Bang! (card game)

This article is about the Bang! card game. For more uses of the word Bang, please see Bang (disambiguation).

Bang! is a wild west-themed card game designed by Emiliano Sciarra and released by Mayfair Games. In 2004, Bang! won the Origins Award for Best Traditional Card Game of 2003 and Best Graphic Design of a Card Game.

Overview

The game is played by four to seven players (two to eight players with variants and expansions). Each player takes one of the following roles:

• Sheriff (x1)
• Deputy Sheriff (x2)
• Outlaw (x3)
• Renegade (x1)

Each player also receives a unique character card with special abilities and a certain amount of 'bullets' (i.e. life-points).

The object of the game is different for every role:

• the Outlaws must kill the Sheriff;
• the Sheriff and his Deputies must kill the Outlaws and the Renegade(s);
• each Renegade's objective is to be the last character in play. The Renegade(s) must also kill the sheriff last and also all other renegades.

Set Up

Each player is dealt a Character card and a Role card.

The Sheriff announces his role and the other players' roles remain secret. All players reveal their character cards.

The character cards determine the number of 'bullets' each player has; each player reveals her assigned number of bullets on the back of an unused character card. The player given the Sheriff role starts with one additional bullet.

Each player is dealt a number of cards equal to the number of bullets he has.

Each player is considered to be at distance 1 from the players sitting next to him on either side, distance 2 from those sitting one seat further away, and so on (counting the shortest route).

Gameplay

Rules

To shoot at another character, a player must play a card bearing a "Bang!" icon to a player within shooting range.

This means that if the shooter hasn't got any weapons, he can only shoot players at distance 1; if he has a weapon that can fire to distance 3, he can target any player at distance 3 or less.

If the targeted player has a "Missed" card, he can play it to avoid getting shot; otherwise he loses one bullet.

When a character loses his last bullet, he is "dead."

A Beer card can be used to restore a bullet. A player cannot use Beer cards to exceed his character's number of bullets. A player can only restore his own bullets via a Beer card, and he can only play it during his turn.

Exception: if a player loses his last bullet, he can immediately play one or more Beer cards until he remains at 1 bullet.

A player may usually play only one "Bang!" card during his turn, but other cards can be played without restriction during the turn.

For example, some cards allow to steal cards from an opponent's hand, force an opponent to discard a card, jail a character, change the relative range to other players, or change the range at which the player can shoot. Most of the cards are self-explaining, bearing little symbols that describe the card's effect when combined; the rest carry a symbol that suggests that the player consult the game manual.

At the end of his own turn, a player can have no more cards than his current number of bullets. He must discard cards to meet this requirement.

Play continues clockwise, with each player drawing two cards at the beginning of the turn, until the Sheriff is killed or until all the Outlaws and all the Renegades have been killed.

If the Sheriff kills a deputy he immediately loses his entire hand of cards, and all the cards played in front of him.

For this and the subsequent rule, "kills" means "plays a card that kills the player", not just "shoots".

If anyone kills an Outlaw, he immediately draws 3 cards as a "bounty".

Strategy

The Sheriff should only shoot at known enemies. If the Outlaws are unknown, though, the Sheriff can remain safe by making sure not to kill anyone directly.

The Outlaws don't usually have much interest in hiding: they generally start shooting at the Sheriff as soon as they can, in order to avoid shooting one another and to gang up against the law. Sometimes an Outlaw might want to hide his identity and prepare for a surprise attack in order to make the Sheriff's play more difficult. However, there is no formal allegiance amongst outlaws, and it is sometimes favorable for the team for one outlaw to murder another fledgling for the bounty in order to enable killing the Sheriff.

The Deputies should start shooting at the Outlaws as soon as they reveal themselves.

The Renegade should act two-faced: he should defend the Sheriff at first, and then try to kill the Deputies and, finally, the Sheriff. Thus the Renegade should disguise himself as a Deputy as long as he can in order to avoid being shot at by the law.

Determining the winner

Once the Sheriff is killed, the game is over. If the only player left is a Renegade and is alive at this point, the Renegade wins. However, if two or more players are still alive or the only remaining player is an Outlaw, all the Outlaws win, dead or alive.

On the other hand, if all Outlaws and Renegades are dead before the Sheriff dies, the Sheriff and all the Deputies win, dead or alive.

Official tournament score

An official scoring system can be found on daVinci web site, the official web site of the italian editors of Bang!. The scoring rules are as follows:

• if the Law wins:

The Sheriff wins 1500$ for every Outlaw;

The Deputies win 1000$ for every Outlaw if they survived, and 700$ if they died;

The Renegade wins 400$ for every player if he is the last to be killed .

• if the Outlaws win:

the Renegade, if he is still alive at the end of the game, wins 300$ for each player in the game;

the Outlaws, if they are alive, win 1000$ for each Outlaw in the game, dead or alive; otherwise they win 700$ for each Outlaw in the game.

• if the Renegade wins:

the Sheriff wins 100$ for each player in the game

the Renegade wins 1500$ for each player in the game

• Extra Penalty: if a deputy kills a Sheriff, he loses 5000$

Character inspirations

Some of the characters of Bang! are named after famous people. Here are some examples:

• Willy the Kid = Billy the Kid - He can play any number of "Bang!" cards.
• Jesse Jones = Jesse James
• Belle Star = Belle Starr
• Bart Cassidy = Butch Cassidy
• Calamity Janet = Calamity Jane
• Apache Kid = Sundance Kid or The Cisco Kid
• Doc Holyday = Doc Holliday
• Kit Carlson = Kit Carson
• Lucky Duke = Lucky Luke (not real person) - When player is to "draw" a card, they may draw two and choose which to use.

Expansions

• High Noon (2003): a set of thirteen scenario cards that are given to the Sheriff, and revealed at the start of each of his turns - the card's scenario is effective until the next scenario card has been revealed. Scenario cards can cause a player to lose his character's special abilities, disallow the use of certain cards, or even return a dead player to play.
• Dodge City (2004): a set of fifteen new characters and 40 new play cards. A second Renegade is also introduced, allowing eight people to play.
• A Fistful Of Cards (2005): a set of fifteen new scenario cards, which can be mixed with the High Noon expansion.
• Face Off (2005): more a spin-off than an expansion, Face Off is a board game for two players designed to be played with a deck of Bang! cards.
• Eldorado (2006): first unofficial expansion, available here.

In 2007, DeLuxe version with all the expansions will be introduced. [1]

See also

• Game theory

External links

• Mayfair Games' Bang! homepage
• Bang! at BoardGameGeek
• Bang! fanpage