed philosophy continues straight through to the Event deck, where players who draw great Businesses will be doing well, while players who can't match up Businesses to their Business Buck cards will always be short on money, and never able to take many of the actions (let alone win).
Random Draws Also Constrain Many "Fun" Parts of the Game: Finally, related to randomness, the game design hides many of its fun elements (Informants, Judges, Lawyers, etc.) in a few cards which almost never come up. This is a large part of why the promise of the game is never achieved.
Card Complexity Too High: Related is the fact that long and complex rules are associated with cards which only exist in a few instances in the deck. For example, there are 2 pages of rules on the singular "Bomb" card, another page of rules on the singular Drive-By Shooting card, and a full 3 pages on rules on the Informant cards, of which there are 4 in the deck. This level of complexity seems high for a card game of any sort, but having this much rules for individual cards totally ignores the advantages of the card medium (where you could have much shorter descriptions of rules on individual cards), and overall makes the game hard to play without deep familiarity. (This is all made worse by the poorly organized rules.)
Random Lose-the-Game Card: Most card games seem to end up with one card which allows the game to either be won or lost as soon as it's drawn. In Gangland! it's the IRS card, which takes out your Leader, no questions asked (unless you have one of those 4 Lawyer cards).
No Defensibility: Overall, the game often feels like an exercise in futility because of the total inability to build up a defensible power structure. Anyone can be shot to death or seduced away at any time, and all the businesses you've carefully built up go with the lost character. Sticking businesses on your leader is the closest you'll get to defensibility, but as just noted there's a 1 in N chance of him going away each time through the deck, where N is equal to the number of players in the game. (The only other real option for defensibility is holding on to the best businesses till your last few turns, which really isn't a very fun tactic.) Without defensibility there's little chance for strategy; instead you just do your best to harm your opponent who's doing the best each turn.
Overall, I found Gangland! slow and a bit boring to play. From turn-to-turn there was a mind-numbing sameness. There really didn't seem to be strategy, just luck. It's one of those games that might be fun if you were just roleplaying it, having fun being a mob boss without worrying about winning, but which collapses when you try and suppose strategic gameplay. I thus give it a "2" out of "5" for Substance.
Conclusion
I simply can't recommend Gangland!, which is just as well since it's out of print. If you want gang warfare you should go buy Family Business.
There's probably a good game built around the base ideas of Gangland!, which might even use the existing components, but it's not the game written up in the 44-page rulebook.
