Introduction
The desert sun drifted behind the small wooden buildings of a remote western town; long shadows provided welcome relief from the intense desert heat. <PERSON> stopped polishing his Sherriff’s badge and squinted at the silhouette of a weathered stranger striding purposefully down the town’s dusty streets. The stranger had a tired look in his eyes and by the way he held his hands on his pearl handled revolver, the Sherriff knew that that this must be the fearsome gunfighter, <PERSON>. The Sherriff placed a couple of bullets in his Colt .45 and moved to intercept the stranger.
“Howdy stranger, what brings you to these parts?”
<PERSON> said nothing and just stared into the Sherriff’s eyes while he slowly reached for his pistol. A small crowd began to gather on the street to watch the action. Several onlookers glanced nervously at each other, their hands ready at their own guns in case of any trouble. Suddenly, without warning, a drunk burst through the tavern doors, wildly firing a Gatling gun at everyone in the area. It was the crazy killer, <PERSON>! <PERSON>’s high pitched laughter could just barely be heard over the roar of his gun’s rapidly rotating barrels. <PERSON> ducked behind a nearby barrel for safety while the Sherriff turned his attention towards <PERSON>. <PERSON> stepped out of the crowd of onlookers and took up position in the top of a nearby building. She fired her rifle at the drunk, silencing his weapon. <PERSON> took a swallow of beer and angrily threw a stick of dynamite at <PERSON> as a response. <PERSON> took advantage of the Sherriff’s momentary distraction to unleash a tremendous volley of fire from his volcanic revolver, only to be interrupted as mysterious man with a black hat stepped out of the General Store and fired a shots at him with his shotgun. 285
Working together with the man in the black hat, and <PERSON>, the Sherriff managed to capture <PERSON> and <PERSON>, only to look up and see a Wells Fargo carriage rushing into town as quickly as possible with an army of angry Indians following behind…
Welcome to the spaghetti western inspired setting for the card game, Bang! By taking some of the classic characters, weapons, and events from the old Western movies and the turn of the century “dime novel” western novels, Bang! manages to capture the feel of a spaghetti western and turn it into an entertaining light to medium weight card game.
Presentation
Bang! will not win awards for the quality of its components. It comes in a small (but sturdy), cardboard box that is just large enough to hold the 103 cards that the game ships with, plus a small black and white sheet of rules. The dirty looking colors on the box and cards do little to inspire the imagination, but the actual drawings look like something you might see in a spaghetti western “wanted” poster, helping to set the game’s atmosphere. In particular, the slightly cartoony artwork and text on the character cards invokes a “don’t take this game too seriously, just have fun with it!” feel. While the art is not something you’d show off or describe as classic, players seem able to immediately identify the setting and “spirit” of the game with just a quick glance at the artwork. Card text is printed in Italian and in English. The text is easy to read, but as one who does not speak Italian, I found the large Italian text at the top of each card to be somewhat distracting while trying to learn the game. Fortunately, once I became familiar with the cards they were easy to read. In addition to the actual text of the cards, there are a series of symbols at the bottom of most cards that indicate how to play the card. By glancing at the symbols on a card, players can quickly identify how to use the card rather than depending on printed text instructions like in most games with similar mechanics such as Magic: The Gathering or even Cosmic Encounters. Initially, I found the symbols on the cards to be quite confusing. The symbols aren’t always easy to distinguish from each other and their meaning is not always very obvious. For example, the “hat with crosshair” symbol means that you can target one player who is in range of your weapons, but the same “hat” icon that does *not* have a crosshair means that you can target any player regardless of their range. After several plays, I memorized what each of the symbols meant, but I feel that printed text like what you would find in most similar “take that” card games would have made the game much easier to learn. 755