Running the Gauntlet Of Fools

by Firestone

Donald X. is the incredibly successful designer of hit games such as Dominion and Kingdom Builder. His latest is nothing like Dominion at all, but don’t let that stop you from playing this fast, fun game.

Gauntlet Of Fools comes with:

• 90 cards—divided into 20 Class cards, 20 Weapon Cards, and 50 Encounter cards.
• 30 dice
• 4,000 tokens—okay, that’s an exaggeration, but there are a BUNCH of tokens.
• 1 Playmat on which to place Boasts before they’re taken.

You’re going to control a hero, who will enter the dungeon, and who will die. (Well, you'll almost certainly die, unless you get really, really lucky. But plan on taking dirt nap...) Your goal is to end up with more gold than your opponents at the end of the dungeon.

First you deal out one Class card per player; they’re the Heroes, and include ninjas, barbarians, zombies, and jesters. Each one of them has an inherent defense, and a special power that you can use in the dungeon. Then you attach one Weapon to each Hero; they include spears, axes, whips, holy swords, and deadly fists. Each one has a number of dice you will roll for your attacks in the dungeon, along with a special power. Every game the Heroes and Weapons combinations will be different, so there’s plenty of replay value here.

Heroes and Weapons have special powers, and while you can use a few of them automatically, almost all of them cost an Ability token. The number of tokens varies based on the power (with a low of zero and high of 20), but on average you’ll get two Class Ability tokens and Two Weapon Ability tokens.

You should be aware that there are some “darker” cards in these, such as necromancers, zombies, and demonic blades. Their power is abstracted, but they’re there; if you felt strongly about it, you could easily remove those cards from the game without really affecting anything.

There are two phases to the game: the Boasting Phase and the Gauntlet Phase.

First comes the Boasting. Starting with the start player, each person takes one of the Heroes—and the Weapon attached to that Hero—and places it in front of them. If they think the Hero might get taken from them, they can attach a Boast to it, but it’s not required. Now the next player takes a Hero. If they take one that’s already in front of another player, they have to attach at least one Boast to it. That continues until each player has a Hero in front of him or her.

The Boasts include things such as “One Arm Tied Behind My Back,” which means that when the Hero is in the dungeon, he’ll ignore all 1s and 2s rolled on the dice. Or while “Hopping On One Leg,” which means you reduce the Hero’s defense by two. Or “With A Hangover,” which means you reduce your Hero’s attack dice by one and defense by four, but as soon as you kill a monster you get rid of the Hangover—fighting sobers you up! There are a few others, too.

So you can take the Hero someone else has, but you’re going to “pay” more for it—in the form of Boasts. And you might really want a Hero, but you have to ask yourself if it’s worth all the Boasts. It generally feels that a Great Hero with a Great Weapon—and a Boast or two—is more valuable than a Good Hero with a Good Weapon. Of course, that’s not always true, and some Boasts feel more harmful than others. It’s a sort of auction, where you’re valuing what’s out there, and trying to do a better job of valuing than your opponents—it reminds me of the province auction in Amun-Re.

Now comes the Gauntlet Phase, where you fight the monsters. And die. Early on, people were comparing this to Munchkin, and that scared me off. I can’t stand Munchkin—for lots of little reasons, but the big one is that the games often take FOREVER. FOR. E. VER!!!  Gauntlet of Fools is only superficially like Munchkin (fight monsters in a dungeon), but it’s also got a natural timer to it. You’re going to die. Everyone’s going to die. You might live one or two rounds longer than someone else—or vice versa—but that’s it. This keeps games at around 20 minutes, and that’s just perfect for this weight and type of game.

Anyway, you play a series of turns, and in each one you determine the encounter (draw the top card of the Encounter deck), attack the monster, defend against the monster, and then check to see if you’re dead yet. Most of the time the Encounter will be a monster of some kind. Each one has an attack strength, a defense strength, a gold amount for if you kill it, a wound amount if it hits you, and finally a special power. They’ve done a good job of conveying a lot of info in a clear way on a single card.

There are a few special Encounter cards. There’s a Spear Trap where you automatically take a wound, and some modifiers that make the next monster worth more gold, or have extra defense, or extra attack power—or do double damage. There are also some good Encounters that give you gold, or tokens you can use on your special powers, or allow you to heal a wound.

So for each regular Encounter your Hero will roll however many dice he or she has for attack, and if the total is as much or more than the monster’s defense, you’ve killed it, and you get the gold. Even if the monster dies, it still gets to attack your Hero. Again, if its attack equals or bests your defense, you’ll take one or more wounds. This attack and defend portion is where you can also use those Ability Tokens you got with your Hero. You might be able to turn one in and automatically kill any monster, or turn one in a roll an extra attack die, or turn one in a reroll all attack dice.

So there are definite decisions to be made in the Gauntlet. When should you just attack, and when should you spend a precious Token? Will I die this turn, and can I somehow prevent that?

Eventually everyone dies (four wounds and you’re dead at the end of the turn), and you count up the gold; whoever has the most gold wins. That’s not necessarily the person who lived the longest. If I was able to kill a couple of big-money monsters—but died early, that could be better than you living a longer time, but only killing monsters that give you one gold.

That’s an exhaustive look at the game. It probably took you longer to read this than it will to play a game. (Okay, that's an exaggeration...)

So what do I think? I like it! It’s a fast and fun dungeon delve. Some people don’t like that you only Boast once and use that one Hero through the whole Gauntlet, but it’s meant to play quickly and easily, and that’s just what it does. Want more? Play another game! Want Mage Knight? Play Mage Knight!

The dice add a lot of uncertainty. There were plenty of times that a Hero should be able to best a Monster, but then he'd roll a bunch of 1s and 2s. We played once, and then we immediately wanted to play again. And then we played another after that.

If there's one thing I'm uncertain about, it's that I'm not sure how well this would go over with nongamers. Auction games might be the hardest genre to bring out with Grandma and your Aunt Fanny. It's hard to figure out just how much something is worth, and if they undervalue or overvalue something, it can kinda throw the whole game off. But Gauntlet's light enough and fast enough that I'm far less concerned with this than I would be with, say...The Princes of Florence.

There’s plenty of room for expansion with this game, and I’ll eagerly add them if and when they come out. In the meantime, I’m going into the Gauntlet with my mace-wielding knight—unfortunately, he’s blindfolded and he skipped breakfast…

Our thanks to Indie Boards & Cards for graciously providing a review copy to Theology of Games.

When We Last Left Our Heroes...

Well it certainly has been a busy week for us here at TOG! We've had lots of exciting news, an interview, and we've got a TON of stuff in the works behind the scenes! We started the week off with a few deep thoughts about the LARP community.

Stay on Target... Or at least go to Target to grab some new titles or a few clearance gems!

We also learned a little more about the wine making community in an interview with Viticulture designer Jamie Stegmiaer.

Thursday we kicked off a new weekly feature: Kickstarter Weekly with news about the Purge: Sins of Science Kickstarter campaign.

And we brought you a heads up of the Halloween Freighters add-on for Ticket to Ride.

We are always so glad to have your support, and thank you as always for joining us for another week here at TOG! The next few weeks will be chock full of game reviews, a TON of interviews, Kickstarter info, and of course up-to-the-minute news from around the gaming community!

We Review Plato 3000

By Firestone I like being surprised by a game—well...pleasantly surprised, anyway. I opened up my recently arrived, Kickstarted copy of Glory To Rome and found a small card game that I’d completely forgotten was a stretch goal. It’s called Plato 3000, and it’s basically rummy with special powers.

The game comes with a 54-card deck of illustrated cards. The artwork is pretty cool; it’s kind of an apocalyptic steampunky series of machines in different kinds and colors. There’s also a rules reminder card—it would have been nice if there’d been more than one, though.

You shuffle the cards, deal 10 to each player, and then place the remaining cards on a Draw deck. There are two discards on either side of the Draw pile—a Scrap discard and a Research discard. A turn consists of drawing a card—either blindly off the top of the Draw deck, or off the top of either discard pile. If you draw off the Draw pile, you draw two and keep one—discarding the other to the top of the Research discard. Then you can play one Theory card (which all have special things they let you do), lay down one meld of three or more Job cards, and/or lay off on melds your opponent has down. Then you discard a card to the Scrap pile.

The various colors have special powers once they’re down in front of you as a meld. The Priest lets you lay down a meld when you have only two of a color. The Farmer lets you keep both cards when you draw off the top at the beginning of the turn. And the Soldier lets you attack your opponent’s melds and remove cards from them.

Just as in Rummy, once someone discards his or her last card, the hand is over. Cards in front are positive points, and cards in your hand are negative points. There are a few other scoring cases, but that’s basically it: rummy with special powers. You continue playing until someone reaches 100 points, which seems to be four or five hands. There are rules for team play, but I haven't tried that yet.

It’s a fun little game! Easy to teach, portable, based on a well-known game, and nongamer-friendly.

I guess the best endorsement I can give is this: I got my copy for free, but even if I hadn’t, I would still buy a copy.

Check back soon for our review of Glory To Rome, and thanks for reading!

Kickstarter Odds and Ends

It seems like more and more often there are more and more games being brought to market through Kickstarter. Today I thought we'd take a quick peek at a few up-and-coming titles, and some that are giant successes already! The first is the quirky "Salmon Run" a modular board/deck builder that recreates the epic struggle of fish to make babies... Designed by Jesse Catron.

Airborne in Your Pocket which only has a few hours left, is flirting with the $100,000 mark! That's $70,000 OVER the funding goal! The game is a co-op tile=laying WWII action game. It looks fun, but a little pricey too.

Heroes of Metro City - Another deck builder with a role-playing twist. Looks a bit like Dominion in spandex, with some fun superpower action tossed in.

Get Bit! Deluxe  Mayday Games is Kickstarting a new pirate themed version of their 2012 Origins award winner, with new graphics and dismemberment. And it comes in a nifty tin too!

There are just a few short hours left in the Resistance: Avalon campaign.

And don't forget, Mars Needs Mechanics! Nevermore games is still in the middle of their campaign for their second title. We interviewed designer Ben Rosset, and Nevermore games' co-founder Bryan Fischer, click their names to find out more about what's going on at Nevermore games!

And we watched Dice Hate Me Games' Great Heartland Hauling Co. roll in hitting their last stretch goal with seconds to spare! Read our interview with designer Jason Kotarski here!

So, what Kickstarter campaigns are you backing? Leave 'em in the comments!

Tooth & Nail: Factions

By Firestone A while back I wrote about my Love/Hate relationship with Kickstarter, and in that article I mentioned a project I was going to back on faith. Well Tooth & Nail: Factions is that game. Was it worth my backing dollars?

Well you’ll just have to read and find out…

The game is put out by Small Box Games, so it comes in a…small box. I like the size a lot, but there’s not a lot of room for expansions—if they make any. (Though it should be noted my copy is sleeved.) It plays 2-4 players, but based on the different rules for 3 and 4 players, it seems like it would just be way better with only 2—and I've only played 2-player so far...

So the game comes with ~200 glossy cards. They’re decent quality, though I would suggest sleeving them. The game is all cards, so you’re moving, turning, playing, holding, and shuffling them a lot. It’s not a deck-builder, so you won’t be handling them as much as you would in, say, Dominion, but still…

Those cards are divided into six Factions, each of which is designed to feel and play differently than the others, and Action Cards. Each Faction has five copies of six different troops. The game also comes with six oversized Faction cards that spell out each Faction’s unique in-game ability. My Kickstarted copy also came with six alternate Faction cards for more variety, and a Dogs of War variant that I have yet to try out.

I really like the artwork on the cards. It’s not super sharp, like some of the CCGs Fantasy Flight puts out (which I also like, btw). But this feels more raw and organic and earthy.

You’re trying to cause your opponent to run through his or her deck before you do: First person out of cards in their draw pile loses. So cards are life points, but they’re also your weapons to defeat your enemy.

The play area is divided into the War Zone and the Command Zone; when you play a troop card, you’ll play it down to one of those sections. The War Zone allows you to directly attack your opponent’s deck (but you ignore the special text on the troop card), or the Command Zone, where you don’t directly attack, but you will end up using the special text to affect things. The other important thing about the Command Zone is that at the beginning of your turn you’re able to draw one card for each card you have in your Command Zone.

You can either draw directly from your stack of cards, or you can draw an Action Card—a set of cards that are available to each player on his or her turn. You’ll need to use Action Cards to play cards down to the table, and to initiate an attack from the War Zone. One of my favorite aspects of the game is that the beginning of each turn forces you to make a tough decision about which type of cards you draw for that turn.

You don’t have to play an Action Card to activate a card in your Command Zone, but you have to discard the card after activation unless you have a copy of that exact card in your hand that you can discard. Sometimes losing that card is still a good choice; sometimes it isn’t… More tough choices.

The games last 15-30 minutes, and because of the variety of Factions (and 30 possible combinations of matchups), it’s easy to say, “Let’s play another quick game.”

Yes, there’s some luck of the draw, but I think each turn is more an exercise in playing what you have in the best way, rather than hoping you draw that one awesome card that’s in your deck. <cough-Magic-cough>

The Factions don’t feel completely different, but there’s definitely a different feel to each. The Enrodentia (rats) are weak, but have swarmish abilities. The Red Claws (dinosaurs) can take a beating (by pulling cards from their discard pile back into their draw deck). The Ostra Vultura (steampunk vultures!) mess with their opponent’s hand by forcing them to ditch cards, or by pulling cards from the opponent into the Vultura’s draw pile.

My one complaint is that sometimes the matchups seem to favor one side a bit. In one game my Pride Faction’s ability forced my opponent to remove his discards from the game, but he was playing the Vultura, and they don’t generally resurrect cards from their discard pile, so it didn’t really affect him. Meanwhile, his ability forced me to randomly discard a card from my hand. THAT WAS MUCH MORE USEFUL. But it could be that more experience will force me to be creative about what strengths I do have. It’s certainly not a deal-breaker at this point; it’s just something to be mindful of.

Overall, I’m liking Tooth and Nail: Factions quite a bit. And there are a few variations and expansions that I haven’t even touched yet, but I’m excited to give them a whirl!

This Kickstarter experience was great; I regret nothing. Thanks for reading!

Hard to See the Future is...

Fantasy flight has unveiled more details about their newest addition to their Living Card Game family: Star Wars the Card Game. This week on their Web site they gave us a sneak peek at some of the gameplay mechanics, deck building concepts, and new artwork.

The Artwork - Looks fantastic! It's original, and not just more of the same screen shots rehashed into a game format, but also not a completely new re-imagining of the classic characters we all grew up with. Instead the images appear to be an artistic translation of well known images from the movies!

The Gameplay - Back in February FFG told us they were scrubbing the original game design entirely (which at the time was a co-op game, and had some similarities to their Lord of the Rings title). And scrub it they have. The game is now a 2-person head-to-head battle for control of the galaxy. The Empire is attempting to reinforce its hold on the galaxy, and essentially wait out the Rebels, by advancing the "Death Star Counter." Meanwhile the Rebels are trying to destroy 3 of the Empire's 5 objectives. They've also included a "new" system called "edge battles"—a battle mechanic that revolves around players secretly bidding cards face down and revealing them to see who gets first strike that turn. There will apparently be a fair amount of effects and abilities triggered during these edge battles to make things interesting.

Deck Building - This is by far the most innovative concept of the game. Players will build their "Command Deck" by selecting 10 (or more) objectives. Each objective has a set of 5 cards that come along with it, you set your objectives aside, and shuffle the 50 cards that came with them and there is your deck!

My Thoughts - I really like the artwork as I said earlier, I think the screen shot thing has been done to death (although, maybe not so much in this century), but choosing to not go solely on screen shots will allow for more creative freedom as the game grows and changes—we could even see characters, ships, and locations from the novels and other iterations of the Star Wars universe come into the game!

I don't know if I'm sold on the "edge battle" thing; when I first read it, it sounded all too familiar to me, and smacked of "Young Jedi," and, well, we don't need to go there again. I much prefer a game that's multi-player; a Living Card Game is typically a hefty investment, and I'd like to be able to play with more than one friend at a time if I'm going to dump some cash on the game. That being said, I'm glad they took the time to revamp the title,; I think a Star Wars rehash of the Lord of the Rings game would have been more of an annoyance, and shown some contempt toward us gamers.

The deck building concept seems really interesting to me. I think new gamers, or folks who haven't built a deck from the ground up, are going to be able to compete and not be overwhelmed right out of the gate. I also see deck building veterans getting super frustrated because they're going to be unable to jettison some unwanted fluff from their deck! It poses a challenge to both the green and grizzled.

Fantasy Flight still hasn't given a hard street date for the title; they are still saying that the release will be sometime in the 4th quarter of this year. I imagine they won't miss the Christmas rush, so I'm expecting it to hit shelves around Thanksgiving (hopefully sooner!).

You can read the news release on Fantasy Flights' Web site RIGHT HERE!

We always love to hear your thoughts on this type of thing! Are you excited for the game? Why? Why not? Sound off here and leave it in the comments!

Thanks for reading!

Mage Knight - These Aren't Your Big Brother's Clix!

by Jeremiah

In the year 2000, Wizkids hit the market with their debut to the "Clix" system with a miniatures game called Mage Knight; it was a hit. Spawning Mech Warrior and the still-popular Heroclix titles for the company. Several years and multiple expansions later, Wizkids decided to release Mage Knight 2.0 and deem every figure previously created null and void in tournament play. Exit Mage Knight as we know it, and the eventual demise of Wizkids.

Wizkids is back up and running, and really hitting some home runs as they slowly but surely reboot titles that were gaming staples for much of the first decade of the 21st century. Which brings me to this week's review: Mage Knight the board game.

The overview—Think 40K, D&D, MTG, and any LCG all mixed up together. It sounds schizophrenic, but it works. The base set comes with 4 characters that players choose from; you then embark on a scenario (1 of 11 included, or if you're daring you can create your own or scale up or down your own) and into a land that is revealed as you explore. Along the way you encounter baddies, keeps, monasteries, dungeons...well, you get the idea. Killing a monster, conquering a keep, exploring (adding a new tile to the board) etc, will earn you "fame' (Experience Points, the ultimate goal in most scenarios is to have the most fame) which allows you to level up, which gives you stronger stats, allows you to gain new skills, control more allies...sound familiar?

Here's where the game takes on a different spin, and becomes very intriguing. You control all of your actions through your "Deed" deck. You have 5 cards in your hand (you get a higher hand limit as you level up), and these cards dictate what you can do on your turn. There is no intricate time-based system to keep track of; there is no Dungeon Master telling you what you can or cannot do. There is a board that consists of tiles that are revealed as you explore, and your own deck of cards. You also cannot die—taking wounds doesn't take away hit points, it only fills your deck with wound cards that clutter up your hand and inhibit you from taking more actions on your turn. Play continues in turns and rounds. A day round followed by a night round and so on. Day and night rounds have different effects on traveling across certain terrain and your ability to see what a certain baddy is before you jump into battle with it.

The Mechanisms—They're actually fairly clean and easy to learn—on the other hand, the multitude of combat rules and special abilities for your foes can be a little much to swallow when you first jump in. Playing cards to do anything and everything is a unique twist on a game like this, and you can really come up with some great combos to accomplish a lot on your turn, but it takes some good base knowledge of the gaming system and the cards in your deck.

I really enjoyed this game, but be warned: If games such as Battlestar Galactica are a marathon to you, Mage Knight is an Iron Man race! The longest scenario included is estimated to be about 8+ hours! It's definitely geared for a multiple-sitting experience.

Beware—As with most games of this nature that take place in some sort of "fantasy realm" the use of darker magic and spell casting is highly prevalent. But there's no flavor text on the cards, so as the game is played it feels pretty innocuous. About two rounds into the game I was informed that my character was a "Blood Cultist." It didn't really have any effect on the game play or the cards in my hand; all the players have the same cards—only different amounts of certain ones. I happened to have a few more cards that were more aggressive in nature, but as I leveled up I could easily select skills and cards that were geared more for healing and being a nice guy. But if casting spells and fighting wizards in towers and such gives you pause, it's best to steer clear of this one.

All in all, it's a deep gaming experience, with nicely tuned mechanisms to help take out some of the randomness of most card-based systems. I'm hoping for expansions to come soon that will offer more characters that are of a less evil persuasion.

Thanks for reading!

A Review of Smash Up!

by Firestone You know what the world needs more of right now? Card games! Okay, Smash Up isn’t a deckbuilder, so I’ll give it a pass. What it is is a fast filler that has lots of room for expansion.

The game comes with eight different “factions”—a set of cards with a theme. There are pirates, ninjas, dinosaurs, aliens, zombies, wizards, tricksters, and robots. Each faction is very thematic and plays very differently. The ninjas can swoop in and exert influence at the last second, while the zombies can take things out of their discard pile. Basic stuff.

But where Smash Up is different is that you mix two of the factions, shuffle them up, and have a different combo each game. So you could have zombie pirates, or trickster dinosaurs, or alien robots. You get the best of each faction! Each faction has Action cards (that let you do cool stuff), and Minion cards (that exert influence and also do cool stuff).

The point of the game is to get to 15 victory points (VPs), and the way you (mostly) do that is by scoring Bases. The game comes with a slew of Bases, each with a unique name and special ability. So on one Base, each Minion there exerts +1 influence, or if you place a Minion on this base you can add another Minion to another base. Each Base has a different trigger number, and once the influence of all Minions there adds up to that trigger number, you score the Base. Generally, 1^st, 2^nd, and 3^rd place at a Base score, and the amount depends on the Base.

It's a pretty fun game, and a fast...ish filler with some neat combos. And I see that there’s lots of potential for expansions--and it’s put out by AEG, so YOU BETTER BELIEVE THERE WILL BE EXPANSIONS.

My biggest problem is that there's special text on the bases and all of the cards. So you spend a lot of time reading your own cards, reading your played cards out loud to the rest of the table, and reading other people's cards (and the base cards) already on the table. So what should have been a fast filler can be just a bit too long for what it is.

Also, some VP chits would have been nice.

Still, this is a fun game, and light enough that I could play it with my kids, or a youth group, or some nongamers. Check it out!

Thanks for reading!

When We Last Left Our Heroes...

It's been a busy week here following Gencon (which we didn't go to...). So once again we've wrapped up all of our posts from the week and put a pretty bow on them for you! Here they are! Monday we checked in with those who DID go to Gencon!

We also took a look at some exciting news coming from Fantasy Flight Games!

Jeremiah took a cheap shot at a kids game.

We discovered that Dominion was being digitized!

Jeremiah reviewed the audacious "We Didn't Playtest This At All!"

Firestone brought us some news about the new Resistance!

The Heartland Hauling Co. Hit its first stretch goal and we got to peek at their meeples!

And Jeremiah reviewed the spaghetti western card game BANG!

It's been a busy week, but a great one! Thanks so much for all of your support and for reading our little blog! We've got more reviews, news and an interview with Ben Rosset, designer of "Mars Needs Mechanics" coming at you next week! If there are any games you would like us to review, or find more news about feel free to leave 'em in the comments below! The weekend is coming, what games are you playing?!?

Bang! You're Dead

Review by Jeremiah

Today we're taking a look at the spaghetti western card game, Bang! Released in 2002, it's been augmented by several expansions, and now a third edition release has kept the franchise thriving. Some expansions can only be found in the "Bang the Bullet," which features the base set and all of the game's expansions in a nifty bullet shaped tin.

The game play is pretty simple: shoot everyone else (with "BANG!" cards), gain weapons to increase your range so you can shoot everyone at the table, and try to get a few defensive cards (Missed! cards), or hang onto some cards that will heal damage (we'll talk about those in a minute).

Where the game really thrives is in the intrigue and strategy department. Each player is randomly dealt a character and a role card. The character card gives the players a unique skill or ability that is theirs to use throughout the game.

The role card is kept secret (except for the Sheriff) and determines each player's course of action and goal for winning the game. The lawful (Sheriff and Deputies) win if they accomplish the task of killing all the Outlaws and the Renegade (the unlawful). The outlaws win by killing the sheriff, and the renegade wins by killing everyone. The trick to the Renegade, is that once the sheriff is killed, the game is over. So you have to kill off everyone else and essentially protect the sheriff until it's mano e mano. Since the role cards are kept secret (except the sheriff), there's lots of guessing, and blame-laying going on throughout the game.

Honestly, the Renegade, while most challenging, is probably my favorite role to play; you are the complete and total wild card at the table and if you play it right, you'll have the sheriff killing off deputies mid-game. Lot's of fun!

The game is designed for4-7 players so it's a great game for a larger group, and the play time is about 30 minutes (which in my book qualifies as a "quick play").

The clear and present danger of this game is that, especially with the full 7 players at the table, chances are someone will get killed—and therefore removed from the game—before they've even taken a single turn. This happens, and it's terrible (for the person who is out; everyone else seems to take a measure of twisted pleasure from the occasion). Then the 30 minutes no longer seems like a "quick play" but more like something I like to call "plotting vengeance time..."

Some things to consider when playing this game: Even when playing with my most "pious" of friends, the temptation to play a "BANG!" card, and blurt out some reference to a euphemism in western culture concerning what said player "did" to the other player by playing the "BANG!" card, is virtually irresistible. If you're going to play with teenagers, I suggest being in a mindset of complete self control. Don't even crack that door open with them, cause it will be game over well before the game is, well, over.

I mentioned cards that heal damage early; there are 2 types of cards that heal damage to characters, and one is the "Beer" card. Yep, have a nice cold one and you'll heal one hit point to your character. The other is the saloon—belly up to the saloon and the whole table gets healed one hit point. Some people change this to root beer to avoid promoting drinking. Your call.

The artwork on the cards is very cartoonish; there's nothing gory or distasteful about letting fly with your favorite six-shooter. And in the style of the spaghetti western, they've even gone so far as to put the card text into Italian underneath the English.

All in all, the game can be fun if the players really get into their roles and you're fortunate enough to survive the first time around the table.

As always thanks for reading, and if there are any games you'd like us to review, feel free to leave your requests in the comments!