Thursday, August 18, 2011

Valley of Shadows: New Czech Expansion for BANG!

BANG! Valley of Shadows Promo Card

News (11/20/11): Revised the translations of the cards with Martin Blasko's help. See the changes and clarifications in the translation below.
Martin Blasko, with Dv-Giochi's blessing, has finished a Czech expansion to BANG! with their local publisher ALBI. It is only out in Europe (in Czech only), and no shipping is provided by the publisher to the United States. However, I have been working with Blasko to have decks shipped to the United States. If you have any interest in a copy, e-mail me and I will try to work something out. I have worked with Blasko to provide an English translation of Valley of Shadows. The expansion does not add any new mechanics to the game; all cards are the typical blue, brown, and character cards. There will not be any new green cards. Here are 2 examples of how the cards look in Czech.
BANG! Valley of Shadows Ghost and Escape Cards

I will be providing a translation that can easily be printed over stickers to be applied to the czech titles and text. Instead of stickers, you could also print the translation off on paper and lay it over the cards in card sleeves (or tape the paper cut-outs to the cards; not an optimal choice for shuffling). Characters:
  1. Mick Defender (4 LP): When Mick is the sole target of any card besides BANG!, he may play a Missed! to avoid that card's effect. NOTE: This would apply to Knife, Punch, Buffalo Rifle, Springfield, Derringer, Pepperbox, Panic!, Cat Balou, Duel, Rag Time, Conestoga, Can Can, Bounty, and Prison.
  2. Evelyn The Bang (4 LP): This one is hard to understand. Apparently, During her drawing phase, she may draw 1 less card to Punch. Punch, of course, means she is banging! a player seen at distance 1.
  3. Henry Block (4 LP): Anytime a player discards or steals a card Henry has in play or in his hand, Henry fires a BANG! at that player. NOTE: Blasko specifies that this BANG! does interact with abilities, cards in play, etc.
  4. Lemonade Jim (4 LP): Each time another player plays a Beer, Lemonade Jim may discard a card to regain 1 life point.
  5. Colorado Bill (4 LP): Anytime a player avoids his BANG!, Colorado may "draw!" On spades, his target immediately loses a life point.
Brown Cards:
  1. Spray: BANG! both a player of your choice and a player adjacent to him.
  2. Wild Bunch: All other players must discard a BANG! or lose 2 cards from their hands, their choice.
  3. Last Beer: Regain 1 life point. NOTE: What makes this card different from a normal Beer is that it can be played when only 2 players remain.
  4. Tornado: Each player must set aside 2 cards from his hand and pass them to the player to his left. NOTE: The passing is done simultaneously.
  5. Return Fire: 1st Effect: Missed!. 2nd Effect: Your attacker is the target of a BANG!
  6. Tomahawk: Bang! a player seen within distance 2.
  7. Poker: All other players must discard a card if they can. If none of those cards is an Ace, you may draw up to 3 of the discarded cards.
  8. Escape: When you are the sole target of any card besides BANG!, play Escape to avoid that card's effect. NOTE: It is essentially like Mick Defender's ability above.
  9. Twin Shot: Play with a BANG!. If your target does not evade that BANG! he loses 2 life points.
  10. Saved!: Play out of turn to prevent any player from losing a life point. If this saves another player from elimination, draw 2 cards from his hand.
Blue Cards:
  1. Ghost: Play in front of an eliminated player. That player returns to life without a character ability and no way to gain or lose life points. Besides this he plays as a normal player. NOTE: elimination would occur when the Ghost card is discarded or stolen from him.
  2. Shotgun (Gun, Distance 1): Whenever you hit a player with a BANG!, that player must discard a card of his choice from his hand, if possible.
  3. Machete (Weapon, Distance 1): During your turn, you may play any card except Missed! as a BANG!.
  4. Bounty: Play in front of a player. If he is hit by a BANG!, his attacker draws a card.
  5. Rattlesnake: Play in front of a player. At the beginning of his turn, that player "draws!" On spades, he loses a life point. Otherwise, he passes the Rattlesnake to his left.
Well, those are the cards included in Valley of Shadows. 3 of the 5 characters are defensive; 2 offensive. They look far less OP than the Wild West Show characters, which is encouraging. The playing cards, on the whole, are quite offensive, and should lead to more devastating attacks that will favor the more offensive characters and roles in my opinion. It will be interesting to see how many of the cards from the base game will be added to balance out these cards. Anyway, I will keep you posted on any new information on this foreign official expansion!

31 comments:

  1. Looks really cool! Do you know, will they publish it anywhere else? Or at least translate the cards in English?

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  2. I don't think there are any plans for international expansion as of yet. And I doubt they will translate the cards into English. However, I am sure that I could work with Martin Blasko on a translation into English. Then, we could have decks shipped to the USA and then apply some stickers with the English translation to go over them. That's the best I can think of at the moment.

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  3. I hope they'll be released in Slovakia too

    -Saby

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  4. Since Albi is publishing it, I imagine that they will do so. I think it is the rest of us that will have the tough time!

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  5. @ Martin: You are very dedicated to Bang!. Me and a couple of friends love this game so much. I hope someday, we will meet and have a bang game. Thanks for all the info in this blog.

    On topic: Yea that would be great, but if they don't want to release in the US / English version, would they be ok with us doing that? This sounds like a great extension

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  6. @Dave: Thanks for the compliments. I am hoping that once the video game gets out of beta, I can schedule some online games with fans and perhaps some online tourneys.

    As for doing the stickers on the Valley of Shadows cards, I do not see why they would have any problem with this. After all, we are still purchasing a physical copy of the game. It's like putting stickers over our current BANG! cards that we own that provide a translation in a different language.

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  7. Oh right, totally forgot about the video game. Yea it should help a little bit on our Bang! addiction. But implementing the expansions (green card, abilities of some character) is gonna be a REAL challenge for them. Like in Bang! we have so many rules overlapping each other so it's gonna be very hard in term of programming it correctly.

    - agree with you on the putting stickers point. I mis-read that part. I thought you said you gonna translate them , and then mass produce and ship them with only productions + ship cost(with no benefits).

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  8. It shouldn't be as hard as it seems; I mean, tons of video games have far more variables than this. I imagine the expansions will be the easy part. The hard part IMO is the cross-platform programming.

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  9. .. yea. haha then I must suck. I tried to code it, pretty hard, man. Coding the score system (scoring with money like they play in Vegas) is easy, but game play is next to impossible for me.

    Yea cross-platform would require them hiring all sort of developers, or outside contractors.

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  10. Sorry, I didn't mean to dis on someone's programming skills. I just meant for companies getting paid cash, they should be able to hire a team that could do this pretty easily. The guy who coded Kbang did a pretty good job for his bachelor's thesis.

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  11. No no, i did not mean that you dissed me. not at all.

    But yea, considering the resources they have, it should be much easier.

    And I tried KBang, very good client. Too bad they forced him to close it down

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  12. For the poker card, I kinda see what they were going with this. I think the assumption is, the player just played a hand that is king high, (perhaps all the expansion's 'poker' cards are kings), and if someone else plays an Ace, the player loses the hand, so doesn't get the 'pot' of three cards.

    Kinda a stretch, (OK, really a stretch) but it contains elements of poker. Almost.

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  13. Hey, the expansion came out on the seller's site. I sent an email to the company asking them how I could get a copy.

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  14. Yeah, I also saw that I could not select any international shipping, only Czech/Slovakia options.

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  15. :< I really want this expansion in English hopefully they bring it over *crosses fingers*

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  16. I have been talking with the designer to have it shipped over to the USA through a custom order. I will be making stickers of an English translation to go over the top of them. If you are interesting in joining in for a group order let me know. I think the cost for the expansion is either 5 or 6 euros. Marty

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  17. Hi guys! I am Martin Blazko (none Martin Blazko). I was cooperating with ABLI, Emiliano and DVDIOCHI ont this expansion. I was also playtester of Golden Rush and Udoli Stinu.

    I like your enthuasiumus. It was long process to finish.

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  18. Ooo I am excited! I can't wait for it to come to America! Bang! needs some new blue, brown, and green cards.

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  19. Hi!

    If you have a good English translation, I can also translate them in Italian; so those card will be more like the original :D

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  20. Hey Alby87, I will let you know when I have the finished English text.

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  21. @martinland
    Let ALBI know if you print the cards with english translations, people WILL buy it!

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  22. hi: I think the rattlesnake card doesn't round at the left: it stays behind the player for the next turn until it is drawn.
    How did you translate it?

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  23. mailto can i get a peterson pack n valley of shadow expansion (in english version surely) file.pdf? I'am one of inonesian people who like yhis game.hehehe emailing me in jodavinky@yahoo.com thk

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  24. Hey there.. Is that Blog Active..?
    I wanna know if i can buy this expansio..
    Even if it isn't in english..
    I'm from Greece..!

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  25. Hi Guys, do you have the pdf file for this expansion? thanks alot..
    please kindly send to me, suri.phen@yahoo.com

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  26. The Rattlesnake works a bit diferently - You don't pass it in any direction - it just stays infront of you until you (or another player) take it in hand (for example by Panic) or discard it (by Cat Balou). So it stays even after loosing a life point and can "bite" you more than once...

    Machete (in CZ called "LEMAT") - is restricted so you can use this only once per turn (because otherwise Willy the Kid would be OP with this gun)

    Poker allows to draw up to 2 cards not 3...

    Colorado Bill: On spades target cannot use another Missed! to avoid the hit.

    I must say that this expansion is really fun to play :-)

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  27. Valley of Shadows has been officially released in Oct 16, 2014. Have fun!

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  28. Just got a copy at my friendly local game store -- it looks like a lot of fun. Can't wait to play! Thanks to everyone who worked to make it happen.

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  29. Hum ... in the French version of this expansion "Tornado" has not the same effect, it just makes you discard 1 card from your hand and then you draw 2 cards from the draw deck. I think your translation is funnier (and at least it makes you use strategy)

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  30. Oh, and I also see that in your version, Poker allow you to draw 3 cards from the discarded ones. In French version it's only 2.

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  31. Another strange difference : in my game, Escape is only on Brown cards but it can avoid cards that attack multiple targets.

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