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.

More Accomplice Ideas

I have finished a few more ideas for accomplices. This is just the initial phase where I try to only strike down ideas that clearly don't work. General balancing of them will take some time.

As for production, I am tempted to make it an 18 card deck, but have another accomplice on the card backs. This maximizes the printing value. Thoughts? Can you see any problems with doing it this way? Will someone try to cheat and switch their accomplice mid-game? But someone call always try to cheat if they wish and this seems like a less plausible way of doing it (more likely to get caught). Anyway, here the new ideas are below:

Accomplices Expansion

News (11/21/11): Rewrote character drafting rules, hoping to bring more clarity. Diagrams will be provided later.

News (11/20/11): Revised how the extra cards are stored up in the character drafting; they now are put into play before the game has even begun. Blue cards are self-explanatory. Brown, purple, and orange cards will function like green cards for simplicity's sake.

I have been working on another short expansion to BANG!. My first expansion, Death Mesa, worked on the player elimination aspect to the game. My second, Robbers' Roost, worked on player interaction and increased gameplay out of turn. This third expansion has a simpler goal: increasing the variety of the game and changing the way characters are distributed at the beginning of the game.

The main way that I hope to do this is through introducing "accomplices" to the game. An "accomplice" is like a character in having a special ability. However, this ability is far weaker, and the accomplice also has no life points. Each player receives an accomplice paired with a character, the accomplice's ability compounding with the main character. This allows for many interesting combinations of abilities that will provide players with no ways of experiencing the game. I have decided what I want to call these "accomplices": accomplices (of course), helpers, followers, partners, companions, henchmen, or cohorts. You will have to tell me your thoughts.

I have created a more unique look for the accomplices. Their cards are oriented horizontally, and the art flows over the card, instead of being in a box in the top center. I haven't nailed down exactly how I want them to look, but this is what I am working with so far. Below is 10 accomplice examples, with some abilities I am considering to include.



The difficulty has been of course to identify abilities that are useful, but not too useful. Also, I have to make sure that no combinations are too powerful, contradictory, or superfluous. For instance, it would be stupid to have an accomplice that allows you to play an Ace as a Missed! If that accomplice was paired with Elena Fuente, she would have no extra bonus. To help balance the fact that some pairings will work better than others, I have created a new character drafting method, which is largely based upon the method of picking races in Small World.

(1) The appropriate roles for the number of players are randomly dealt. The Sheriff reveals his role; the others remain hidden. The playing card deck is shuffled.

(2) The character and accomplice decks are both shuffled. Reveal 4 characters at random and lay them face up in a single column. Place the remaining characters face down, in a single stack, at the bottom of the column. Do the same with the accomplices, placing one to the left of each revealed character. Stack the rest of the accomplices in a pile face down to the left of the character stack. You should now have 4 character and accomplice combos face up on the table.

(3) A player is selected to go first. Have all players guess a card's alphanumeric value (2-10, J, K, Q, or A), but not a card's suit. "Draw!" the card on top of the playing deck. Whichever player is closest to the "drawn!" value goes first. Put the "drawn!" card in the discard pile.

(4) That player selects one character and accomplice combo, from among the 4 visible on the table. The cost of each combo is determined by its position in the column. The first combo, located at the top of the column, is free. Each of the other combos, as you move in succession down the column, cost 1 additional playing card. That cost is paid by the player dropping 1 of the playing cards (that he would typically start the game with) face down to the left of each of the combos situated above the combo he wishes to pick. These cards are provided from the playing deck.

If the combo a player selects contains some playing cards (dropped by players who previously passed up this combo), the player pockets these cards. He must still drop 1 of his own playing cards on each of the combos located above the one he selects (if any), however.

(5) The player places his combo selection in front of him. Any cards he gained through the combo selection are put into play in front of him. Since these cards may be brown, orange, or purple cards, such card colors when put into play are considered green cards. Their effects may be stored up to be used in or out of turn as the effects dictate.

(6) The player draws playing cards from the deck equivalent to his life points minus any cards he expended on character and accomplice combo selection.

(7) Finally, the player replenishes the column of combos available to others. He slides existing combos (and the playing cards to the left of them, if any) up one position in the column, so as to fill the void, and reveals a new combo from the top of the stack, if appropriate. There should thus always be 4 combos visible to all players, on the table.

When every player has selected a character and accomplice combo, remove all remaining characters and accomplices. Remaining playing cards spent for combos are put into the discard pile for playing cards. The game then begins with the Sheriff's turn, and proceeds like usual.

One thing I also like about this expansion is that it is easily made with a POD. The unusual size of the accomplices won't matter since they are their own set of cards, much like the Dead Men's Deck in Death Mesa. Any feedback on this accomplice idea?