Don't Play iPad Lah! Play "Bang!" The Dice Game

Date:  Apr 4, 2015

Whenever your kids started to “ask” for iPhone, iPads or any equivalent electronics smart gadgets, you should probably put a stop to it.  

So, buy some board games for them to play.

By now, you should know that I am a geek.

So Geek Dad should buy board games and play with his geek sons.  Hahahahahahahaha

Me and the kids started a new game yesterday.  It’s called “Bang! The Dice Game”.

Although it says it’s for 8+ years old.  Kay Kay who is 6 years old can play it.

It is a game that required minimum of 3 people.

If you have four it is better.  The game will not end so soon.

It says 15 minutes, but you can end the game very fast.

It is a dice game.  Kids love to roll the dices.

Let’s do a quick demo of a 3 person games.  Playing 4 players or more should be more fun.  But it is still fun at 3 players level.

There are two different decks of cards.  The role cards and the character cards.

For 3 players game, you only need to pick out the Deputy, the Renegade, and the Outlaw card.  So, it is easy.  shuffle the 3 cards and each of the player will get his turn to choose their role.

So in the following example, Kay Kay got the Deputy card, and Jay Jay got the Renegade card, and I am the Outlaw.

So, for 3 person special rule:  Deputy must kill the Renegade, Renegade must kill the Outlaw, and Outlaw must eliminate the Deputy in order to win.  The first role who accomplished the task, he shall win.

But in the case that if Deputy got killed by Renegade instead of Outlaw, Renegade did not win the game, and the remaining players, Outlaw and Renegade must try to stay alive in order to win.

So, why would that happened?  If you are in a situation where for example, outlaw almost get the deputy killed and win, so to ensure you still have a chance to win the game, renegade must kill the Deputy first, so that he can have a final duel with the outlaw.  If Outlaw successfully killed the deputy, he wins the game for that round.

So, the fun part of the game for example for a Deputy is, you not only need to keep killing the Renegade, you also need to watch out whether renegade will be killing the outlaw before you manage to kill him.  So, there is a bit of strategies involved and it is easier for the kids to understand.

To setup the game, each player will need to draw from the Character cards and choose one of the character.

Each character will have their LIFE indicated on the card, so, you draw the bullets from the centre pile and put there to indicate your life points.  

Thru out the game, you will start loosing these bullets, that means, your life is going to be terminated if you lost all the bullets.

This is the centre pile where you keep all the bullet life and the Indian’s arrows there.

There are 16 characters cards.

For example, Jay Jay drew the “vulture Sam” card.

He has 9 lives.

And each character card is unique in such a way that they have SPECIAL ABILITY or SPECIAL POWER.

For example, the Vulture Sam has the power of “Each time another player is eliminated, you gain two life points."

Take note, one cannot have more life than the total life indicated on your character card.

This is what Kay Kay has.  He is "Willy the Kid”.

He has only 8 lives.

And he only need two gatling guns dice to use the gatling gun.

Wow!  Gatling gun is one of the face on the dice, if you roll 3 of them, all the players except you lose 1 life.

But if you are Willy the kid, you only need to roll 2 gatling and kill 1 life from the rest of the people.

There are 16 characters card.

Here are all the characters.

In this example, I am Suzy Lafayette.

I have 8 Lives.

And my special ability is, if I roll all the 5 dices and without any “1” or “2” target face.  I can add 2 lives back.

The special ability is fun.  So, every time you will have different kind of game flavour with different characters involved.

This is a dice game.  So, you played with the dice.

The mechanics of the game is, that you can have up to 3 rounds to re-roll the dices you want to re-roll.

With an exception:  You cannot re-roll a dynamite. 

Dice has 6 faces. 

So, you have all these 6 sides and their effect if you row them.

The whole game is about getting your opponent killed.  So, you want to sent him as many bullets as possible.

In a 3-players game, the 1 or 2 target face has no meaning.  If you get a “1", the player on your left or right loses 1 life point.

If you get “2”, the player two places from you will lose 1 life point too.

So, I have decided to modify the rule in such a way that you can only go ONE DIRECTION.  So, that, it is either the first player on your left or the 2nd player from your left die.

That will make the game more interesting.

Now, if you roll a beer, you can heal yourself or another player.  You get 1 bullet life point back.

If you roll dynamite, you cannot re-roll this dice.  If you have 3 dynamites, you lose 1 life point.  If you only roll 2 dynamites, nothing happen.

You need to roll 3 gatling guns to kill every one else by 1 life point.  If you only roll 2 gatling gun, nothing happen.  unless you have Willy the Kid card.

Arrow is the interesting one.  You want to re-roll the arrow dice and hope you don’t get arrow.  Even you get arrow it does not matter.  But you must make sure you don’t get the last arrow.  If you get the last arrow, the Indian will attack with their arrows and every one will lost their life == to the arrow they have.  If your life points is less than the arrow, you are immediately eliminated.

The game is easy.  So, let’s play one round and see.

Kay Kay is the Deputy, so, he starts first.

He rolls the following.

So, he cannot re-roll the dynamite.  So, he has to keep it.  And he wants to re-roll the beer and the arrow.

Oh dear, Kay Kay rolls another dynamite and now he has 2 dynamites in hand.  And he decided not to roll any more.  Because scare of rolling the third dynamite.

He is the deputy, and he got two “2” shots, and he can kill the Renegade.

So Renegade loses 2 life points.  Two bullets was removed and put in the centre pile.

Because he got 1 arrow, so, he take 1 arrow from the centre pile.  It is early in the game, so don’t worry.  You can take the arrow if you want.

And 2 dynamites has no impact.

Kay Kay round ended.

Jay Jay after roll and re-roll, he rolled 4 arrows.  So unlucky.  And he got one chance to shoot the bullet.

This is bad.  He got to get rid of the bullet or make sure at the end of the 9th arrow, he has enough life to take these 4 arrows.

So, the renegade gets 4 arrows.

And Jay removed one bullet from the Outlaw.

Because I rolled a beer, So, I heal back myself by 1 life.

And I have two “1” so, I take out 2 bullets from the Deputy whom I suppose to kill.

So, we continue to roll dice and re-roll those unwanted dices.  Kay rolled two arrows.

So, he gets another two arrows.

One time, Jay rolled two “1” and two “2".  

So, as an outlaw, I removed 4 life points.

Bad luck, I rolled 4 dynamites.  so, I lost 1 life point.

Kay Kay doing well.  He keep shooting the renegade.  And at the same time heal himself.  He has 3 arrows in hand, but still have 6 lives left.  So. he is doing fine.

So, you lost some points, you heal yourself, you get arrows, and the game goes on.

Some one took the 9th arrow.  So, the renegade loses the game because he has 5 arrows.  The Indian shoot 5 arrows, and he is killed immediately.  

Now, the game has not completed yet, because, it is the Indian who killed the Renegade not the Deputy.  So, now, both Deputy will need to continue to play each other until the one guy falls.

It is a very fast pace game.

We like it.

It takes about 5-10 minutes for 3 players game. 

And I know a lot of killing, but hey, no real blood involved, only Fun!

And like this, we can spent half an hour to 1 hour playing the games.

The kids will stay away from the electronics and their eyes are saved.

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