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

Infinite loopholes in Bang!

In my previous article posted on this blog, I have given some basic tips on what to do in a typical game of Bang!. I was PMed and asked what the first turn game-ending scenario was.
I appreciate the interest. I thought of replying, but then an idea came through my mind... let's write
a whole new article about this! There is only one first turn game ending scenario that guarantees the win  (if you draw what you need, you win, no matter what your opponents do) as far as I am aware, but Bang! also creates some other possible scenarios allowing you to draw infinite amount of cards and likely win the game afterwards.
While they are quite unlikely to occur, it is nonetheless good to be aware of their existence.
Let's see what kind of crazy combos can be pulled off!

A few honorable mentions

This article is about infinite loopholes. That is it. INFINITE. But there are so many other cool interactions and characters who simply do not make the cut because they are bound to eventually run out of cards.

Lee Van Kliff - This character is capable of a single massive game-decisive turn provided the correct cards, but it is by no means guaranteed or infinite. Anyway, he is really one of the greatest damage dealers in the entire Bang!. Sadly that is not good enough for today's list.

Chuck Wengam - His ability is one of the coolest and most unique abilities in the game. Voluntarily losing a life point to draw two cards allows him to do some crazy shit during his turn, especially when at full life. He can draw up to 8 cards a turn if he chooses to drop himself to a measly one life. Any Beer card might be then used as a Stagecoach, simply losing the regained life point again. Gold Rush further increases this potential with cards that restore health or reward you for losing life points. One way or another, the distribution of life refilling cards is too low for him to be even theoretically able of truly infinite combo. 

John Pain - He gets any card a player "draws" as long as he doesn't hold more than 6 cards in his hand. It is the limit of 6 cards maximum that prevents him from getting an infinite amount of cards using a teammate's Barrel in conjunction with Volcanic, Showdown and Blessing cards or the third true combo on this list.

Jose Delgado - Where those infinite combos offer fierceness, this character offers consistency. He literally draws 3 cards a turn in most cases. Sometimes it is only the previously nonexistent limitation to a 2 times per turn use of his ability that stops him from chaining it for incredible amount of cards drawn. Even as he is, he is a force to be reckoned with.

1.) Suzy Lafayette OTK

This combo is very well known, and is the only "true" possible first turn win I am aware of. Other than just getting lucky cards and somehow winning with say Willy the Kid and a bunch of Bang! cards. You need to have the Wild West Show expansion in play, but other than that, it can be done with the basic game only. The idea behind this is that you are the Sheriff and you character is Suzy Lafayette (note that Greygory Deck could do as well). In your opening hand and your two cards in Phase 1 of your turn, you need to get a Volcanic and at least one card that triggers the Wild West Show event deck. You hope to turn over the Showdown card, which says that any card may be played as Bang! and all Bang! cards may be played as Missed!. You put out the Volcanic and then use all your cards in your hand as Bang!. Then Suzy's ability triggers and you draw a card. That card counts as Bang! and you can play any number of them thanks to your Volcanic, essentially leading to you converting the whole deck into Bang! cards. Be careful not to play any Wells Fargo or Stagecoach you draw in the process using their actual effects. You must play them as a Bang! card in order to prevent the Wild West Show deck from changing effect again, as this would end your rampage! Now the bad thing is that unless you are playing a 4-player game, there is also a Deputy in play, so this combo doesn't really allow you to 100% win the game anymore, because killing the Deputy would cause you to discard the Volcanic as a penalty. This can be prevented if you are Greygory Deck and you manage to draw both Suzy Lafayette and Willy the Kid as your abilities for the round. Then you again need to get lucky and draw the Wells Fargo/Stagecoach in order to get the Showdown card on, but from here, you can just shoot everyone without worries, as Willy the Kid substitutes for the Volcanic and doesn't get discarded if you kill your own teammate, the Deputy. Good luck pulling this off, the chance to do so being about 0.165% for the default combo, depending at what sets of cards are you playing with and provided you have already drawn Suzy Lafayette to be your character.

Note that the Showdown card has been errated by the author of Bang!, Emiliano Sciarra, who stated that the correct text was meant to be "All cards may be played as Bang! cards. All Bang! cards must be played as Missed!". The combo is still pretty nice, but doesn't allow infinite Bang's anymore. But given the likelihood of this happening, I like to play the old wording just for fun and excitement that comes from even a hypothetical chance of this happening. :)

2.) High Noon/A Fistful of Cards loophole

This one is a bit of a mystery. Many people have tried to answer the question how to proceed when this actually happens. You need to have both the High Noon and Fistful of Card expansions in play. Now, at the beginning of the round, Sheriff simultaneously turns over the top card of each deck. If there is Blessing/Curse card and the Peyote card at the same time, it technically lets the Sheriff draw the whole deck. The former mentioned cards set the suit of all cards in the deck to Hearts, respectively Spades, for the duration of the round for all effects and purposes. Now what Peyote does is that it makes you guess the color of the top card in the deck instead of drawing cards in the Phase 1 of your turn as usual. If you guess right, you take the card in your hand and guess again, otherwise you go directly into the Phase 2 of your turn. But if the suit of any card is set to be Hearts/Spades, you can keep guessing until you eventually draw the whole deck! There might be a FAQ contradicting this and people usually have a house rule to limit this. My house rule in fact says that you must guess the ACTUAL colors on the cards, because this is not that unlikely of a combo and having a game end like this every now and then is quite unsatisfying IMHO. 

3.) Teren Kill "suicide"

Not only is Teren Kill inspired by a famous Italian actor we all love, but he also is a pretty cool and powerful character. What you maybe didn't know is that there is a combination of cards that allows him to draw the whole deck. You thought the Gag was included only for fun. But in fact, it is a rather unknown loophole enabler. Let me explain how it works. Teren Kill "draws!" each time he would be eliminated. On Spades, he dies. Otherwise he survives and draws a card from the deck. When Gag is in play, anyone who speaks loses 1 life point. So Teren Kill is now able to lose a life point infinite amount of times, therefore able to trigger his ability infinitely, provided he doesn't die. "But he might die!" you say? Add High Noon expansion and the Blessing card shown in the previous case. Now imagine what happens. Teren may trigger his ability infinitely and all cards are Hearts. "Draws" the card each time he would die and it is always a Heart so he always lives and gets to draw a card. Other players silently watch him as he draws the whole deck by talking or scream in agony and die. Either way, you better be talkative when doing this, as a meticulous opponent might demand you really say something each time you want to lose your last life point.

4.) Simeon Picos and Toys

The Gold Rush expansion brought some funny new mechanics and 8 new characters, Simeon Picos amongst them. This inconspicuous character takes a gold nugget each time he loses a life and lets you draw the entire deck using a complex combo of 4 specific cards. Those are the previously mentioned Gag, and three new equipment cards. Let's have a closer look at them. First one is the Lucky Charm, an equipment that costs 3 nuggets and does exactly the same thing as Simeon's ability - gets you a nugget for each life point you lose. The second card is Boots, which costs 3 nuggets and lets you draw a card each time you lose a life. With Gag active, you once again can lose a life point infinite amount of times. Once you have all those cards, you pretty much have the ability "Whenever you lose a life point, draw a card and take 2 gold nuggets."

The third and final equipment card is the Rucksack. It costs 3 nuggets and says "discard 2 nuggets to get 1 life point". So you once you have acquired all those cards (a total of 9 nuggets!), wait for the Gag to get into play, then say a word, lose a life point, get two nuggets and a card, then regain a life point for those two nuggets. This allows you to draw the entire deck. I have never seen this combo in an actual game and I doubt it will ever happen, but one never knows! 

5.) Greygory Deck

Greygory Deck has already been mentioned in this article. He randomly draws 2 characters from the basic game that are not in play and uses them both. This obviously allows him to pull off any combo Suzy Lafayette is capable of, provided he draws her as one of his characters. But there is more to him. Using Gold Rush expansion, he is capable of the most elaborate infinite combo I know of in Bang!. To achieve it, you need to have some previously mentioned equipment cards. Those are the Boots (costs 3 nuggets, whenever you lose a life point, draw a card) and the Lucky Charm (again costs 3, whenever you lose a life point, take a nugget). You also need to draw exactly Sid Ketchum and Bart Cassidy as your character abilities at the same time. On top of that, the Gag form Wild West Show expansion must be in play. Once all those conditions are achieved (and I doubt it will ever happen, but it is not impossible), you simply say a word, lose a life point, get a nugget and two cards, then discard two cards to regain a life point. Repeat until you have a lot of nuggets. Now you need 59 nuggets to be able to go through the whole equipment deck exactly once. As any card bought is immediately replaced by a new one, you now have infinite card draw (thanks to the Union Express card which lets you draw 4 cards), and you can use any brown-bordered card in the GR deck any number of times. In other words, you most likely win. 

The bottom line is that while this is cool, if you intend to draw the entire deck, this can be quite demanding. As I said, you need 59 nuggets to cycle through the Gold Rush deck once. This lets you draw 6 cards. The playing deck has 80, 120 or 135 cards by default. You need to cycle through the Gold Rush deck 13, 20 or respectively 23 times to draw the whole deck. That requires from 767 to 1357 nuggets. Maybe it will be better if everyone just mutually proclaims you the winner.

Summary

Those are some crazy things up there. No doubt about that. Period. What I want to mention though, is whether I think this is good for a game. I have played Magic for quite some time. In Magic, there is currently about 20 000 cards in the game, some of them reprints of older cards or essentially reprints. It comes as no surprise that there are many infinite combos in the game, actually allowing whole decks to be build around those. It probably makes people think it is pay to win or noninteractive and there have been so-called banlists filled with cards enabling some combinations considered unfair or overpowered. I personally do not appreciate existing cards getting banned from the player's perspective, but given the sheer number of cards they have to take into account when designing a new card, I guess it is acceptable every now and then. Now you clearly do not want to buy a non-collectible card game and straight out of the box remove some cards, because they enable some kind of a combo. And as you can see, those combos exist in Bang!. Those are a problem in many games, most notably Magic or other TCGs. Is it a problem in Bang!? I would say no. In fact, the existence of those combinations is in my opinion beneficial to the game in this particular case, as it adds something very difficult to achieve, yet not impossible. You cannot build your deck around the combo, you cannot really do too much to increase the odds of pulling it off. For that reason I am glad to have them included in the game. I am curious what do you have to say about this.

Hope you like those. Let me know what crazy combos do you know about and what infinite loopholes occurred to you while playing!

Basic strategy tips for Bang!

As promised, here is the first and the most basic guide on how to play Bang! the card game.
Before we begin, remember these are my opinions based upon my personal experience with the gameplay. I have played numerous games, but you might have a different playstyle and you will almost certainly play against different people. Also remember that point of the game is to have fun in the first place, winning should almost always come in the second.

First of all, let's answer the most immediate question that you think of.
Why bother to come up with strategy for such a purely luck-based game?
For some people it is fun to try to find the "optimal" way to play the game. That is my case, for example. I know it is a very relaxed game with a lot of luck involved, but there are many seemingly minor decisions that separate the "bad" players from the good ones (or the ones focusing on playing the game in some cases :D ). The second possible answer to the question is that some people simply are competitive and believe it or not, there used to be actual tournaments in Bang! and I think some are still around. Anyway, here are the absolutely basic strategic tips:

When choosing a character, consider your hidden role
This one seems really obvious, but some people forget it and end up with a bad character for what they should be aiming for in the game. The most obvious example would be the Renegade. Imagine you are presented with a choice. You are dealt two characters, the first one being Sid Ketchum, the second one being Slab the Killer. The obvious pick especially for the newer players would probably be the latter, but remember your objective! Your goal is to survive until there is only you and the Sheriff left. At this point of the game, the Beer cards played have no effect, making it quite difficult to regain your lost life points. Sid Ketchum has the ability to convert 2 card from your hand into regaining a life point, making him a solid renegade and giving him more survivability, whereas Slab the Killer only offers good offensive potential.

Now imagine the same situation again, but this time your role is an Outlaw. Your ultimate goal in the game is no longer to survive (well, you still want to survive, but it is not necessary for you to win), but to kill the Sheriff. In this case, strong offensive ability might come in handy, probably making it the better choice. Ideally, you want to survive and win, but both isn't always achievable at the same time. Generally you do not need to do both if you are a Deputy or an Outlaw. You essentially must survive as a Renegade in order to win, but there are few possible tricks you can do with the expansions that let you come back and win. As a Sheriff, you have no choice but to live or lose.
No matter what your role is, always consider which of the two characters synergizes with your goal. Some characters might be powerful enough for you to choose them over a character better suited for your role, but sticking to this rule might help you decide those close calls.

Do not bluff beyond reason
Yes, it can be done. While it is a good idea to be deceptive, if you are a Deputy and make the Sheriff kill you, you are doing something wrong. There is nothing wrong with playing Gatling and making the Sheriff lose a life point, but if you shoot him with you Bang! card right after that, not only he might suspect you are an Outlaw, he might even kill you and lose his Deputy and all his cards! Talk people into making bad decisions or things that help your side, but remember that actions (or bullets) speak louder than words.

An example of this might be when you are a dying Outlaw and you have 1-2 life points left. There is a reward of 3 cards for killing an Outlaw and you clearly do not intend to give those cards to the Sheriff. Now let's presume it is the Sheriff's turn. What you might want to try if there is at least one Deputy left  is talking him into not taking the risk of killing you, because you might very well be the Deputy (assuming you aren't obviously an Outlaw, who shot at him multiple times). Do not be afraid of telling him that you are fine with dying to anyone else and your goal is to prevent the Sheriff from discarding all his cards as a penalty for killing his Deputy. If he doesn't shoot you, either heal yourself or (if your chances of survival are low) unload all you have, try to damage the Sheriff, and hope for the best, which actually might be one of your teammates killing you and getting the reward. But if you keep up to your promise in the previous situation and start shooting anyone else but the Sheriff, chances are you will end up shooting your teammates and wasting your already limited resources, therefore bluffing beyond reason. It might temporarily be an acceptable strategy, but if you stick with this for too long, you are more likely decreasing your chance to win.

Pay attention to the game
Most players have already found themselves in a position similar to the one I am about to describe at some point. During the game, the General Store is played, each player chooses a card and then the player whose turn it is says "it's your turn now" towards you. You have a single Duel card in your hand, which you picked from the cards offered and you draw two pretty useless weapon cards. Your opponent you want to target with the Duel has only a single card in his hand, but you do not really want to lose a hitpoint. If you could only look at his card! But if you paid attention, you would know that the card left in his hand was a Missed! card he picked up from the General Store. Simple awareness can potentially let you "see" some cards in your opponent's hand.

Be realistic
Learn to know which cards seems great and which card should you really steal with you Cat Balou or Panic! cards. While taking your opponent's Barrel seems fine, even more if he has been lucky and he has drawn hearts twice in a row now, taking away his weapon might be more important, because he then perhaps won't be able to shoot you, while you can fire on him and this advantage came at the price of him keeping the approximate 25% chance to avoid your shots.

Another great example of this is when General Store comes in play. You are presented with a choice of either picking the Volcanic or one of a couple of Bang! cards. Everyone knows how powerful the Volcanic can be. But let's say you have no Bang! cards in your hand. The Volcanic is a completely worthless card to you in that situation and you should only choose it over a Bang! card if you want to deny it to the other players, because it almost always has no immediate benefit for you in that given position.

Use your ability
I have seen people forget about their character's unique ability countless times over and over again.
It is what makes every game different and also what gives you something specific only you can do.
This is not a strategic tip but rather a friendly reminder, that with the sole exception of Big Spencer (and possibly Bill Noface), no character ability in the game has a strictly negative effect for the player on its own. Never forget this and see what you can do with your ability. Sometimes, the options are almost unlimited, some characters being even capable of ending the game in the first turn (albeit just theoretically).

Keep those tips in mind during your next game of Bang!. I hope you will find them helpful, feel free to comment and share your results. The next time I will bring you some more tips and also add some not so obvious or maybe slightly more difficult things to do.