Name: Jourdonnais.
Inspired by: "French" Jourdonnais, The Riverboat Captain in The Big Sky.
Life Points: 4.
Ability Type: Defensive.
Ability: Whenever he is the target of a BANG!, he may "draw!": on a Heart, he is missed.
Activation: A BANG! is fired at Jourdonnais by another player [i.e., a player uses a BANG! card against him]
Cards Enhanced for Use: Missed!, Barrel.
Cards Less Powerful When Played against Jourdonnais: BANG!
Characters who Jourdonnais Counters Well: Slab the Killer [if Jourdonnais has a barrel, he can successfully draw from his ability and the Barrel to provide the two Missed! to cancel Slab's BANG!; see http://boardgamegeek.com/article/55513#55513 for Emiliano Sciarra's agreement on this], Willy the Kid. However, in some senses both Slab and Willy are decent counters to Jourdonnais because with Slab, even if he provides one Missed! with his ability, he still has to expend a card or take a hit, and Willy can often fire at Jourdonnais twice, giving him a dang good chance of hitting Jourdonnais at least once.
Characters that Counter Jourdonnais Well: Kit Carlson
Best role for Jourdonnais: Sheriff.
Good role for Jourdonnais: Renegade.
2-Player Value: Excellent. Since Beer no longer count, Jourdonnais' defense against BANG! is especially useful at this point.
General Strategy as Jourdonnais: Jourdonnais is a defensive character. If you are playing the BANG! variant where you can select 2 characters, I would recommend not picking Jourdonnais if you are an Outlaw or Deputy. Ideally for these roles you want offensive or neutral abilities (neutral meaning abilities that are interchangeable between offense and defense, such as Calamity Janet's ability), so that you can take down the Sheriff or the Outlaws. If you are dealt defensive characters, and you are an outlaw directly next to the Sheriff, Jourdonnais is not a bad choice as he will be able to soak up more BANG! than his comrades (and your other character likely). Jourdonnais might even Cat Balou/Panic guns from the Sheriff so that he has to focus his fire on him, and not on his teammates (given that Jourdonnais' health is not completely depleted). After all, the offensive characters are more likely to terminate the Sheriff. Jourdonnais would simply be the distraction.
Get a Barrel to "stack" Jourdonnais' ability against those BANG! cards, allowing him to "draw!" twice to avoid being shot. In fact, since Jourdonnais' ability is so enhanced by having a Barrel, I recommend saving a panic to steal someone else's Barrel for his use. Due to Jourdonnais' quasi built-in-barrel (his ability is NOT equivalent), he can be a little riskier with depleting cards (like BANG!) from his hand. This is especially true if Jourdonnais has a Barrel. Some card counting of Cat Balous and Panics is not a bad idea when it comes down to considering when the best time for Jourdonnais to lay down a Barrel is. Like all characters, card count the amount of Indians!/Duels that have been played so that Jourdonnais knows when to deplete his BANG! or not.
Playing Against Jourdonnais: When you play against Jourdonnais, it is important to remember that his ability is NOT equivalent to a Barrel. This means Jourdonnais' ability is not activated when Gatling is played (notice that the BANG! is capitalized unlike other cards where bang is in the lower case to differentiate between the card and the attack action). And since I have seen this question in boards, Jourdonnais' ability is NOT activated when BANG!s are discarded during duels (which should be obvious). Thus, use Duels, Indians, and Gatling to weaken Jourdonnais, and Cat Balou/Panic his Barrel as soon as possible. This is especially necessary if Jourdonnais is a Sheriff. Don't let Jourdonnais' ability intimidate you: you can hit him a lot more than you think.
NOTE: I think Jourdonnais is actually too weak a character once you add in Dodge City. There are too many cards that his ability does not account for (think of Punch, Howitzer, Buffalo Rifle, Springfield, Derringer, Knife, Pepperbox) that can be played simultaneously in 1 turn. I think his ability should be adjusted to deal with this: we could make a distinction between direct and indirect attacks. Whenever Jourdonnais is directly attacked (singled out for damage), he can use his ability (except for duels of course). Whenever the attack is global/universal (like from gatling, howitzer, and Indians) his ability does not activate. This keeps the original card game cards (with the addition of Howitzer) as being the same cards that can hurt Jourdonnais.
