Adjustments to Accomplice Abilities

Accomplice Ability Adjustments:

Big Nose Nick: Removed Duel Immunity. Now, "You may discard any card from your hand as a BANG! during a Duel." Thus, cards are still depleted during the Duel, even though the person possessing Big Nose Nick has a high probability of winning the Duel.

Ellie Cashman: Simple indicator adjustment, as well as shift from "next turn" to "next draw phase" activation to avoid possible Jail confusion. Now, "If you do not play or use any cards during your turn, you may draw an extra card at your next draw phase. Rotate this card vertically to indicate you will draw an extra card."

Debating over Adjustments:

Albert Boothwell: His ability has read thus, "Once on your turn, you may discard a card to disable a card in play. Flip it face down to show it is disabled. While disabled, the card cannot be used or utilized. On his turn, that card's owner may discard a card to enable it." With more thought, this ability appears to be very powerful, especially depending on turn order. The card disabled is out of play until the affected player's next turn, in which he can get pummelled by you and your allies if it was an essential defensive card (Mustang, for instance). I think this is far too powerful an ability for an accomplice, but how to adjust it for greater balance? Should the cost for disabling be 2 cards? Or should the disabled card's owner not have to pay any card to enable it? Or should the disabled card's owner be able to enable the card by discarding a card at any time? Or should only 1 action be able to be carried out against the disabled card's owner before the card is re-enabled? What do you think?

Lilian Smythe: Her ability reads, "Give up your draw phase to discard 1 card from the hands of 2 separate players." I don't know how often a player would want to do this; he would have to be pretty secure to give up his draw phase, and what if he draw 2.5+ cards a turn? The chances of him using Smythe's ability is quite low. The 2 separate player stipulation also makes it difficult once only 2-3 players are left alive. Thoughts? Perhaps she could forego drawing a card during her draw phase to discard 1 card from another player's hand? That way if Black Jack succeeded on his guess for his second card, he could discard instead of draw a third card, and Pixie Pete/Bill Noface wouldn't be negatively affected.

Jay Bryant: His ability reads, "At the start of your draw phase, call a suit. If any cards drawn are that suit, you may pass 1 with that suit to another player. You must show the card to verify it is of the called suit." My question is whether or not Jay's owner should have to show the card to verify the suit, or simply show the card's suit (masking the rest of the card with his hand/another card if he wanted)? What do you think?

Grue Duck: His ability reads, "If you play a BANG! at a player whose gun range is less than yours, that player cannot play, use, or "draw!" any spades or hearts to avoid your attack." I like using the gun range numbers against each other, but is his ability too powerful or too useless? Should a scope/binoculars augment "gun range," since technically the cards only refer to sight?

Sally Skull: Her ability reads, "Once a turn, you may lose a life point to negate the effect of a card just played or used." Must Sally do her negation immediately when the card is played, or can she witness what its outcome would be and then negate it? We could imagine her seeing what a played Indians! would do, and then choose to negate it, or simply negating it the moment it came into play. Losing a life point is a big deal, so I thought the "foresight" might make the ability more useful. But would it be too useful?

2 New Ideas:

(1) You may discard any card as a BANG! when Indians! is played.

(2) At the end of your discard phase, you set aside the card on top of the deck. This will be the first card you will draw at the beginning of your next turn, but you may look at it at any time before then. NOTE: If this is too weak, perhaps the player at the end of his discard phase could look at the card on top of the deck and choose whether it will be the first card he draw on his next turn. If he chooses that it is not, it returns to the top of the deck. But that seems perhaps too powerful.