Strategy: Possible for Outlaw to Openly Team Up with Sheriff?

While it seems incredibly unlikely, I was curious if it is possible for the Outlaw to openly solicit the help of the Sheriff. When would this happen? Perhaps when there are only 3 roles left: Outlaw, Sheriff, Renegade. The Renegade has full health and the Sheriff/Outlaw are down to 3/2 health. The Outlaw knows he could be teamed up on for the 3 card bonus. But perhaps he could convince the Sheriff that the Renegade is enough of a threat that he ought to help him lower the Renegade's health first. After all, no Beer works once there are only 2 players left. The issue is that it is not clear why once the Renegade's health was down that the Sheriff would not return to gunning the Outlaw (3 card bonus). And then the Outlaw would be wasting his ammo on the Renegade. So I don't think this would work. It could work as a 1 time juke move--convince the Sheriff to gang up, let the Sheriff take a turn against the Renegade and then turn on the Sheriff right away. That way you get 1 turn without the Sheriff gunning at you. Of course, don't expect it to work again. Can anyone else think of a situation where an Outlaw might team up with a Sheriff?

Alternate Gameplay: Varying Agendas for Renegade

Over at Board Game Geek, there was a post discussing how a Renegade could have a random goal assigned to him at the beginning of each game for him to accomplish. The brain child behind this idea described it thus:

At the start of the game a die is rolled to determine the objective of the renegade.

1 and 2-Normal renagade objective
3-be the first player to die if not roll for a new objective
4-bootlegger: try and get 3 beer cards in your hand
5-murderer: kill 3 players
6-Normal Renagade.

He specified also that the Renegade is not the person who rolled the die; it declares the objective for the Renegade and everyone knows that that is the Renegade's goal.

Some general comments: Why bring a dice role into the game? Just "draw!" and use the playing card values in the bottom left corner to determine his role, or the suits. Scraps the need for dice. Second, I don't think the alternate agenda will work for 2-3 player games; I would say it only counts for 4+. And how about these alternate agendas? I think we can universally agree that (3) is stupid. Be the first player to die? It is dumb for the game to end so soon if he does die, and since it is so easy to avoid (3) being the outcome, does the Renegade automatically lose if (3) is not accomplished? I would scrap it. In fact, many of these might have that problem. As a murderer, I have lost if other players have killed others over X (whatever my specified amount is); what is my incentive to keep playing? It might be helpful if I had 2 victory conditions instead (normal renegade conditions OR being a murderer), that way if the 1 condition becomes eliminated the Renegade can change to achieve the regular victory condition. The fact that he can always default back on this helps him serve as the buffer for the Sheriff like he should.

(4) is a little fascinating, but it will be brutal to accomplish this when all the other players know that that is the Renegade's goal. This probably should scale with different amounts of players, as chances of getting beer in 7-player are not high. You can imagine that in General Stores everyone will be grabbing to keep away the beer from the Renegade. On the flip side, he has a high chance of collecting beer when he plays the General Store. The game will probably last longer, giving him more time to collect on beers. I know I would be brutal on whoever collected the beer on a General Store. I would simply make that person my target, shooting at them until they used the Beer. Since I haven't play tested it, it may also be too easy of a win. It could be made much more difficult if he had to get the Beer, Whiskey, and Tequila cards.

(5) is interesting, but simply specifying 3 is not going to work. I would rather call this alternate condition "Headhunter" and say he has to personally eliminate a certain number of players depending on how many there are:
4-5 player: Kill 2 other players.
6-8 player: Kill 3 other players. You might put 4 for 8-player, but with too many other bullets whizzing around, I doubt he could do it.

It might be more interesting if the Renegade's alternative victory condition was not public. His alternative victory condition could be determined by the first card that he draws for the game: use its suit/value to specify that condition. Then part of the intrigue of the game could be discovering what that other condition is by seeing how he behaves. I would simplify the alternate conditions by having the first card draw's value determinations be:
2-7: Normal Renegade
8-10: Bootlegger (However best to determine this alternate role) + Normal Victory Condition
J-A: Headhunter + Normal Victory Condition.

I made 2-7 Normal because the higher value cards are more common in BANG, so a greater range had to be used to offset that. I think it is fun that you can be a Normal Renegade and yet have to convince other players that you do not have another conditions for winning. Or have 1 condition, and convince them that you have another. Anyway, I think this idea still needs a lot of work, but it has some potential.

The only thing that makes me laugh is that the Renegade is an interesting role already... this only increases his fun. What can we do with the Deputy to make him more interesting, and not have his role be revealed?

Strategy: Aggressive Renegade against Deputies

After concluding in a prior post that the Renegade that perma-covers as a Deputy is a bad strategy, I wanted to bring up a Renegade strategy that I like for games with 5-7 players. The strategy is to be very aggressive against the Deputy(ies) almost immediately. Watch for the Outlaws to gun the Sheriff and then a player to respond against them, or a player(s) who shoot at other players besides the Sheriff. Chances are this is your Deputy. Even if the game is overbalanced with Outlaws against the law (like in 6-player), shoot at the Deputy first. If he is a 4-health character, try to knock his health down to 2. A 3-health character, try to knock his health down to 2. Don't knock him too low or the outlaws might pop off the Deputy. However, on the whole the Outlaws are so focused on popping off the Sheriff that they will not waste firepower on the Deputy. The Deputy will have plenty of Missed! and Beers to use before you get him down, so don't worry too much. But you need to get him down some or the law can overpower you later on. The deputy might fire back at you, but he can't do too much or he won't be able to cover the Sheriff. In 5-player, it's not bad to pop off the Deputy right away unless the Sheriff is too weak and the Outlaws strong. Besides this, once the deputy's health is lowered sufficiently, then turn to weakening the outlaw team by killing one of their players. Immediately turn to knocking off or lowering the health on the Deputy again. You want it so that even if the Sheriff isn't completely weakened by the time all the other Outlaws are gone, finishing off the Deputy (if he isn't already) is no problem.

Strategy: Dealing with a Renegade that Pretends to be Deputy

One of my friends has a strategy he always plays when he is Renegade, and I know many others employ this strategy too. I am, however, convinced that on the whole it is a failing strategy. I will describe its counter here. The general Renegade strategy that I will be portraying as poor is where the Renegade tries to completely mirror a Deputy (This, of course, only applies in 5+ player BANG!). In other words, they think of any possible move that a Deputy would do in their situation and they do it. They follow it through, if they survive, until all Outlaws are eliminated and then they shoot the real Deputy, claiming the whole time that they are the real Deputy. They hope to either get the Sheriff to kill off his own Deputy(ies), or knock off the Deputy(ies) and then go after the Sheriff. I think this is a poor strategy, whether there is 1 or 2 deputies or not. The deputies are unlikely to have low health as the Outlaws were likely directing their gunfire almost exclusively at the Sheriff. Of course, the Renegade would not have poor health either, but the issue is that the Sheriff can always play it safe. He can just weaken each of the characters down to 1 health and let them kill each other off and reveal who they are. With 2 deputies still around, the Renegade will most likely be gunned down in the crossfire. With 1, the Renegade may survive, but will become very weak in the process. The deputy still wins as long as the Sheriff lives, so it is not a big deal if he dies. With the Renegade down to one health, and getting no card bonus for killing the Deputy(ies), the higher health Sheriff is almost guaranteed to be able to finish him off. Hence, I don't think the complete pseudo-Deputy Renegade strategy works. He will have to gun at lawmen at sometime if he is going to win the game most of the time. If someone has some reason why this strategy should work, and can point at something I have neglected, please chime in.

I will discuss the Renegade strategy that I prefer soon.

Alternate Gameplay: Renegade can become Sheriff

This is a recent idea that I have tossed on my mind that can change the gameplay for both the Renegade(s) and Deputies. The Renegade, if he wishes, can choose to kill the Sheriff before he kills off all the other players. If he personally is the one that kills the Sheriff, he becomes the new Sheriff, has the new health limit bonus and gains 1 health. His mission is of course to survive like the deceased sheriff's mission was. If he only damages the Sheriff and the Outlaws or something else like Dynamite kills the Sheriff, game over and the Outlaws win. So it is a very risky move on his part, but it can be a way for him to shift the balance of the game and do something different. Imagine if a Sheriff is getting blown away and he will not be able to fend off the outlaws before the Sheriff dies. He can now kill the Sheriff and resume this role, so the Outlaws don't immediately win. But he wouldn't want the Sheriff to be overwhelmed every time because if he did, then he has no Renegade of his own to back him, and so might get overpowered himself. Think of how stupid this would be on his part in a 4-player game. I think this is a fascinating change to the Renegade role. It might be worth specifying a certain amount of players that need to be killed before he can do this, but it could be good on its own too.

As for the deputies, I think there is two things that could happen here. One, they could have to defend the Renegade who has become the new Sheriff. I think a more interesting variant is that they were loyal to their old Sheriff and won't side with the new Sheriff. They become Renegades themselves! Now, they might have the opportunity to become the new Sheriff as well if they depose the prior Renegade, or it could be that only the original Renegade has the capacity. Anyway, I think this could be an interesting way to switch things up.