INTRODUCTION
In a world where technology has taken precedence over everything we do, board and card games have started becoming things of the past. Even poker cards now remain a thing of casinos as such there are such things as internet poker and internet gambling.
Such a formal greeting, i feel like i am writing some technical report on the situation of the world.
Anyway today we shall talk about bang!, and for the uninformed this is a atypical board game that can be played from 4-7 players or 3-8 players using the expansion pack. EXPANSION PACK?!?! you mean like starcraft broodwars? Yes that is what i mean. Board/card games in today's time even have expansion packs to add depth and a bit of variety to the game.
So basically for this game, you take a role of a specific character with specific special abilities and you use cards to either arm yourself better, defence yourself better and attack the enemies. There are 4 roles to be played in the game, the sheriff, deputies, outlaws and renegade. The sheriff must kill the outlaws and renegades, the deputies are to help the sheriff, the outlaws are to kill the sheriff and the renegade must do everything and anything to ensure that he is the last man standing to win.
The catch is that, only the sheriff role is revealed and the rest can only guess who they are playing from the actions they take in game, the lies/truths they speak, and the targets they attack in the game.
Heres a few pictures of the characters in the game, for more info just search out the game online.
So the blue edged permanent cards are the equipment to help u hit people or hide from people while character cards have abilities like that, which makes every game different for your play style depending on what character you have. So for characters like Calamity Janet she can be defensive or offensive and will keep many missed and bang cards, while for people like 
you will try to get rid of all the cards as soon as possible to make full use of your skills.
So why play cards compared with other forms of entertainment?
For games like bang! you can easily squeeze out hours and hours of uninterrupted playing pleasure with people who are right there. This is different from computer games. First of all, for games you need to have the equipment and the game, and the price for playing 5 people can easily reach above 10000 bucks if you want people to play high resolution graphics. Bang costs about 50 dollars or even l
Another reason is that not everyone wants to play computer games especially the ladies. But they are much more willing to play these card games and some seem to really enjoy these kind of games. So they are much more easy to get people into as compared to other forms of games and they do not need too much time to learn.
Also there is no need for any particular places for playing, all you need is the game and a table and you are set for many hours of fun. There is alot of chances to communicate and chat and know each other better and this is probably the best reason to play card/board games. In fact many of these card games encourage interaction and chatting whether to roleplay and get into the mood of the game or to trick and cheat people for the purpose of winning.
Now for the review proper.
Accessibility
From my experience of teaching my friends from scratch how to play the game, it takes about one game to understand the essence of the game, and in 3 games most people already know how to play by themselves, by 5 games they would already have thought of the intricacies of the game and are able to play very well with respect to their roles and their characters that they have picked. So this is a really easy game to pick and play.
The expansion set however adds a bit more complexity to the game and makes it a bit more difficult to learn. For casual first time playing its recommended to just stick to the normal deck and only when everyone is more used to it then move on to the expansion cards. For us we use the expansion characters but not the playing cards.
Along with accessibility, we can have up to 8 people playing the game if there is the expansion and even 3 people it is still reasonably fun. So this is a very big plus point as there are many games that cannot be played with more then 4 players while there are other games that are abysmally boring with 3 players.
Fun Factor
The game as many points to derive from, deceiving your friends, helping your boss, cheating both sides as a renegade, begging for people to spare you, seeing the sheriff kill his own deputy. So all in all when we played this game in school we couldnt really stop when we wanted to. So thats testament to how fun the game is, or maybe how fun it was playing with the people. Either way i trust that this experience won't be confined to only us so i do think this is a fun game to pick up and play.
Also in this game, because people can attack you, you will not really be sitting there and doing anything while waiting for your turn. So there is better immersion then other games where you just play your turn and slack while waiting for your next turn again.
Replay-ability
There is a lot of replay-ability in this game due to the fact that there are over 20 characters to choose from, and yet there are 4 different roles. So on your side there are 80 different combinations of how you could play the game in the very first place. This is unlike games like poker where there is only one way to play like monopoly because there is no change in the objective that adds to the diversity.
Add to it the expansions we do have a game that is pretty lasting and can be played again and again.
Time needed
There are games that end in 5 mins, there are games that require 1 hour to play. Bang can take anywhere between 15 to 20 minutes for a reasonably sized game to be played and hence easier to learn and to play. It is also relatively easy to set up and play as there are no boards needed and just cards. So this game scores high on this criteria
Cost
The set of Bang! costs about 40-60 SGD depending on where you get it from. The expansions cost about 40 SGD. You can get a fullset plus expansion plus some additional cards from about 80SGD from the internet. Hence I would say it is reasonably priced and you probably will get enough BANG! for your buck. Pun intended.
SUMMARY
Hence here are the scores for Bang!
Accessability : 4.5 (Quick to pick up and can play pretty masterfully after a few games)
Fun Factor : 4.5 (Fun social game that is not too complex, large range for number of players possible)
Replay-ability : 4 (Good permutations and combinations to provide new experiences everytime the game is played)
Time needed : 4.5 (Very comfortable time for a board game)
Cost : 4 (Reasonable price, only difficulty is its hard to obtain from your average shop)
Overall : 4.3 (A game that you will probably like the moment you try it. Recommend everyone to give it a try either at your board games cafe or at your friends place any chance you have.)
As usual if you have other board games that should be checked out please post in the comments : D
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