Bang! Armed and Dangerous review

Hello all and welcome back!

It has been quite some time since I have added some content to my little blog, mainly due to lack of time to play games, let alone write something at least somewhat informative/funny about them. Fortunately, some time ago DVGiochi has released yet another Bang! expansion. It is a miracle we still get new stuff into this game which was initially released at the start of the century and a testament to it's popularity (a cynic would call it more brand milking tho). I haven't seen any reviews on this yet and I figured I would look at the expansion, because I have bought it anyways. 

So grab your explosives and let us start our dangerous journey, ehm, review. :)

Contents

-28 cards, 13 of which are new orange-bordered cards, 9 are new brown-bordered cards and 6 are reprinted brown cards with the newer art and symbols.
-32 brown wooden load tokens
-8 new characters
-the rules

All that comes packed in the paper box depicted above. Bought the set for about 12 euro, actually like 10 after FLGS discount. Given the amount of cards and wooden tokens, I must say I would have liked slightly more, but I cannot say I it is an unreasonable price. All the cards came in protective plastic package and there is a basic but good quality plastic bag for the tokens. Compared to the tokens from Gold Rush, this time it isn't really clear from the first moment that these represent ammunition or something, but again just a minor concern. All cards have expansion-specific symbol in the right upper corner, this time a dynamite pack, so that all cards are easily sorted from the basic game and other expansions, as usual. Overall, they are just fine and serve the purpose, being neutral in regards to the theme.

Gold versus ammo

Gameplay

As with the Dodge city expansion, the playing cards (28 total) are added to the deck. I recommend shuffling them in thoroughly, as you do not want to have 10 orange cards in 15 cards drawn and nothing from the expansion in the rest of the deck. If you own every expansion released so far, the deck is going to contain 165 cards, which is twice as many as the original deck's size. With that size of the deck, there is roughly 1 in 8 chance that any given card is new and therefore interacts with load tokens. There are few issues with that which I will get to in a second, but first let me explain the cards and the tokens. Orange cards work just as a blue card would. You put them in play in front of you (or another player in one case). Player puts 3 load tokens on any orange card just played by default. The card depicts a number of load tokens necessary to activate certain effect. To activate an effect of a card, simply discard the required number of tokens. You cannot activate an effect if there isn't a sufficient amount of tokens on a card. Once there are no tokens on a card, it is immediately discarded, but otherwise those effects are reusable, as long as you can pay for it and the card itself doesn't limit that. Specific orange cards are weapons. They work just as any other weapon would, but also come with three tokens. In addition to getting you in range, they allow you to enhance your Bang! cards (and no other card such as Springfield etc.) if you pay a single token while shooting and before the targeted player reacts. The other type of new cards is an upgradeable brown-bordered card. Those have known effects, but also have several tokens depicted on them with additional effect. You can pay for the upgrade any number of times by removing tokens from your orange cards or your character card in any combination while you play the card. 

There are two ways to get tokens outside of special abilities or cards. Whenever you play any blue card, you may put a load token on any orange card you own or your character card. 

Whenever you discard a card in your phase 3 (remember, cannot discard cards unless you are above your limit at the end of your turn), you again get a token for every card discarded in the same manner. Now important catch is that there can NEVER be more than 4 tokens on any card or character at any given time. And if you run out of tokens during the game, you cannot play any card which requires you to put tokens on it from the reserve.

What is my opinion on all that? Well it certainly brings some new mechanics, some cool decision making while determining the order of playing your cards, and unfortunately also moderate amount of text on the cards, in a similar manner as The Valley of Shadows expansion. The problem I mentioned earlier is that if you play with all you have, the game gets complicated and people collect wooden tokens useful for improving or using cards that rarely show up. If player selects his character from a pool of like 60 then there is a decent chance of not getting a character from this expansion. If that is the case and that player is stuck with say Calamity Janet, he will likely end up putting tokens on his character card the whole game, occasionally drawing an orange card which is probably going to end up used as a one-time-use brown card as there is no good way for said player to move his hoarded tokens to his orange card in time. Yes, there is a couple of brown bordered cards which can be upgraded furiously and any tokens can be used to pay for that, but again the odds of drawing such card AND using it meaningfully aren't exactly huge. I really recommend playing with basic game, dodge city and maybe one or two other expansions, or perhaps taking dodge city out and then mixing it as much as you like with other expansions. And having played a couple of games with just this and the basic box, I can tell you it makes for solid and fresh yet not too complicated game with even playing field for most characters and playstyles. Plus the basic game only includes 80 cards, so every fifth/sixth card would be new, meaning players get their hands on those just enough.

With that general summary out of the way, I will now delve into particular cards included in the expansion. There will be spoilers so if you haven't bough the expansion yet and want to get surprised, close your eyes and scroll down to the end :)

Playing cards

-Reprints are 4 Bang! cards, single Cat Balou and a single Missed! card

Ace up the Sleeve-An orange card, allows the player to draw a card for 2 load tokens. Very interesting given the fact that this starts with 3 tokens. I feel like once you play this, you either have a full hand and or are playing against Frankie Canton (a new character, steal one token a turn) or you immediately trigger the effect once and wait for a convenient blue card to give you another token to turn into another card, as you already had one left on this card anyways. If you have a full hand, this can be a good way to "store" your cards without taking too much of a risk. Do note that tokens do not carry over if stolen, but instead are discarded and upon playing the card by the new owner, new 3 tokens are placed on the card as usual. Interesting card.

A little sip-Brown card. The rules found online call this card "A little nip" which has to be a mistake, right? Dunno. Probably. Either way this card allows you to regain 1 hitpoint. You can upgrade the effect by paying 3 tokens any number of times for an additional life. If you play this and pay 6 tokens, you regain 3 life. Only need 1? Simply play the card, pay nothing. Easy. Very versatile and strictly better than a Beer, unless you lost your last life outside of your turn, because it cannot be played then, it isn't a Beer card. On the other hand, this could give you massive advantage in the duel of the remaining 2 players as this can be played even then. Cool concept. 

Arrow-Brown card. Makes one player regardless of distance discard a Bang! (an actual Bang! card) or lose 1 life. Can be upgraded for 1 to repeat the effect when you play it and before anyone reacts to it, but this time you must target a different player. And it is suited in diamonds, meaning Apache Kid doesn't get hit by this, which is kinda cool. Selective Indians', very good card and has a great bluffing potential. Plus they receive extra points for making Apache immune to this.

Bandolier-Orange card which allows you to spend 1 token once a turn to be able to shoot one more Bang! card. This can be useful but you must have 2 or more Bang!s to make use of this. Not unlikely, but some characters already do this and do it better (Willy the Kid and Evelyn the Bang being the most notable exceptions). Still comes in handy from time to time and greatly helps to increase offensive capabilities of some characters who otherwise struggle to actually kill someone.

Beer Keg-Not a Beer card, orange card that allows you to regain a hitpoint for three tokens. Never managed to regain more than 2 health with the card as it is extremely slow to regain 3 tokens on a single card. Unless you are discarding huge amount of cards, but then this either comes as a consolation prize or something useless. Typically this is simply a beer which cannot be used to save your last life and can be played in 2 players. Probably nothing new, but might be useful in some very long games.

Bell Tower-An orange card which allows the owner to ignore all distance modifiers and distance in general for his next card played. The cost is 1 token only which is sweet. Now if you aren't in friendly environment, make sure you play your weapon cards first, otherwise your opponents will mock you for wasting your activated advantage. Can be used multiple times a turn, but each time you use it, you must pay the price. This card apparently even ignores Mustang as per the rules, so it is the ultimate "Screw you" to your opponent who has been turtling meticulously the whole game. Extremely useful in almost every situation, great comeback card.

Big Fifty-Orange weapon card, which allows you to pay a single token as all orange weapons do when you play Bang! card with this on the table. If you pay for the upgrade, the shot cancels the target players ability and effects of cards in front of him. You can only do this provided you were in range before you shot him and you were able to do so (AKA haven't played a diamond Bang! against Apache Kid). Not like you are gonna be out of range too often as this is the weapon with range of 6 (finally :D ). Doesn't state for how long is the ability canceled, but I assume it is for the purposes of that single Bang! card played, otherwise this would be hilariously overpowered. Cool thing is that you do not really want to use this against Big Spencer, because it mostly helps him rather than cripples him. On the other hand, this super destroys Teren Kill with some setup, as well as Jourdonnais, Calamity Janet, El Gringo, Bart Cassidy, Simeon Picos... well half the characters which rely on strong defensive abilities. This is to Bang! what the Elder Wand is to Harry Potter franchise.

Bomb-Orange card, can be played in front of any player, starts with 3 tokens. At the start of the players turn, he "draws". On red suit, the bomb can be given to any other player, on black suit, the bomb stays and 2 tokens are removed. Once there are no tokens left, the bomb explodes and the player currently "owning" it loses 2 life. Another dynamite-like card, this time slightly less random, somewhat tactical and again synergising well with a character, this time Frankie Canton, who can fuck up your day provided there is only one token left on the bomb and you happen to be the unfortunate person in possession of this explosive.

Buntline Special-Weapon with range of 2, orange card. As an upgrade to your Bang! for the standard single token, you force your opponent to discard a card if he successfully blocks the shot. Much better design than the Shotgun because if your opponent blocks, he is punished, which makes him do hard choices or weakens him systematically in case he/she has to block or die. Sadly, this is what makes combining Valley of Shadows and this expansion tough, because there are somewhat similar cards which aren't too distinct from each other and have similar effects. I mean, every player knows what Indians do, but what if you ask them what is the effect of random orange gun number 2?

Caravan-Brown card which is essentially draw two cards. Nothing new. Wait, for every 2 tokens paid there is an additional card? Exactly, put two useless orange disasters in front of you, play this, pay six tokens, draw 5 cards? Well effectively only 3 but still, the flexibility and win-win scenario this card represents makes it one of the most insane cards in Bang!. One could argue that house-rule might be in place for this to activate the Wild West Show deck, but nobody plays that anyways, so let us just scratch that. Oh and this is what your worthless tokens on your character card are for. Pity there it is probably only card which lets you cash them in big time.

Crate-Orange card, if you pay 2 tokens, you get a missed!, can only be used as a reaction to someone shooting you, can be activated before or after Barrel (only one reason to ever do it before, John Pain). Not bad, not too impressive. Why not tho. Plus it is technically better than a Missed! card, but your opponent knows for sure that you have this.

Double Barrel-Another weapon with possible upgrades to your Bang!s, this time at Range 1, but your Bang's of diamonds are instant damage, cannot be blocked and it apparently works with the Valley of Shadows card that makes your Bang! deal 2 damage. And yes, Apache Kid really made sure to pay the developers handsomely to make him immune to new cards.

Duck!-It is a Missed! which can be returned to your hand for 2 tokens. Simple, plain, new. Like it.

Flintlock-A Bang! equivalent (not an actual Bang! doesn't trigger dangerous weapons, Slab the Killer etc.). Can be returned to your hand for 2 tokens if it is canceled. No, cannot do it later in retrospect, you must pay the 2 tokens immediately. I like the fact that they avoided infinite chain of returns provided you have enough tokens. Simple card, yet slightly different.

Lock Pick-Pay three tokens to steal a card from player's hand. Technically reusable but really hard to pull off repeatedly. Basically a twist on Panic. Almost feels redundant because random card from hand isn't thaaat intriguing. Might win you the game here and there but so could Cat Balou in that situation.

Quick Shot-Not a shot of whiskey, unfortunately, this card is nevertheless useful. A Bang! equivalent which can be upgraded for 1 token to also affect another player which is in range for you and at the same time a legal target. A selective Gatling but distance actually matters this time (unlike with the Arrow).

Reloading-Immediately gain 3 tokens, can place them anywhere in any combination. This card is situational, often doesn't do anything, but can be used to pull off crazy chains of activations. IMHO has a place in the expansion albeit it might be bad more often than not. Depends on what sets you are using, less sets means more frequent cards with tokens which increases usefulness of this card.

Rust-Other players take 1 token from every dangerous=orange card and their characters and put them on your character card. Any extra tokens are just discarded. Same as above, situational, potentially cool.

Squaw-At first I thought it was "Squat" and expected this card to be Tom Platz parody, but it instead lets you discard a card in play=on the table. You can pay 2 tokens to keep the would-be discarded card. Yeah, this is getting less and less creative but still quite works for me, another Rag-time effect, except it is more flexible.

Thunderer-Range 3 weapon, lets you keep the Bang! if you pay 1 token. Not bad, in fact I would say this weapon is really useful, essentially draws you up to 3 Bang! cards. Or more if you can supply it with tokens but bear in mind that any blue weapon card put in play forces you to discard Thunderer.

Tumbleweed-Orange card which allows you to force a "redraw" to a player for 1 token. Kinda funny with Dynamite, Prison, Barrel or Bomb in play. Just a cool card which is certainly going to create some memorable randomness moments.

Whip-Last and least, this card lets you discard another card in play for 3 tokens, and is in theory reusable... and in fact probably not, because it takes ages to get 3 tokens back up there and you need to get 1 token on the card before you use it, otherwise it just gets discarded.

Characters
Most of those work with tokens, and probably were designed with the basic game in mind. I feel like they aren't balanced around playing with deck as large as 150+ cards. Good news is that while some of them are clearly powerful, they won't make your older characters look like they have no ability at all, which was the case with THAT EXPANSION. Yes, nowhere near Wild West Show level of insanity.

Just for the record, I will try to estimate the power level of characters compared to other characters where A+ is the most insane character (such as John Pain, Greygory Deck, Don Bell etc.) and F the most worthless one (Johny Kisch).

Al Preacher (4hp)-This dude has the ability to draw a card for two tokens whenever another player plays blue or orange card. This means he doesn't want to activate his orange cards too often. Well, honestly you want most orange cards over his ability, but this can be used as last resort draw or if you simply have nothing else to spend your tokens on. It is probably somewhat weak but doesn't get worse even with larger deck as there is a good amount of blue and orange cards anyways (41 in total for the 165-card deck). Your opponent can be smart an shoot you first, then put his barrel into play, but your teammates might give you good opportunities to use your ability right on time. Probably solid renegade as he doesn't seem to be much of a threat. Cannot trigger his ability with his own cards so he is dependant on others. (C-)

Bass Greeves (4hp)-He can reliably create tokens but the question is whether that is enough. The less cards other than orange and or upgradeable cards there are, the better for him. Which means he is at his best at games with just the base and this, where he could create slower game controlled by him and cards like Beer Keg which I mentioned are slow. I am not quite sure whether it is enough, but if this character has a chance to be good in certain scenario, here it is. Problem is that by the time you have enough tokens, you will have been killed. Twice. (D)

Bloody Mary (4hp)-Cool art and corresponding ability, anytime her Bang! is canceled, she draws a card. Only actual Bang! cards count but at least it makes for some interesting order decisions both for you and the opponent. And I think the ability triggers often enough to make it worth it and is hard to play against as you are constantly torn between losing a hitpoint or blocking which refuels your opponent. Quite versatile, except for Sheriff and even then not bad. (B or B- depending on role)

Frankie Canton (4hp)-Can take a token from any card or character in the game and put it on his character card. Once a turn. Unfortunately, most orange cards already did something by the time he gets to steal, only steals 1 token which means even a weapon gets stolen within 2 turns, sometimes slower, and he doesn't get to use tokens with his own orange cards as they go to the character card. Yes, can harvest tokens from other while there isn't anything to use them on and then explode, but there is about two cards which are worth it. Although very funny in certain situations, in my games this dude essentially had no ability and if not for the testing, wouldn't have been picked. (F, goes to D in a game with only this expansion.. I guess)

Julie Cutter (4hp)-Whenever a player makes her lose a life, she "draws", on hearths or diamonds, that player is target of Bang! effect. Solid survivability due to strong psychological factor and actual damage her ability can cause, she is a wonderful Sheriff, whom you either kill, or lose. Funny with the High noon expansion and has some nice tiny combos, for example with the Horseshoe. Can technically force herself to repeat the draw with Tumbleweed. Having both Tumbleweed and Horseshoe brings her chance of hitting up to 15/16, which is really nasty but not happening too often. Even as it is, it is a 50/50, which is fair enough. Overall not too insane, but universal and quite strong.
(B-, B as a Sheriff)

Mexicali Kid (4hp)-Once a turn, can pay 2 tokens to shoot an additional Bang! without a card. Similar to Doc Holyday, but much better currency used to pay for his extra shot, he doesn't rely on hitting the enemy like his Gold Rush equivalent nor does he rely on having too many cards. He can simply stack some tokens over time, replenish one or two here and there and then consistently shoot 2 Bang!'s a turn for several rounds. I have seen him outshoot Calamity Janet's defense in 1-to-1 duel. He sucks as a Sheriff, but is very good on the offensive side. If he gets himself into a scenario where both players have 2-3 HP left and they keep shooting one Bang! a turn, then discarding a card, he can slowly gather tokens for the cards discarded and keep shooting 2 Bang!'s a turn. Requires a bit of skill and thinking but can be done. (A- as an Outlaw/Vice, otherwise B-)

Ms. Abigail (4hp)-She may ignore brown-bordered cards which only target her of values J Q K and A. There is about 70 offensive cards in the game if full deck is played. Abigail gets to ignore 18 of them, which is roughly 27%, very similar defensive ability as Apache Kid. She has extra life and therefore card at the start, but she doesn't ignore such a specific set of cards as Apache (Indians). I believe she is going to be absolutely comparable to him, even though it is only brown-bordered single target cards. Super durable Sheriff, resistant Renegade. Gonna rate her (A-) just because Apache seems to be more focused and better version, but might very well end up being wrong.

Red Ringo (5hp)-Starts with 4 tokens, may relocate up to two tokens a turn to his cards. Again works with this expansion and nothing else. So far only one character based on tokens really was a good one in terms of competitive thinking. Red Ringo does absolutely nothing until you get a card with tokens, at which point he gets what essentially is one to two free activations of any card, then he has no real ability for the rest of the game. 5hp also gives him a slight advantage, but I do not personally think it is enough, albeit it is better than the thief. (D)

Conclusion
Wow. I admire you if you have made it to the end with me. I have described what I think about this expansion and what I find redundant, so a quick sum-up is in place. I hope you have enjoyed reading and as always feel free to share your thoughts in the comments, on the BGG forum or via PM.

Rating
+Cool new mechanics and characters
+Good feel and atmosphere, fits the theme
+More playing cards, compatible with previous expansions
-The game gets perhaps too heavy and complex for a card game
-LOT of reading needed, some rules subject to different interpretation
-Few frankly quite boring, pointless, dull cards
Overall: 6.5/10

I feel I have to comment on the score due to my review being quite positive. Bang! is a game with huge amount of expansions and as such has set up some very high standards. This one fits in size somewhere between Valley of Shadows and Dodge city. For a veteran player, this is still quite easily explained set of new rules, which can be incorporated into games. But for newer player or one with no expansions, I see no need to buy this over Dodge city+High noon expansion, which offers more characters, cards, an event deck and much smoother gameplay with the same added variety people so seek. That said, my second purchase would be either this or Valley of Shadows, which does a good job at adding few interesting cards but suffers from the same problem as this expansion, few redundant cards, lot of reading. Fistful is just an alternative/additional event deck with the characters being somewhat bland while Gold Rush and WWS are fun to play but frankly break the game more or less. Therefore my overall impression is very positive, it is just that there are other products in the line which simply bring more.

The upcoming Marco Polo expansion

Hello again gamers! I have gone a bit silent for the duration of the week, but this thread made me think a lot, and today I will share most interesting thoughts with you and highlight some of the best suggestions mentioned here by other users.But let me answer the big question: What is this about?
Boardgamegeek shared some info about brand new expansion of one of my personal favourite games, The Voyages of Marco Polo. They were quite sparse on details, so we do not know if it's just another miniexpansion or a full-scale big boxed addition to the game.

source: http://www.expansionexperts.com/

First of all, let me clarify one thing. I do not believe that this game needs an expansion. I love the miniexpansion and I wouldn't mind adding even more characters, but I think it has little to no mistakes as it stands, as well as awesome replayability. I just do not really see what else could they add in terms of new mechanics to imrpove the experience. However, as always, some people actually came with things worth thinking about. Here they are with a comentary from a Marco Polo enthusiast.

Adding a new map, maybe focusing on China
BGG user flott suggested exactly this and I think it is one of very possible things we might get in the expansion. Game wise, it is an option to introduce new mechanics, which would otherwise prove difficult due to the original map being printed in certain way. I doubt they would just take the original and modify it to suit the expansion better.The theme of China only might seem bad, but the real Marco in fact stayed there for quite some time. Maybe Japan could get involved too, after all, someone was planning an invasion of Japan around 1270, right Kublai? And the arrival of MP is dated somewhere around 1273. Would just make sense.

With a new map in play, I imagine they might make oasis do something, include a minor bonus for arriving there (like take 2 coins, gain 1 victory point, get a camel...) or they could even introduce a separate deck of Oasis cards, which could give you more locations to go to, or even serve as an alternative to contracts, give you a single-use city-like action or maybe just sit there and do nothing as they did in the basic game. I mean, it totally makes sense for an Oasis to be useless, but on the other hand, it might be the only place to get water in the middle of the desert and therefore being a good place to get to or be at. Maybe some kind of bonus in a form of card providing you with minor ability for as long as stay in the particular oasis, then you discard that card (having left the oasis to face the hostile desert once again). I can imagine they might just try to give some real meaning to those mostly worhtless parts of the map. It might still be wrong to travel anywhere else but to a city, however especially the "as long as you stay" bonus could shuffle your priorities while performing certain actions and make poor Johanes Carprini a bit more viable option.

Last but not least, a new map would probably be a good way to introduce the next point to this game.

5-player game thanks to the expansion
A lot of people mentioned this and I thought it was a total nonsense. Then I thought about the new map which could bring a bigger market, more options for travel and other adjustments generally making it less crowded. I really do not have a clue how could that work, as I already feel pretty bad when I go last, even though picking a character first makes up for combined with more money at the start of the game. Bigger problem would be the really crowded map. I know they would probably make more space in the market, but let me just imagine the current map with 5 players. Berke Khan pretty much becomes the single best character, not to mention how strong he is now. Getting camels becomes tougher. Getting money also becomes a bit tougher job, but they are more needed now, as more spaces tend to be occupied. I would love to be proven wrong once this is released, but I do not think this game could work as a 5-player one. Not to mention a neccesity to adjust Mercator or at least make a note of him in the rules (probably a very minor concern tho).

New city tiles, new contracts, new quests
This one comes to mind quite quickly. The contracts could bring a bit more variety to the game, but not really too much (still, making the game less hard to play by introducing some more quite easy to complete yet rewarding contracts, or doing the exact opposite thing might be quite an itriguing idea). New city action could be modifications of existing ones (victory points trade for resources for example), but I would really love to see some new, creative ones, because too often I feel like there are two big cities on the map that include a useful action and everything else seems to either be a complete garbage or an end-game one-timer. To see more contest for the city actions could make it even more fun and could encourage people to travel and stop trying the boring "contract-only strategy" that doesn't work anyway.

The last thing they could introduce are new travel quests. I can imagine something pretty crazy (3 cities a quest for example), but for the most part I think they would only bring new quests to work with a new map. Other than that, there isn't much to add about this.

Variable turn order
Do not know what exactly joeeoj010 had in mind when he posted this on the forum, but I assume he was addressing a long-time problem with this game. If you travel last in a round, you go first in the round after that. Pretty clear, quite fair, isn't it? But what happens if there is a player sitting to your left, therefore playing always after you, who doesn't even travel at all, doesn't try to contest the travel action with his dice. Assuming you always travel last and therefore go first, that inactive player will always go second without any effort, being essentially rewarded for "correct" seating next to you. Player to your right might be regulary fighting for the last spot, travel around the map and so on, but he always goes last. Many games include this and have some kind of an initiative tracker, that makes the order clear and not neccesarily clockwise. This system is the case in Signoria or Egizia and it makes you feel rewarded for at least trying to improve your position over time in both games. I would love to see that in Marco Polo, too, even though this changes the way the game plays a bit.

Those were my thoughts on your thoughts about the upcoming expansion. Now let's just wait to see if some of your predictions turn real in the expansion. Can't wait to see it! :D

The New Characters miniexpansion - The Voyages of Marco Polo initial thoughts

After my last article about Marco Polo here, someone suggested looking at this expansion, too. I have personally only played with proxied version of this and only one game playing each character, so unlike the previous article, this won't be base upon any kind of serious experience, but it will be more of a theorycrafting exercise. What I am about to share is just my opinion, and might turn out to work pretty differently in an actual game. So, let's have a look at what the expansion brings:

Gifts

The first thing you probably notice besides those new characters are the new round tokens. Those are called gifts, and can be obtained by completing some new contracts, by travelling to a small city with the new small city bonus tile, or by being one of the new characters. More about the characters will be said later, but let's have a closer look at those gifts first. There are two kinds of gifts. The first one has a lightning bolt depicted on it (Harry Potter reference) and the bonus depicted on them is acquired as soon as you get the gift. The other kind is kept in front of the player until he decides to use the gift, at which point it typically allows him to "one time use" an ability of one of the characters from the basic game. The gifts seem to be pretty neat bonuses and those contracts (especially the non-gold ones) appear to be really good! The only problem is randomness, but imagine the 1 camel 3 pepper quest getting you a reward of 2 camels, 2 points and a black die, or 5 coins, or a free travel, a resource of your choice... No matter what you receive, you cannot really end up being too unhappy, unless you were looking for a specific thing. Since you have to plan ahead in the game, that might be the case quite often, but you can keep track of which gifts are left in the pile and then take say 2 out of 6 chance of getting camels or so, obviously depending on the situation. Design-wise, I think this adds more randomness to the game, but given the amount of those contracts, I do not think it is gamebreaking. What sucks for me is that Berke Khan, Rashid and Wilhelm von Rubruk each have 1 specific gift that doesn't do absolutely any good for them, as it represents a one-time use of their existing abilities. Similar feature appears in Bang! Gold rush, and I like it, because it "stacks" in Bang!, but in Marco Polo, those gifts are worthless to their respective characters. They could have just added an option to say discard a gift to get a camel instead or something like that, or just add this to those three specific gifts. Plus as you will soon discover, it is not a good time to weaken the original characters, as they might find themselves struggling against the new ones.

Characters

To me, the more appealing part of the expansion, those characters once again bring some "out of the box" thinking, as they get quite nice and not previously seen abilities. The thing is that those abilities seem quite strong as far as I am concerned. I will rate them as was the case with the original characters, but again, this isn't really something I could back-up with some serious stats or experience, just my estimation, or as one could say, best guess. Anyway, here they are!

Altan Ord

Let me put this clearly. I like building an engine and improving it every time I move on the board. This character lets you do exactly that! In theory. The ability says "after placing the first trading post, gain a victory point. After placing a second trading post, get a coin and all previous bonuses. After placing a third trading post, get a camel and all previous bonuses. And so on as shown in the picture. If you place all seven, or even eight or nine posts, you get yourself a total of 7 Vps, 6 coins, 5 camels, 4 sacks of pepper, 3 pieces of silk, 2 gold pieces and a single black die. This is your ability at its best. 

Note: For placing the 8th and 9th station, there is no additional bonus to the usual 5, respectively 10 victory points.

It seems overwhelmingly good, as it allows you to complete about 2 contracts for free just for travelling around. It essentially gives you an increasing one-use bonuses in every city on the map just for you. The problem I have is that there is nothing at all that will help you get this running at the start of the game. If you play against characters focused on travel, you might find yourself being too slow compared to their start. Or at least that is what I am concerned about. I would still love to pick this against Kubilai, just because I think this suits my playstyle more, but I believe this is just average. The one think really worth mentioning is that as long as you can guarantee that you will travel to a city (see what I said about travelling in my previous article? :D ), you can also guarantee getting the specific bonus. And if your opponents somehow do not mess up with you in the first round or two, the game might be over. For this hopeful line, I will estimate a rating 3/5. 

Fratte Nicolao

Here is the "one more monk/priest joins the party" package. His ability gives him a choice of three random gifts at the start of each round. He picks and keeps one of those gifts and discards the other two. To increase his power a bit, he may once per game keep two of those instead. So he gets six free gifts a game. How powerful are the gifts? I think they are pretty solid. The fact that he gets to choose makes it so that he might be able to get what he needs, like the money +5 or the 3 camels. I would generally say that the gifts are worth one die. If there was an action that says "place a die of any value here to get 3 gifts, then choose one and discard the rest", I would say you would try to squeeze a die there here and then. Problem is that anything you might get can be somehow achieved on the board without having to worry about random gift distribution. Yes, you theoretically get every gift in your games during the game, but will you get the free move now, or in round 4? Nobody knows. And while I said I like the gifts, they do not do enough to make this the best character. However, I think he is slightly above average to potentially very good, if you get lucky. I rate him 3/5.

Gunj Kököchin

Finally! A female character was given to us! And more good news coming, because I think this is a pretty awesome girl (and just by a coincidence happens to be a Mongol princess). She has 2 main actions just for herself through the game. Both are simple, the first one turns any single die into 2 camels and two any resources of her choice (they can be both the same kind). Then everyone else receives any single resource from the common pool of resources. This feeds your opponents resources, but can give you invaluable gold or silk for a single day AND it gives you camels. Use this carefully, but without any doubt, this can get you a contract done for a single die without having to worry about your opponents dice. The second action requires one die of any value too, and gives you a single free move. This is huge in my opinion and can get you to a lot of places, especially combined with your ability to get camels no matter what everyone else does. Yes, both of those are uncontested actions at all times. I just think that if you get a solid bonus in Anxi (+5 money or the "?" bonus in this case, but camels aren't bad either), then you should be able to place all stations, travel fast AND do a contract here and there. It all sounds ambitious and maybe gets slightly worse if against characters that travel a lot, but I think she isn't meant to be a purely contract-based character as Mercator is, even though she could probably slow down travel-wise and roll contracts. Maybe she will turn out to be the jack of all trades and master of none, but my rating for now is 5/5.

Khan Arghun

Kököchin's would-be husband and a mighty ruler, he surely had a lot of influence. Game-wise, his influence is represented by 6 city action cards randomly drawn from the deck, known to the players before the characters are selected. He can use one of those cities once a turn as a if it was a bonus action, then discard the card. He doesn't need to use any die on this and he counts as having played a six-pip die when using any of those city actions. Basically, he has a kind of round bonus. Now there are 9 city cards that require nothing (well, one of them takes a coin) but a die. I am talking the take 2 coins for each pip on the die you place here action, the actions that give you resources (and are great if you have a 6, which you "have"), and the small city activators. I think that very often, he bad cards will be drawn and he won't be picked. But if you see like 2 or 3 good cards and or a solid combo, I think he comes into a consideration as on of the stronger characters. Ideal scenario might be round one +12 coins, round two +3 gold, round three +3 silk and then convert them into quests and get +6 victory points for the 1 point a quest card in round four, then perhaps activate 2 small cities for free AS A BONUS ACTION. I just feel that this won't really happen very often, and even though those actions are uncontested, you still have to pay for them to activate most of the time, because most require camels and something else. If he gets picked with the good cards, he might very well be one of the best characters in the game, but other than that, I think he has effectively no ability most of the time (like Kublai) without getting much of a compensation. I will consider the average state of things and rate him 2/5. 

Conclusion

The expansion brings new things without really changing the way the game feels. The characters are fresh but compatible with the old ones, albeit some of them seem bit too strong, but they certainly have weaknesses and can be beaten. Any character might still end up being THE best one for some particular setups. The gifts mechanic seems a bit random, but I think it is an acceptable level of randomness which also brings some new options into the game. I wouldn't mind some slight adjustments, most notably the three gifts mentioned above, but even as it is, I think this is a must-have if you like the game. 

Rating

+New characters are cool and bring new options and playstyles

+The gift mechanic is quite nice

-Questionable balance of the characters

-Some gifts useless to certain characters

-Not widely available yet

Overall: 8/10, appears to be a great mini-expansion 

The Voyages of Marco Polo tips and tricks

Today I have played several games of this online on the Yucata website and finally achieved reasonable TrueSkill rating out there (1000+). It is time to share some tips and thoughts on this game, then play some more. I think the following should really cover the basic strategy, but I am looking forward to proving myself wrong as I hopefully progress through the ranks online and improve my live play as well. As a side note, I would like to mention that always follow your playstyle, as each game is different and unique. In fact, it might be a very foolish thing to try to come up with a comprehensive strategy for a game such as this one, but guess what? I will try anyway. :D

Strategy twists depending on the character
One of the main pros of the game are it's characters, each possessing a very unique ability. The immediate questions is which one is the best? There is no clear answer to this, but I will share my thoughts on every character and maybe add my personal subjective "rating" based upon my experience. Keep in mind that it all heavily depends on the particular setup of the board and is by no means a strict order. I will also consider a 4-player game, but most characters and mechanics work similarly anyway.

Berke Khan
This guy allows you to place your die/dice on an occupied space without paying the additional cost. He is arguably one of the strongest characters, because his ability allows you to do one great thing: stop caring about what your opponents do. Sure, you still want to get your hands on the black die as often as possible, but you no longer have to worry about running out of money if someone travels first. Voyages of Marco Polo is a game with a lot of imperfect information given to the players. You do not know what travel quests the opponents have and therefore how fast or where do they want to travel. With this character, you simply do not have to care. You can focus more on your own game plan, hoard camels to convert to the black dice and so on. Also try to pick this guy if you anticipate weaker actions in the cities and bad options to earn money. If there are good city actions that generate money in easily reachable cities, there is a chance that this guy will be worse, because nobody will care that much about money anyway, making this ability less useful.
This character is slightly countered by Mercator Ex Tabriz as he tends to feed him a lot of camels and other resources. But it is easy to play and quite powerful no matter who you are facing. I will just point out here that for me it is relieving to play this character, but sometimes it actually turns out to be a bit boring experience and I also think he isn't the absolute best. My rating is 4/5.

Johannes Carprini
Second character is a bit of an odd guy. He doesn't seem to get picked very often and when he does, he performs just right, but not really much more than that. He gets you 3 coins at the start of each round, effectively getting you a 15 coins bonus thorough the game, and can jump from oasis to oasis anywhere on the map. Bear in mind that this usually requires a move of 3 or more to be useful, as you simply do not want to move in any way but from a city to a city. The ability allows him to fulfill any pair of travel quests and reach Beijing pretty conveniently. I would still recommend not to pick the two highest value quests blindly at all costs, just because some destinations (Kochi in particular) just take a lot to get into and out of. The idea with this one is to grab some money first, then pick the good "!" bonuses and travel around the map using those oasis that can be accessed easily. Remember to grab contracts that reward you with a bonus move action. Those are very strong almost in any position for pretty much any character. It is worth mentioning that he gets countered by Kubilai Khan, who makes it less profitable for Johaness to get into Beijing first, as he steals the 10 point trade station spot. Overall, I like Johannes, but I do not consider him to be too strong and he doesn't fit my personal playstyle that well. I rate him 3/5.

Kubilai Khan
Historically a ruler of vast empire, Kubilai starts in Beijing (represented in the game by a fictional city of Bejing AKA Misprint City), the seat of power of his dynasty in China. He starts with one station placed in Beijing on the 10 pts spot. That is it. This ability seems a bit underwhelming and truth to be told, I think it is. But let's try to evaluate what it does. You get 10 automatic points, but the value is relative, because any time a player arrives to Beijing, it decreases, as he gets some points for this, points that you cannot deny them. The ability effectively gives you a 3-point bonus against whoever comes to Beijing second. You also get quite important head start by having 1 station placed on the board. Makes it seem bit less impossible to place the remaining 8 I guess. Now consider the location on the board. You are only 1 step away from Xian, a small city with a recurring bonus. You are close to Sumatra, but movement from there is impractical and pricey, as well as from Kochi (especially in the first few rounds). I just think that no matter how you play this, even in the ideal scenario, this character just has limits to what it can achieve. I do not like this, as it kinda says "you might end up being second with a nice score, but you won't win". It is an interesting design and  I love how it influences other players, but sitting here without any real ability and a minor one-time advantage isn't good enough for me. In fact, I think this is the worst you can get more often than not. Honestly wouldn't pick him if I were aiming for the win against experienced opponents. Might be just my opinion tho. My rating is 1/5.

Matteo Polo
Next up is the uncle of Marco Polo himself, Matteo Polo. His ability gives you an extra white die at the start of each round and an extra random contract. Having a total of 30 dice minimum over the course of 5 turns is an advantage on it's own, but he also gets a free contract every round. Sadly, his white die counts towards the 15-pip limit, which in turn screws him up a bit. To me, this guy seems to be the one to get his quests done, give up any points for the 8th and 9th station, and do his homework, or contracts to be more Marco Polo-related. I am the kind of guy who thinks that building a solid engine on the board is better than occupying the market. This character does absolutely nothing to promote that strategy. I find him very luck-dependant, if you roll low, it isn't low enough for the compensation, the contract doesn't seem to matter all that much as if you take new contracts, you get 2 most of the time, if you do not, you still only got one contract you probably do not focus on anyway, and those contracts are random, so they do not end up being very good too often. He might shine and he might sometimes beat Rashid in the beginner game, but I still think he is bad against solid opponents. My rating on this one is 1.5/5.

Mercator Ex Tabriz
Let my put this clearly. I hate this guy. He is the parasite, the bad guy, who gets something for your effort while smiling and doing nothing. Every time someone takes and action in the market area, he gets one piece of the respective resource. Now what this ability really does? Let's say that it is a 4-player game, that is what we are considering anyway. Yes. The picture is technically incorrect, ignore everything but the first ability. Anyway, on average, you get about 3-4 resources a turn in a 4-player game. You clearly want to block the Favour of the Khan action, as it takes the player's attention away from the market, and you also hope that there is no good way to get resources and camels in the cities. Unless this is true, you won't be getting all that much. Also you get countered pretty hard by some characters that focus mainly on travel (notably Wilhelm von Rubruk or perhaps Nicollo and Marco Polo). The strategy should be to complete your quests and start a solid contract-fulfilling machine in the process. The good think is that others inevitably help you, even though you do not have much of a control over the timing of their unintended aid. I do not like to play against him, but he isn't extremely powerful unless in a very specific setup. I think he is easy to play to get a solid result but pretty tough to win with. I will rate this one 2.5/5.

Niccolo and Marco Polo
Father and a son, and also an interesting set of abilities. This character offers you two separate meeples to move around the map instead of the usual one. This allows you to move to two cities at the same time using two dice only. The second ability seems very minor but it is in fact huge. You get a free camel at the start of each round. Now that includes the first round, which is where it matters the most, because 1.) you can guarantee a black die no matter what the first turn 2.) you can get yourself to both Alexandria and Moscow using a total of 4 dice, then perhaps get some pepper and fulfill the movement quest with black die+camels or just use those camels to get some dice in return and steal those nice one-time bonuses. The first ability also almost guarantees the placement of all 9 trade stations. The 12-cost move actions are your best bet.
I love this character for it's explosive start potential and I almost auto-pick it if I am to go first and there are some decent sources of money. You can dictate the tempo of the game, get to Beijing, easily complete your travel quests, do a contract here and there and build a healthy base. The disadvantage is that some players will block you and this strategy isn't suitable if there is an extremely money-dry scenario where you just do not get what it takes to travel for 12 about 4 out of 5 times you travel using the action. To me though, this is "objectively" the best one. My rating 5/5.

Rashid ad-Din Sinan
This is the most overpowered ability according to the first-time players. He may set the value of his dice to whatever he wants. This sounds incredible, right? I say that his dice have "high value". That means that he gets a lot done with one die, or more specifically gets to use each action to it's maximum potential, where other characters must roll well to do so. The question stands. Does it win you the game, if you can theoretically use each action to it's maximum potential? If we take them one by one and determine whether you profit a lot from this ability. The market-yes, always getting the optimal value helps. Take 5 coins-slightly, usually helps you get a single coin, almost insignificant. Travel-slightly, again, usually saves you a coin or two compared to your average character. Take contracts-quite a lot, allows you to generate camels this way. The Favour of the Khan-a lot, you can block this action and monopolize it, getting yourself a lot of resources. City actions-varies, generally those requiring higher values suit you better. Conclusion is that about 2/3 of actions are better for you with this character, however most of those get blocked easily by the other players. One think this guy doesn't have is money. Try to get the black die, contracts that reward cash and travel a bit to get your hopefully not too difficult quests, then contract the heck out of your opponents. Aiming for points rewarding for placing 8th and 9th station is IMHO almost always a bad idea and too ambitious of a plan with this one.  Nonetheless, this is a solid and challenging character to play. I rate him 3.5/5.

Wilhelm von Rubruk
This monk brings 2 additional black stations with him and a potential 10 point reward for placing them on board. Note that you must place them as your 10th and 11th station. He also only needs to go through a city to place a station in it. I think this character is very tough to play and quite easy to stop from winning, but if there is a decent source of money, you can still pull the win off. You want to make a big jump or two in the game, 5 or 6 steps each. That takes a lot of money and camels, so you'll need to prepare for this. It is a great idea to get the Anxi bonus ASAP, unless it is something like 3 VPs, because that is surprisingly no good to you at the start of the game. Also, you only have 2 realistic routes to take in my opinion. The first one is the upper route from Venezia to Moscow-Anxi-Karakorum-Beijing-Xian-Karachi-Ormuz-Alexandria-Adana-Kochi-Sumatra. The other one and the suboptimal one, but probably less contested one, is Alexandria-Ormuz-Karachi-Xian-Beijing-Karakorum-Anxi-Moscow-Venezia-Samarcanda-Kashgar-Lan-Zhou. The first one requires a total of 17 steps, 13 or 16 camels and 27 or 22 coins. The second one requires 19 steps, 22 or 25 camels and 12 or 7 coins. If we assume a camel is worth about 1 and a half a coin, the second route seems slightly more favourable. But the two additional steps and the relativity of this "exchange" rate make it less suitable, but not an impossible way to place your 11 trading posts. Overall, I think he is just average. Like him tho. My rating 3/5.

Plan ahead
With characters out of the way, let's get into those tips. The first one is maybe the most important one. After you roll the dice, come up with a plan. A series of things you will do either no matter what (in other words, nobody can mess it up) or a series of plays you make if the previous scenario isn't possible. If the second point is the case, you will usually end up with several lines of play, based upon what you opponents has done. Also, at the beginning of the game, you should chose a path you will follow when travelling almost blindly. This isn't a game you can play without planning ahead. The order matters and to minimize the amount of things your opponent can do to mess with your actions, there is a concept called contested and uncontested action. The uncontested action is such action that will just sit there unoccupied and unused for you to be used at any time you choose. Provided you do not need the things you would gain by performing that action, this can wait. The contested action, on the other hand, is typically the camels in the market, if you do not take it, someone else will. If you had a plan at the start of the round, you should be able to determine which contested action to go for. Also, if you can afford and plan on paying money for performing an occupied action space, then this action should probably again be considered "uncontested", in other words, it can wait. Unless you need what you would normally gain by performing the action of course.

Luck pushing
Never push your luck, and if you are going to reroll any dice, take it into consideration as soon as the round begins. As a rule of thumb, you should reroll a die only if you are desperate, have a useless 1 or maybe 2, or if you need anything else but a 6 (being too high for you to pay for placing a six on somebody else's die). If you have a one or two and need specifically a one-pip higher value, it might spare your money and camels if you just use the +/- 1 value of the die action. If you have a useless one and anything else somehow helps you without really aiming for anything specific, reroll it. You may keep rerolling as long as your overall amount of camels is sufficient for executing your general plan or you do not have any other choice. Other than losing the game.

Contract priority
So there are good contracts and the bad ones. Each contract serves a different purpose. The generally good ones are the ones rewarding camels, resources of any kind, the travel action ones. The bad ones are the random contract ones and the ones rewarding only a single resource. The money rewarding quests seem situational. Of course, you may still pick any quest if it denies your opponent or serves your goal (simply because you might only be capable of doing one specific contract). If you focus on winning the contract game and not so much on the travel, the ones giving you extra resources are perfect as they allow you to chain contracts without much effort.

Travel strategy
I have already mentioned this in the article, but you shouldn't really ever find yourself outside of a city. It just isn't efficient to travel to an oasis and end your movement here. You do not place a station, do not get a bonus, no additional action unlocked, simply bad for business. Plan in such a manner that any movement you do, be it a travel action or a contract reward, will get your guy to a city. The honorable exception might be Nicollo and Marco Polo, as it doesn't make sense to place two 4s on the travel action and then only move 3 spaces with one guy because of this rule. The other exception might be Johannes, as he kinda likes oasis.

City actions
First of all, let's establish that those are contested actions as soon as there is more than 1 player in the city. There are some really good ones and then there is the thrash. Yes, different actions suit different characters, but the absolutely thrashy ones are: Anything that rewards both points and coins (with an exception of the gold one, that one is just bad). Anything that converts 2 same resources into points. Anything that converts only camels into points. Those should be avoided unless it is like the last round and they present the best way to make some final points. Also, actions that aren't listed here aren't always great. The really good ones are the money gainers, the small city bonuses activators, and the gold+camel=4 VPs, especially later in the game. Resource generating cards tend to be quite good and favour Rashid while simultaneously screwing up Mercator. The bad ones you should be avoiding are marked by a red "X" in the picture bellow.

I will add to this article as I progress in the game and get some more games under my belt, even though I think I got a solid foundation. Anyway this is my take at the strategy, hope you find it helpful. Feel free to discuss those and stay tuned for an update!

Play games online - Yucata

Have you ever wondered whether you can play your favourite board games online? Now you are thinking that I must be joking, because the social interaction with people sitting at the table with you is what makes playing games fun. And interactive (duh). But let's say all your friends are unavailable for some reason, yet you really, REALLY want to play a game of Port Royal or something. You may take the game out of the shelf and play solo-mode against yourself, but that is a bit unsatisfying, isn't it? For those of you who do not already know about this and sometimes find themselves in a situation similar to the one I just described, the Yucata website is your saviour. After a free registration, you get access to more than 120 famous games taken directly from the board to your computer. Now you may notice that 120 games is in fact quite a low number, but it is enough for an average gamer to find something of note. The list includes but is not limited to two versions of Carcassonne, Port Royal, the classic Othello, and many other good and quite widely known games. There are some hidden gems, too. Games like The Castles of Burgundy, Hacienda or The Voyages of Marco Polo are transformed into their online versions without losing much of their complexity, clarity and fun aspect. 

There is a concern about the quality of the gameplay itself. I do not claim to have played all games available on this website, but I was impressed by all the games I have tried so far.

The details of vital symbols and actions are pretty well done, so you always know what do you get from performing any given action, everything is clean and smooth. If you do not know the game, there are thorough rules that go with each game before you even start playing, and you can also check the rules at any time while playing, as they are included in the game manager even during play.

The animation is ok and it also supports replays, which allows you to quickly recapitulate the events in the game that happened while you were having a bio break or something. You can even undo your most recent action should you happen to misclick. To help keep the game clear and prevent confusion in more complicated games, your options are usually marked in some manner, usually a coloured frame appears over them. You therefore do not wander the board with fear of mistakenly choosing the wrong button.

I have never encountered any adds while playing this, which helps the overall very enjoyable experience.
But the site has to live from something so there is a system of voluntary donations, you can basically donate any amount and you receive a certain site supporter badge based upon how much you have donated. Nonetheless, you can keep playing for free. There is a whole ranking system and some stats, which both keep track of your performance in both ranked and training games and somewhat motivate you to play better, you can add people to your buddies list and play with them again and create an invitation to get people to play the game you choose.

All in all, this site is an absolute blast. The only problem for me is that some people just won't play more than say two turns a day, which doesn't really serve the purpose of playing a quick game of something online before I get to play it live somewhere. But I guess that this is up to us, the players.

Advanced strategy tips for Bang!

This is a second part of this article about Bang! strategy. The first part focused on giving some really basic tips and was intended for people familiar with the game, but not complete beginners, as those should probably try the game few times on their own. Yes, I doubt there can be a Bang! beginner in 2017, that is why I have not provided a guide for those (also the rules do a that job quite well anyway). This time around, I will focus on some advanced tips, sometimes quite minor things in a greater scheme of things. If you aren't really too familiar with the game, start with the first article and come back to this one later. Bear in mind that those tips are for people who want to do as much as possible to win the game (within the boundaries of the rules). An average casual player might feel confused or perhaps might question himself why would someone ever try to follow those. With that in mind, let's jump right into it.

Know what cards are in the game

This tip is rather an obvious one, but I cannot stress enough how important it is to know this. I need 3 cards to kill my opponent. I have nothing in my hand and I will be drawing 2 cards in my next turn. Can I even hope to kill him? Is there any card that draws more cards left in the deck? More importantly knowing what kinds of effects are there helps you to correctly estimate what you can expect from your opponent. And if you play with any of the expansion, this knowledge's worth increases. Do you know what cards are in the High Noon deck? And the Wild West Show? 

I will be going through those in the future so do not be afraid if you do not know. 

This is also an absolute necessity if you want to utilize the next one.

Card counting

You may have heard of this in Poker or many other card games. There is up to 135 cards in the playing deck in Bang!. This task seems pretty impossible at first, but if you start with certain cards and ignore the rest, and gradually add more cards as you get used to this, you might end up being able to remember all the cards played in the game so far. The cards you may want to start with are those with the biggest impact. Those are the cards with stealing effects (Cat Balou, Panic!, Rag Time, etc.), distance modifiers and weapons (Mustang, Appaloosa, Silver, Hideout, Remington, ...) and cards that force you to keep Bang!s in your hand as a defensive tool (Indians!, Duels). It is also quite useful to keep track of cards that draw additional cards such as Stagecoach or Wells Fargo.

There might also be more decks in the game, such as High Noon, Fistful of Cards, Wild West Show and Gold Rush. All of those (except for Gold Rush) have one card that is always the last card in it's respective deck. By tracking those decks, you may give yourself a significant advantage that comes from knowing what effects are about to come or what equipment card can you hope to turn over when you buy one of those already offered to you. The keen players are able to exactly tell you what the last 2 cards of all three decks with predetermined last card are.

Looking for tells

You already know that it is a good idea to keep an eye on what cards people pick when General Store is played. What does it say about them though? First, you can catch some less experienced players picking up a weapon card that conveniently allows them to Bang! the Sheriff from distance. Look at the diagram bellow.

Let's assume that "A" is the Sheriff and nobody else has given any clue to what role is he playing. "A" plays a General Store card and following cards show up: Wells Fargo, Mustang, Stagecoach, Beer, Remington and Panic!. The Sheriff immediately picks Wells Fargo, as it is arguably the best card. Now player "F" picks Mustang in order to protect himself from the potential Panic! and improve his position overall. "E" picks Beer. "D" suddenly decides to pick Remington (a weapon that allows the player to shoot up to a distance of 3) over some quite solid cards (Stagecoach, Panic). Why would he do so? It's a 6-player game. In a 6-player game there is a Sheriff, 3 Outlaws, a Deputy and a Renegade. If the player who picked up the Remington were a Deputy, what would he try to achieve? It doesn't make sense for him to increase his own range as everyone around is an enemy. It could only be a good choice if he was trying to deny the weapon to player "C", who might be a Renegade or an Outlaw. But it probably wasn't worth the 2 extra cards or the Panic! effect anyway. We can quite safely predict that such player isn't the Deputy. Now the Renegade might potentially want o increase his range but only if he is after a specific target or he is trying to bluff everyone into thinking that he is an Outlaw. Neither of those is a good option because in this game we assume he doesn't have a clue who the Deputy might be. Therefore it only makes sense for him to either shoot someone immediately next to him or wait. That player is probably an Outlaw trying to initiate an attack against the Sheriff. Also if someone else played the General Store, you could expect a Deputy to pass a better card to you, in other words, if "C" played the GS and picked the Wells Fargo, then "B" picked Panic! and passed that Stagecoach to you, there is a good chance that he is your ally (unless you only have the Stagecoach in your hand, because guess what he will do with that Panic! on his turn if that is the case).

Micro decisions
Many people overlook little things that do not even matter most of the time. Since they are really minor, you perhaps didn't even notice some of them. A typical example would be following situation.

Let's say a player has both cards shown above in front of him, active and ready to be played when  needed. He is a target of a Bang! card, he has no Missed! in his hand. Which card do you play? The original and first impression is that it doesn't matter. Wrong! If you play the Cappello first, you risk drawing the second Iron Plate in the future, but if the first one is still on the board by the time you draw the second one, you are suddenly stuck with a dead card in your hand. The only instance in which it is correct to play the Cappello is if your opponent already has an Iron Plate in front of him and you suspect he might have a Panic! card in his hand. By playing the Cappello first, you prevented him from stealing AND using your Plate at the same time. Yes, he may still steal the card, but then it is a dead card in his hand. Another great example of this is a situation where your opponent has both a Hideout and a Mustang card in front of him. You might wish to steal one of those to get closer to him. But which one? They both do exactly the same thing just as in the previous case, but once again, a clever observer will point out, that there are 3 copies of Mustang card in the deck and only a single Hideout. So by stealing a Hideout you prevent your opponent from easily replacing it.

The Valley of Shadows expansion brings some cards that might cause a headache. Cards like Aiming (play this with a Bang! card, the target needs 1 Missed! to avoid it but loses 2 life points if he doesn't) force you to play your cards in a particular order. Let's say you have this, a Bang! card and a Punch card in your hand. Your goal is to kill a player to your right or something like that. If you Punch him first, he will likely use his Missed!, if he has any in his hand. Then you use your enhanced Bang! to make him hopefully lose 2 life points. Note that very experienced opponents who did their homework and counted all the cards that have been played to that point in the game might suspect you have this combination of cards and they might decide not to play the Missed! on purpose. You can use this to your advantage, Punch them for 1 life point and stop. Or call their bluff and shoot them with everything you have. After all, there are only 13 Missed! cards in the deck, 2 Dodge cards, and a Backfire card that also comes in the VotS expansion. Either way, keep in mind that this is a very advanced thing and many people do not really want to go that far in case of Bang!. But I feel that if you were willing to read this up to this point, you could as well try those.

Be calm

Does it surprise you to read this? The final point of this very passionate article about strategy for a seemingly simple mindless game advises you to stay calm. Yes. After all, it is just a game. If you lose, it is often pretty bad feeling, and the odds are sometimes in your favour and yet you still somehow lose. I know that feeling. I have been through that numerous times, dying to my opponents, to an unfortunate Dynamite draw, to an Event Card and so on. But even then, the most important thing is to stay calm. You may point out that it sucks to be unlucky, but it happens, and if you complain too much, people might go after you just so that they can see you explode again. Plus it is a terrible sportsmanship to leave the table enraged without even saying something like "thanks for the game". :D And that doesn't cover the elimination part only. If someone is about to steal a card from you and you know you have 4 cards in your hand and one of them is the crucial Volcanic you have been safeguarding in your hand for the whole game, just shuffle them, put them on the table face-down, and do your best to stay calm and try not to react at all. Sometimes you get away with that, sometimes you do not, but either way it is better than being a loud butthurt jerk. You sometimes just cannot help yourself from complaining and that is natural and probably appropriate in some situations, but keep it as limited as possible and try to enjoy the game instead.

Other than that, all I can do for you is wish you a good luck! Keep those in mind and improve your general game knowledge by playing more games (both games of Bang! and games in general). And most importantly, have fun!

Thoughts on Epic Munchkin

Have you ever played something as pointless yet so catchy as Munchkin? This game, well-known parody of role-playing games, starts as an empty box with little more than 200 cards as this article points out, but before you know it, you find yourself in local store looking for expansions.
I will assume you have taken such step or that you are familiar with the game itself. If that is not the case, there is a whole section focused on reviews of the basic game here. Anyway, let me briefly introduce the good ol' classic Munchkin.

What is Munchkin - If you are familiar with the game, feel free to skip this part.

-Created by Steve Jackson, originally illustrated by John Kovalic
-A game with a ton of jokes and geeky references
-Designed for 2-6 players
-Gameplay time listed on the official website is 1-2 hours

You start as a Human at level 1. Players take turns at kicking down the doors to enter the imaginary dungeon. Now the main point of Munchkin is to reach level 10. To do so, you must kill Monsters, grab the treasure and make your character more powerful as you collect and use new Races, Class and equipment cards, using everything you can from the Chainsaw of Bloody Dismemberment to the Vorpal Blade. The catch is nobody knows, what "Vorpal" is. Okay, I was just testing you. The true catch obviously is that other players may make it more difficult for you to defeat the Monsters by playing buff cards that increase their strength. They may also offer their help in exchange for certain number of treasures or other useful items. There is a pesky kind of cards called Curses, which do bad things to you. Every time you manage to defeat a Monster, you go up a level. There are some other ways to level up, such as selling items of a combined worth of 1000 gold or more, or playing a "Go up a level" card, but to reach the final level, you must defeat a Monster (or pray for Divine Intervention).

That shows the first problem people tend to have with Munchkin. You gain equipment and also a majority of better cards by defeating Monsters. Yes, you can trade with other players, but you must first have at least something useful to have chance of getting what you need from an opponent. Typically in a game, there always seems to be a player who struggles to draw a Monster. He then falls behind, with no real option to come back in the game and the most he can do is he finds himself in a kingmaker position when deciding who to prevent from winning with his remaining cards. There is a catch-up mechanic called charity, which forces any player who exceeds his hand-size limit to give any excess cards to the player with the lowest level. That rarely happens and if it does, the player receives mostly useless cards.

The second flaw people complain about is the "runaway leader". One or two players get ahead, reaching like level 8 or 9 and then it comes up to who draws a Monster first and whether other players can stop that player from winning with what they have in their hands. If they can, then it mostly ends up with the other player winning on the very next turn. Or other people inevitably gang up on you if you take the lead, completely exhausting their resources, wrecking you, and meanwhile allowing someone else to win without much effort. Anyway it is also what makes Munchkin so intense in the final few turns, especially if there is more claimants for the win. Do not take me wrong. Many people, including myself, quite enjoy the classic Munchkin and it has it good points, such as the negotiating it involves, the tension at the end of the game, and so on. But for this review, I need to highlight the bad parts of Munchkin in order to clearly clarify my opinions. Also bear in mind that those problems sometimes arise, but sometimes they don't. You might have had a different and an entirely positive experience with the game and that is completely fine (lucky you tho :D ).

What is Epic Munchkin

Epic Munchkin is a set of rules that lets you play up to level 20 and brings some new mechanics and abilities. After any player reaches level 10, the game continues, and the player is considered "Epic Munchkin". If he somehow gets back to levels 1-9, he loses the epic status. Epic Munchkins turn over two cards instead of one when kicking down the doors and resolve them in a given order. First, any Curses are resolved. Then you may pick up and apply any Race or Class card. The third come the Monsters, which you fight as usual, but if there are two Monsters, fight them both. And any Monster Enchancer card immediately applies to the Monster drawn with it. The Epic Munchkins also get another ability in addition to their standard Races or Class card abilities, called Epic Ability. This usually further improves their current abilities or brings entirely new ones. The object of the game changes to reaching level 20. To reach levels 19 and 20, you must defeat a Monster.

What does it try to achieve anyway?

The goal of this set of rules is to make the game last longer. It also brings the Epic phase of the game during which players become even more powerful and get some new abilities. Those are available on this website for free. They come described in a list that probably is just ok, but it takes time to memorize them and it is pretty inconvenient to look at some kind of a table every now and then during a game like this. But hey, you do not have to pay for this and it is a minor downside anyway.

My thoughts

Having played this a handful of times, I am pretty sure I won't try to do so again in the closest future.
There are several reasons. Once a player reaches the level 8-10 area in a regular game, he pretty much can beat any Monster in the game on his own, unless other players intervene. And they do not do so unless they absolutely have to. So what happens is that an already very powerful Munchkin gets a new stronger ability and more time to gather more equipment, buffs and generally get out of control. Any player in that phase of the game then just draws two door cards, moreless automatically defeats any Monsters drawn and puts a new *insert an item* in front of himself. They fixed the issue of players ganging up on the leader by making the leader(s) powerful enough to withstand nearly anything others can throw at him. The game then becomes a mindless race through the deck between those players fortunate enough to have at least level 10 or so. For the others, it prolongs their suffering and also takes the fun out of the game by simply making it last way too long. It doesn't address any other issue, most importantly doesn't introduce any way to keep all players really involved in the game to the end. And that means something from a gamer like me, who believes that if you fall behind in a game, you deserve it, as you probably played badly. Well, this obviously applies to serious Eurogames with little to no luck factor involved, so it would make sense for me to have a catch-up mechanic in Munchkin. Something like "Watch and learn" rule: "Whenever an Epic Munchkin goes up a level, all non-Epic Munchkins choose to either draw a treasure card or go up a level." This would obviously require some playtesting, but something like this allows those behind to feel like they still have a chance to catch up and maybe even quietly climb up to the victory. And it isn't really all that gamebreaking, as it isn't too rewarding. After all, all the player did was watching.
Last but not least, this little tweak would bring one more decision to make, in form of taking an immediate reward (level up) or try to fish for an item that might prove useful in the greater scheme of things (the treasure). I also like the fact that it doesn't directly harm or slow the leading players.

About those new abilities... some are quite powerful (Elves, Dwarves, Wizards, Thieves, Clerics), while some have little to no impact (Centaurs and Gnomes). I generally like how they are designed, if not balanced (Who cares about Munchkin being balanced anyway? This guy does!). They also stick with the original theme of individual Races. I absolutely wouldn't mind playing with those by default, as it encourages players to use Races and Class cards and makes them slightly more powerful. Or make it obtainable by say "tapping" your respective Class or Race card at the beginning of your turn, then you get the Epic ability for the duration of the round, leave it tapped as you end your turn and untap it at the end of your next turn. This makes it so you cannot just rely on having the ability at all times.

Conclusion

I won't lie to you. When I first saw the Epic rules, I was excited to try them and didn't even think about it being a bad idea. I would tell you not to do the same, to do yourself a favor and play the classic Munchkin or an entirely different game. But by now you have probably stopped reading and played a couple of games using this variant anyway. It is a good one-time modification. If you use one of my suggestions or come up with your own, you might enjoy this multiple times. It is quite sad that such a small "expansion" or set of rules is designed in a way that requires a house rule or two, otherwise it just makes the game almost unplayable for most, even though a small percentage of hardcore fans might still enjoy it. But to be fair, it only deepens the problems Munchkin already had before, and doesn't bring too many new things.
In my opinion, this isn't for regular play, unless you are fanatically devoted to Munchkin. Yes, it isn't a serious game, so it doesn't necessarily need to be balanced, but come on, this game lasts about hour in it's most basic form and I am being optimistic now. Imagine a 6-player game of Munchkin using your average number of expansions (5 in my case) and now add the Epic rules to the mix. The time it takes before you get to your turn and the time the game lasts just make it a frustrating experience no matter who is winning, because guess what? Most players do not even care at certain point under such conditions.

Rating
+ Pretty low price :D
+ New abilities
+ Cool idea of drawing 2 cards at the same time
- Doesn't try to fix problems, makes them more significant
- Makes the game more frustrating, more dull, doesn't let you build the tension
- Time this takes is just too long
Overall: 3 out of 10, worth a shot but not really much more than that