Shall we Bang!

For years there has existed in my opinion one of the best card games ever. Magic: The addiction? No. Legend of the five rings? Close, but no. You-Gay-ho? Of course not. In fact, unless you frequent your local games shop like the plague you probably don't even know what it is.

Its called Bang! Its a italian and english game (The cards are Bilingual.) based around a spaghetti western, in fact most of the characters are mostly parodies of historical or popular fictional cowboys and icons. Names such as Willie The Kid or Jessie Jones. On the back of the character cards are five bullets, you have a character card bullets showing to act as your health, sliding your character down to show how much health you currently have.

The game itself plays much like a Wild West version of Werewolf. One player is the Sheriff, who is revealed to all players as the sheriff. Then there are a handful of deputies (Their goal is to protect the sheriff), Outlaws (Killing the sheriff makes them win) and one or two Renegades (They must kill others until they are the last one standing, but they must kill the sheriff LAST, otherwise the Outlaws win by their condition). Combat is simple, many cards have a "BANG!" symbol, cards with it will damage other players health. However, cards with this symbol can be deflected instantly if the targeted player plays a card with the "Missed!" symbol. Adding to this, all the characters have special rules that can go from seemingly useless, but a lifesaver (Increasing the range others must have in order to attack you) to making you 'That guy who must die NOW!' (Requiring two missed! cards to be played to deflect your Bang!s, or letting you play any number of Bang! cards in your turn.)

With the expansions, even more whacky, fun rules are added to the mix, along with even more characters. Then there is what I bought today that made me revisit this bliss. The Bang! Bullet. It contains the core set (Which has 7 role cards and 16 characters), Dodge City (15 more characters, 8 more Role cards. It says its to play with 8 players, but everybody knows it really means "Play with 7 MORE players, go freaking NUTS!"), the two special rule expansions Fistful of Cards and High Noon (Each with a deck of 15 cards, meant to make the game to go faster) along with rare cards (Three exclusive characters, based on the Producer and Distributors CEO's, along with... Santa?)

In short, this game is the ultimate game to play in a huge party when people managed to forget the booze and whores (If your reading this post, its probably going to be any party you go to, don't leave your Bang Bullet at home.). Its also worth mentioning last week it has been revealed that the game will have a electronic version released online in the coming months. Will we be able to find games on it? Who knows.