Bang!

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,
Deputy Sheriff,
Outlaw,
Renegade.

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.

Set Up

Each player receives a character and a role.

The Sheriff reveals himself, while other roles remain secret. Character cards are revealed. The Sheriff receives one additional bullet. Each player is dealt a number of cards equal to his character's bullets.

Each player is considered to be at relative range "1" from the ones sitting next to him, at range "2" from the ones 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. If the targeted player has a "Missed" card, he can play it to avoid getting shot; otherwise he loses one bullet. When the 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 may usually play only one "Bang!" card during his turn, but other cards can be played without restriction during the turn—to steal cards from an opponent's hand, to force an opponent to discard a card, to jail a character, to change the relative range to other players, or to change the range at which the player can shoot.

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.

Strategy

The Sheriff should only shoot at known enemies. If the Sheriff kills a deputy he immediately loses his entire hand of cards, and loses an ally as well.

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.

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 Vice Sheriffs win, dead or alive.

Interesting facts

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

Willy the Kid = Billy the Kid
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

If the High Noon expansion (see below) is used, the dead players should not leave the playing table immediately after they die, since they may get a chance to revive. The dead players may also want to stay at the table if they want to know whether their team won the game. Additionally, when there are more than one Renegades in the game, the game may end at a special outcome: if the Sheriff dies leaving only two or more Renegades alive, the all-dead Outlaws win the game.

Expansions

High Noon (2003): a set of 13 scenario cards that are given to the Sheriff. The cards are not meant to be played by players. At the beginning of the game, the cards are shuffled. The Sheriff reveals one scenario card at the start of each of his turns, and 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, force a player to draw one less card at the beginning of the turn, disallow the use of "Bang!" or "Beer" cards, or even make a dead player revive. At the end of a set is a card called "High Noon," which is not shuffled with the others; this card stays in effect until the game ends.
Dodge City (2004): a set of 15 new characters and 40 new play cards. A second Renegade is also introduced, thus allowing eight people to play.
A Fistful Of Cards (2005): a set of 15 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.

External links

Dedicated deck card games | Origins Award winners

Wanted! (jeu) | Bang!

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