Thursday, January 13, 2011

Alternate Gameplay: Infinite BANG! (in English)

I have translated the rules to Infinite BANG! by Aitor Vilchez. You may have noticed his boards or files that were placed on Board game geek. I had been interested in, and had been working on an Infinite BANG! of my own, and when I saw Aitor's work I was excited. While it has some downsides--roles are always revealed--his mod still looks pretty fun. Some people at Board Game Geek had asked if there was an English version, but there was no response. I took it upon myself to translate the variant into English. Later, perhaps, I will make English renditions of his game boards, but that is less necessary. Anyway, on to explaining Infinite BANG!

Infinite BANG!

Variant and Game Boards by Aitor Vilchez

Rules translated into English by Martin Pulido

Game Materials:

- BANG! the Bullet
- Game Board
- Rules

Game Boards (2 Variations):




Object of the Game:

- Be the player with the most points by the end of the game.

Preparing the Game:

Place the board in the center of the table. Shuffle the High Noon and A Fistful of Cards decks and place them in the spaces provided on the board. Take note of the amount of people playing the game and select the right number and types of roles as stated in the BANG! manual accordingly. Distribute the roles to each player face up; place the unused roles in the box where it says Sheriff. Next, take the character cards and deal 2 to each player. Each player's first character card dealt will be his character while the second card will be his life point indicator. Each player draws as many cards as their characters have life points.

Gameplay:

The Sheriff and his deputies may not shoot each other. The Outlaws cannot shoot each other. The Renegade can shoot at all and everyone can shoot at him. 1 point is gained for every successful shot at another player (i.e., a player gains 1 point for playing/using a card that is responsible for making another player lose a health). The game plays accordingly to the normal rules, except that when a character dies, the player who possessed this character card puts his dead character aside, while he flips his life point indicator character face up. This is the new character he will use. He then takes a new character who will serve as the new life point indicator. He also loses his role and takes a new one from the role stack, but also places his old role at the bottom of the stack. Finally, the player who lost his character also loses all of the prior character's cards and possessions. He draws as many cards as his new character has life points.

Point System:

The game has the following point system as noted here:

If a Sheriff shoots and kills an Outlaw/Renegade, he gains 3/2 points.
If a Deputy shoots and kills an Outlaw/Renegade, he gains 2/2 points.
If an Outlaw shoots and kills a Sheriff/Deputy/Renegade, he gains 3/2/2 points.
If a Renegade shoots and kills a Sheriff/Deputy/Outlaw/Renegade, he gains 2/2/2/2 points.

On top of this, every player gains 1 point for any player he successfully hits. When a Sheriff or deputy kills an outlaw, his companions gain a point. When an outlaw kills a Sheriff or a deputy, his companions gain a point. When one group is annihilated (Sheriff and Deputies, or Outlaws) the Renegade(s) automatically gains a point. At the end of the game, each player is deducted a point for each of their characters that died (this amount will be withheld during the game).

Example of the Point System:

Andres, Ruben and Gorka are Outlaws. Boris and Manu are the Sheriff and Deputy respectively. Aitor is a Renegade. Andres (an Outlaw) kills Boris (the Sheriff) and gains 3 points for doing so. Ruben and Gorka, as Andres' Outlaw comrades, also gain 1 point each. Boris, the eliminated Sheriff, draws a new role and character, and now becomes a Renegade. Aitor (the original Renegade) kills Manu (the Deputy), and so gains 2 points for killing a Deputy and also 1 point for eliminating the original Sheriff's team. Boris also gains 1 point for that very reason.

End of the game:

The game ends when no player can draw a new character card.

Special Rules for the High Noon and A Fistful of Cards decks:

Dead Man: The eliminated characters return to life this turn with 2 lives.

Ghost Town: The players can choose a person from the pile of dead characters and become this character. They adjust the amount of cards in their hands to the amount of lives that this character can possess.

Recommended Variants:

- When the two beginning characters are drawn (the chosen character and the life point indicator) they player chooses which one he will use to begin the game.
- It could be that the BANG! Infinite games last too long for your taste, in having to wait for all characters to be drawn. Instead, you could have the game end when:
1. A certain number of points is reached.
2. When the event cards have all occurred. EDIT: You can lengthen out the amount of turns until the end of the game by not playing the High Noon and A Fistful of Cards simultaneously. Play 1 of the decks, followed by the other. This lengthens out the typical 15 turns to 30.
3. You could shuffle the character cards deck and select the amount of character cards you want to be in the game to shorten or lengthen the game accordingly.
- When your character is killed, you automatically lose a point and the character card is removed from the game. This allows you to have a greater control over the player's points but it removes the factor of surprise.

11 comments:

  1. Hello Marty:

    Thanks for the english translation.
    In this way more people can enjoy with this Bang Variant.

    You miss the variant that explain the draw of the events. That you can draw the two events for a turn OR first a "fistful of Cards" and later "High Noon" This provide 15 turns in the first case and 30 turns in the second.

    Good Job!
    I hope you enjoy with Infinite Bang!

    Aitor Vilchez; Mynth nickname.

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  2. Hey Aitor, thanks for pointing that out. I edited the post to include your point:

    "You can lengthen out the amount of turns until the end of the game by not playing the High Noon and A Fistful of Cards simultaneously. Play 1 of the decks, followed by the other. This lengthens out the typical 15 turns to 30."

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  3. Hey, I had a couple questions that I don't believe were covered by the translation.

    1.) When you are playing a game with a lower number of people and the Sheriff dies his role goes to the bottom of the role pile. Now what happens when you flip an event card that begins with "Starting at the Sheriff"? Also, who flips the pile if there is no sheriff out?

    2.)If you are playing the game with eight people, does that mean everyone stays the same role the entire game?

    3.) How do you play with both the "High Noon" and the "Fistful of Cards" decks. Do you flip one card from each every Sheriff turn?

    4.) Will this variant work with the newest "Wild West Show" expansion and events.

    Lots of questions, I know! However, I am very into Bang! as is my entire group of friends, and I tend to be the one with all of the answers. Thanks!

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  4. Hey Michael, these are some good questions that you rise, although they are no fault of the translation! I can offer some suggestions myself, but since Aitor is the author of this variant, you'd have to ask him yourself if at all possible. I have been working on my own Infinite BANG! variant where only characters die and roles are not altered, but that is irrelevant to your current questions.

    (1) I don't know how important starting at the Sheriff is. I would deal with it this way: If the Sheriff is in play, then start/flip over the event card with him. If not, start with the player who was the original Sheriff as the event cards should always occur on a 1 round basis (they should be active for only 1 turn for each player). Or you could edit the Infinite BANG! variant so that a Sheriff is always in play. Whoever kills the Sheriff becomes the next Sheriff (he discards his old role, places it at the bottom of the deck, and takes the Sheriff's role card and puts it in front of him instead). The problem is having event cards that are active for 1.5 rounds here. But you could have the new Sheriff and still only have the event cards flipped over when the original Sheriff's turn arises.

    (2) Actually, 8-player wouldn't be a problem, 7-player (with only the original game) would be. 8-player I believe is only available in the bullet, and there you get 2 stacks of roles (1 set for the original game, and another for Dodge City). So you could just pull out a select amount of the Dodge City roles to accomodate. If you only have the original game with the 7 roles, it looks like your only options would be to print out extra role cards (or some other home made way to tell roles; it is not as important that they are well done and secret, since all roles are face up anyway), use another person's role cards from their copy of BANG!, or buy another BANG!

    (3) Yes. Although that it is the Sheriff's turn seems unimportant in this Infinite BANG! variant. Whoever is the initial Sheriff is the player who signals the beginning of a "round." Have him flip over the new event cards each time he gets a new turn regardless if he is no longer the Sheriff. This way certain rounds aren't longer than others--you don't want to have an event card that certain players have to deal with 2 turns and others do not.

    (4) I don't see why it wouldn't be compatible with "Wild West Show." Bone Orchard probably should be set aside, but that card was stupid anyway. It gave the law recurring card bonuses for popping off 1 life point outlaws that kept coming back to life.

    I hope that answers most of your questions!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Thank you for those answers. On another note, I finally got 6 friends together and played some infinite bang and noticed a few flaws, or rather just weaknesses. The game requires no real strategy other than getting the cards and playing them to their maximum potential. The game lacks the tactical game play of regular bang where you would normally be playing a game of lies and deceit. The game made everyone who loves and plays bang on a regular basis, bored and tired of playing quickly. I wonder what the game needs to make it playable..

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  6. Hey Michael, I noted that downside before: the roles are revealed so it lacks its mafia-esque aspect. That is why I brought up trying to create an Infinite BANG! which does not do this. But in essence, Infinite BANG! is trying to create a way to keep dead players involved in the game until it is over. I encourage you to look at Death Mesa as a different attempt to solve that problem while having less of a role problem. Another way to make this Infinite BANG! more interesting, however, so that it isn't just playing cards to their maximum potential is to mesh it with BANG! Tactics. That would give you a much greater latitude in making strategic decisions even with the roles known.

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  7. I looked at both Death Mesa and Robber's Roost and I really like what is there. I would totally play it if i had the resources at the moment. I really wish those were up for purchase.

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  8. Thanks Michael--I may have found a quasi-solution for that. I might be able to get a group of us to pitch in to get a professional printer to produce several decks of cards. I will not get any money from it; we would simply all split the cost for production. This will be easier and more affordable to do for Death Mesa, where the card sizes do not matter. Robber's Roost will require a custom project where the card sizes need to meet those of the BANG! playing cards. If I find out more information about this, I will let you know.

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  9. Does any one remember the name of the game back in the 60-70's where it was titled something like Outlaw, Sherifs or Wild Wild West and you had a stack of well known cartoon looking outlaw cards (Black Bart, Jessie James, etc) and there were jail cell doors on the board game?
    I have been looking for years and have been unable to find it, thanks..
    Please Reply to gary.segan@yahoo.com

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  10. Is there nowhere some information about the expansion: Wild west show?

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  11. Check out my review: http://bangcardgame.blogspot.com/2011/06/review-wild-west-show.html

    I am working on character guides, but so far have only done Big Spencer for WWS:

    http://bangcardgame.blogspot.com/2011/08/character-guide-big-spencer.html

    ReplyDelete