Review: Bang!

The Sheriff looks at the men around the table, unsure of who is on his side.  Takes a swig of beer to steady his nerves.  He's suspected Pixie Pete has wanted him dead for awhile now.  Trusting his instincts he quickly pulls out his gun and takes a shot at Pete, but only manages to shoot his hat.  Having run out of bullets, the Sheriff ends his turn.

Bang! is a large group game (7-10 people in my experience) where each player has a different goal based on their assigned Role.  The Outlaws just need to kill the Sheriff.  The Sheriff and Deputies need to kill the Outlaws and the Renegade.  The Renegade needs to be the last man standing.  Problem is, the only role that gets revealed at the start of the game is The Sheriff.  Everyone else's roles are revealed by the actions they take.  And by actions they take, I mean who they shoot at.

Players get character cards as well as Role cards that give them certain abilities.  Maybe you draw 4 cards per turn.  Maybe you can use any card in your hand to avoid getting shot.  The more powerful the ability, the less maximum health you have during the game.

On your turn, you draw two cards, put any equipment cards down in front of you to help you reach other players or get farther away from them.  Your ability to shoot someone is based on where they are sitting at the table in relation to you.  If they are next to you, they are 1 away and you can shoot them by default.  If they are sitting next to those people, they are 2 away from you.  And so on and so forth.  You can use one Bang! card per round to shoot at someone within range.

I love playing Bang! because of its asymmetric goals and its character abilities.  It's a lot of fun trying to figure out who is what with as little information as possible.  The downside is in games where you know who is who, but just don't have the cards to do anything to help your team out.  Or if you're the Renegade.  It's really hard to win as the Renegade.  Especially for me, since people almost always point out I'm the Renegade before I even get my first turn...The other downside of the game is that it is elimination based, so it's very possible for one person to get knocked out of the game very early and then have to watch everyone else have fun until the game is over.  There is an expansion with a few cards to help fix this problem, but it still sucks to get knocked out because someone went on a successful killing spree early on.  One of my personal rules while playing is that I refuse to ever kill someone on the first round because of that.  The other thing to keep in mind is that just like you always get jokes playing Settlers of Catan about people needing or getting wood, you will hear plenty of jokes about someone banging someone else (especially if there is a married couple playing it seems) and I guarantee someone will start to sing "I Shot the Sheriff" before the game is done.