Bang - The Bullet
Since the beginning, the Outlaws hunt the Sheriff, the Sheriff hunts the Outlaws. The Renegade plots in secret, ready to take one side or the other. But who are the merciless Outlaws, willing to gun him down? To find out you have to draw! (Your cards, that is!) Now the Sheriff has decided to settle things once and for all in his own way. He has written a name on a single bullet. That name is… BANG!
This special edition includes every BANG! card published to date, and a few new extras! Inside, you will find:
* BANG! - The basic game
* High Noon - The first expansion
* Dodge City - The second expansion
* A Fistful of Cards - The third expansion
Also two new cards for High Noon and three special characters! Plus two blank cards for your own creations, and a special gift: a shiny new Sheriff’s badge!
User Ratings and Reviews
4 Stars Great game but only for 7+ people (not age)
the game itself is VERY fun and it does have some learning curve but i think most people will catch on after 2-3 practice games since it’s all visual and not much words.
the only down side for this game is that you need at LEAST 5 people to play the game but you really need 7 people to enjoy the game to the fullest. i’ve played with 4,5 and 2 and none of them were that exciting and eventually gave up playing. getting 7 people to play this game is actually quite rare for me so i do not get to play it as often as i like to.
other than that, it’s very good FUN game and each game should last around 30-40 mins with average players.
5 Stars BANG! This game is the best!
We love this game at my house. It takes about one or two games to get used to the cards and then you are shooting the sheriff like a pro. You first get to choose a character and each character has a special power to help you win (with this set there are tons of characters). Then you get a job (you could be an Outlaw, Deputy, Renegade, or the Sheriff). You pass out cards equal to the amount of life you have (5-3) and then you are ready to play. Each job requires you to do something to win (like with the Outlaw, you have to kill the Sheriff). In my opinion that is the easiest one. This game is so much fun and it’s exciting to guess who is what (the Sheriff is the only person known on the board). If you get this set you will not be disappointed (that is as long as you have at least 3 friends who want to play with you.)
5 Stars Best board/card game that’s out there!! A must get..
If you love playing board/card games then this is the game for you.. A must get after you get the hang of it totally fun and you can play for hours.. Extremely fun and entertaing a must have..
4 Stars Bang!…bang…bang - once you get the hang.
Bang is a role playing game - party card game wrapped together. You’ll find an excellent description of how it works in one of the other reviews. The actual rules are not much longer than that review. Having said that, if you buy this game, play it a bit against yourself first to see how it works, and in the first session with a new group, start off with a practice round or two so people can get the drift. Once people see how to shoot and block shots, and see a couple of the event cards (such as a visit to the Saloon or General Store) working, they’ll catch on very quickly.
I’ll compare this game to chess and Uno, both games that many readers will know. Much like Uno, the format of the BANG game consists of the players rotating in turn to draw cards and play cards against other players. The rules are no more complicated than chess - and like chess, the game is a whole lot more complex than the rules. The level of complexity, and therefore the longer-term interest factor, above Uno is that there are numerous characters who have different skills or defenses and it takes a while to take advantage of the various characters and tools; like chess, better play requires thinking ahead a little bit before whipping out the ole six-shooter.
However, in chess it is almost impossible for players of unmatched skill to have anything like a fun game; if it to be even at all, the better player is patronizing the weaker player. In BANG, the group dynamic means that an inexperienced player can do perfectly well even if there is an experienced player or two in the group, rather than getting slaughtered early on (see “Warnings” below), and it is quite possible that the group dynamic will lead to an early ganging up on the experienced player for just that reason.
What is this group dynamic? The players are divided into teams of Outlaws, Deputies and Renegades (ambitious free-lancers), and a Sheriff. But only the Sheriff’s identity is known. The only advantages the Sheriff has are one extra life point (handy when most people are gunning for you) and the fact that the Renegade/s cannot win unless a Renegade and the Sheriff are the last 2 in the contest, so for a while the Renegades are the Sheriff’s bodyguards - until they turn on him. Meanwhile the Sheriff’s Deputies are trying to eliminate the Renegades and the Outlaws while the Outlaws are trying to eliminate the Sheriff - and the whole time, nobody knows who is really on which team, and there are consequences for mistaken identities. There is no prohibition on talk across the table, and so the deception and role-playing begin, which is the fun part of the game mmore than just the shoot-em-up process.
Like many games, there is a process of elimination (see “Warnings” below). Since the game only takes 15-30 minutes once you get the hang of it, this is not such a tragedy. The Internet has several rules variants available (the best BANG site is actually a Czech site) which allow the continued if reduced participation of eliminees, but the game is perfectly watchable and it is still interesting as the players’ secret team identities emerge, so you can still kibitz while you refresh your libation. There are also rules for 1-, 2- and 8-player BANG.
Pretty much the only way you can buy the game any more is to buy the Bullet (Deluxe) set that includes all current expansions, which makes it rather pricey. But it will last a lot longer and get a lot more use than your average board game.
WARNINGS!!
If you are one of those sulky hyper-competitive people who cannot stand to lose but cannot figure out how to win, maybe you should avoid BANG (and any other form of social interaction).
Well, yes, there is quite a bit of slaughtering. After all, it is a Western-style shoot-em-up, the objective of which can be boiled down to being the last one standing. If you are one of those grim people who is professionally offended by most everything, then you’ll be offended by this game too. For those genuinely concerned over the sensibilities of the younger fry, the elimination process is a matter of “losing life points”, something that the younger among us are well used to as a result of all those video games in which exactly that happens. Please recall that if they were sent outside to play, which would be much better for them, they would probably play something that included phrases like “Bang! You’re dead”.
5 Stars THE EXPANSION IS WORTH IT
Wow, we bought bang three weeks ago and then we bought this because it is awesome. The expansion, the bullet, everything about this edition ROCKS!!!
Filed under: Classic Board Game Reviews