|
Bang! is a simple card game of Old West combat.
Players: 4-7
Playing Time: 20-40 minutes
Difficulty: 2 (of 10)
This is a review of the second edition of Bang! The game of Bang! is an Italian design produced by Mayfair Games in association with daVinci Games.
The Components
 The Bang! game contains 110 cards in an appropriately sized box, with rulesbooks in two languages.
Cards: The cards are divided into 4 types: playing cards (80); summary cards(7); character cards (16); and role cards (7). All of the cards are printed on nice, textured cardstock, of higher quality than what you find in most card games. Each of the four types of cards has a very different backing, which makes it very easy to separate them out.
The playing cards are the heart of the game. Each one features: a name (sometimes in both Italian and English); artwork; a few icons; and a card suit and number (e.g., Queen of Diamonds). Each card also features either a blue or gold border, to note whether it is kept in play or discarded after use, which is a nice, clear distinction.
The artwork consists of stylized color line drawings, which are attractive and appropriate to the period; only the guns are different, featuring plain black ink drawings, which look plain in comparison.
The icons depict what each card does in extreme short form.I find them too terse to be helpful to a newcomers, but once a player gets into the game, the icons will all make sense. Only two of the icons, a +1 and a -1, which relate to distance changes caused by horses, remained non-intuitive throughout our three playtest games.
The card suit and number are used only for certain random elements in the game.
The summary cards list all the playing card icons and what they mean. These summaries could potentially help out a newcomer, though I found it simpler just to quickly run through all the cards, because there aren’t too many different types.
The role cards determine what a player is doing in the game, and thus his victory conditions. There are 7: 1 sheriff, 2 deputies, 1 renegade, and 3 outlaws. These all feature plain black and white artwork over an explanation of the victory conditions.
The character cards determine who a player is in the game, and offer each player a special ability. Each one has a name, a sepia-toned line drawing, a short explanation of the character's special ability, and a number of starting bullets (life points). The backs of the cards are also notable because they're used as a marker in the game. The back displays five bullets; by placing his character card over a bullet back, a player is able to show exactly how much life he has left--which I found quite clever.
Overall, the cards for Bang! are all graphically attractive, and generally do a good job of presenting their information intuitively.
Rules: There are two rule sheets, one in English and one in Italian. They're each printed on a single sheet of paper with six folds in it. I thought this made it a little harder to refer to the rules than a standard rulebook would have, because there was some fumbling with all those folds during the game. Other than that the rules were clear.
Box: The box is just large enough to hold the 110 cards, which makes the game nice and portable--a rarity among card games which tend to be packaged in huge boxes. I would have preferred a divider in the middle of the box, to prevent the two stacks of cards from sliding into each other, but fortunately the texture & thickness of the cards make this a fairly minimal issue.
Especially given the very low price point of Bang!, the components are clearly above average, and thus earn a "4" out of "5" in Style.
The Gameplay
In Bang! you're trying to eliminate some or all of the other characters through judicious use of bullets; your exact goals depend upon which role you've drawn (more on that when we get to Winning the Game).
Setup: To start with each player is dealt one random role card and one random character card.
The role card is either Sheriff, Renegade, Outlaw, or Deputy, and determines a player's victory conditions; selection is from a specific set of roles for each of 4, 5, 6, or 7 players (e.g., for a 4 player game, randomly distribute 1 sheriff, 1 renegade, and 2 outlaws) to ensure balance. The Sheriff role is revealed immediately, while the other role cards remain face-down.
Each character has a humorously authentic western name (e.g., "Bart Cassidy", "El Gringo") and a special power, all of which make a fairly big difference in the game. Based on his character card, each player then notes his starting life points in bullets, either 3 or 4; the Sheriff gets one extra bullet.
Afterward each player is dealt a number of playing cards equal to his bullets and play begins with the Sheriff.
Phases of Play: Each player takes the following actions, in order:
- Draw two cards.
- Play any number of cards.
- Discard excess cards.
Draw Two Cards: Two playing cards are drawn, simply enough.
Play Any Number of Cards: This is clearly the heart of the game. The player may play however many cards he wants from his hand. There are three major categories of cards:
Bang! Cards:Each turn each player is allowed to play only one Bang! card. These are the combat cards which you use to wound and eventually kill other characters. (There's two ways to play more than one Bang! card a turn: the Volcanic is a gun which allows the playing of multiple Bang! cards in a turn; one of the characters, Willy the Kid, also has this ability.)
There's a catch: you can only shoot at people in range, where your range to any player is based on how many players away they are, around your gaming table (so someone next to you is range 1, someone across the table in a 4-player game is range 2, etc.). The range of the Colt .45 that you start the game with is 1, meaning that initially you can only shoot adjacent players. As the game progresses, you'll get guns (permanent cards) with greater ranges.
After you Bang! someone, they have the opportunity to avoid the shot. A permanent card, the Barrel, lets a player avoid 1 in 4 shots. If that fails, they can play a Missed! if they have one.
When a shot hits, it removes a bullet from the character. If they are out of bullets, they have a last opportunity to play a Beer card which restores a bullet, otherwise they die.
I'm gonna have a beer, just to get my courage up for shooting someone in my jail.
--The Sheriff
Other Temporary Cards: Most other cards in the game have a temporary effects, which immediately occurs, then the card is discarded. These are marked by a brown border and include:
- Beer: Restores one bullet.
- Saloon: Everyone gets a bullet back.
- Gatling: All other players lose a bullet.
- Stagecoach: Draw 2 cards.
- Wells Fargo: Draw 3 cards.
- General Store: Everyone gets a card.
- Panic!: Take a card from a character at range 1.
- Cat Balou: Choose a character to lose a card.
- Duel: Engage in a one-on-one fight with another players. Discard Bangs! in turn until someone can't, and that person loses a bullet.
- Indians!: All other players must discard a Bang! or lose a bullet.
Permanent Cards: These blue-bordered cards stay out on the table when played. Most of them are guns which allow additional range (or in the case of the Volcanic, additional Bangs!). Besides the guns, there are a few other permanent cards:
- Appaloosa: -1 range for anyone you're attacking.
- Barrel: Avoid a Bang! if you draw a heart.
- Dynamite: Circles the table until it blows up (on a draw of 2 to 9 of spades), at which point it deals 3 bullets damage.
- Jail: Person played upon loses a turn if he doesn't draw a heart.
- Mustang: +1 range for anyone attacking you.
Discard Excess Cards: At the end of his turn a player may hold no more cards than his current number of bullets. He must discard extras if he has them.
Killing a Character: When a character is eliminated, he reveals his role card and discards his hand. In addition, there may be a penalty or a reward: if a sheriff kills a deputy, he discards all cards in hand and in play; while if anyone kills an outlaw, he draws 3 cards.
Winning the Game: Each of the four roles has a different victory condition:
- Sheriff: kill all outlaws and the renegade.
- Outlaw: kill the sheriff.
- Deputy: protect the sheriff and share his goal.
- Renegade: be the last character in play.
The game ends as soon as someone meets their goal, so it's possible for the renegade to lose if the sheriff is eliminated before he eliminates the rest of the characters--thus it's in his best interest to make sure that the sheriff is the last character alive other than himself.
Relationships to Other Games
This game has some peripheral similarity to a subgenre of games that solely center around players fighting each other on a somewhat abstract playing field. It was the heart of Naval War and The Challenge and for that matter many CCGs, starting with Magic: The Gathering. However, Bang! really distinguishes itself from all of these with its smooth, simple mechanics and its usage of characters and roles.
The roles, in fact, highlight a game with much more similarity: Mafia (or as recently produced by Looney Labs, Are You a Werewolf?). These games have character roles of mafia/werewolf, angel/detective/seer, and civilians/villagers, who all have different victory conditions, generally revolving around the death of other characters.
The Game Design
Bang! is a simple, genre beer-and-pretzel game. Yet, unlike most games in that category, it actually enjoys solid game design and a decent level of strategy. Here's some of the better points:
Encourages Roleplaying: The layout of this game, with its roles and characters, genuinely encourages roleplaying in any group that is inclined for such. Our games were full of witty quotes, westernisms, and gameplay based on what people said, as opposed to just what cards were available.
Hidden Roles Allow for Very Complex Gameplay: The fact that different players have different yet overlapping victory conditions, and that it's all hidden, keeps the players constantly guessing. There's good opportunity to bluff about your own victory conditions, and thus raise strategy to the level of social engineering.
Characters & Roles Increase Replayability: The different characters allow for very different types of gameplay; ditto the roles. Even the number of players can make a big difference, as it changes the number of outlaws and deputies in the game. Together they make the game quite replayable because it can be very different as you go through all these variables.
Good Player Numbers: The fact that the game is usable for up to 7 players is a rarity in the card game market and much appreciated.
The game does have a fairly high random component, as you might expect of a card game of this type, but this generally doesn't get in the way of gameplay. We always seemed to have enough Bang! cards to play, which was really the big issue.
Overall, the game is enjoyable and relatively unflawed. It's not as hugely innovative as some games I've played, but it still earns a "4" out of "5" in Substance.
Conclusion
Bang! is a very enjoyable shoot-them-up spaghetti western that really takes abstract conflict games to a new level. Its use of hidden roles is what really differentiates the game. If you enjoy short card games, this is a very good choice.
|
