BANG! MTG Variation
The Kitchen Table forum
Posted on Aug. 21, 2014, 1:35 p.m. by Gidgetimer
For those who don't know of it this variation is based off of the card game BANG!. In it each player is randomly assigned a role in secret and their win condition is determined by their role.
King(1): The only player whose role is revealed. The King wins when all Assassins and the Traitor have been eliminated.
Guard(0+): The Guards win when all Assassins and the Traitor have been eliminated.
Traitor(1): The Traitor wins when they are the only one alive.
Assassins(2+): The Assassins win when the king is eliminated and there is at least one Assassin alive.
A minimum of 4 people are required to play this variant and it accommodates any number. For each person above 4 you alternate adding a Guard and an Assassin starting with the Guard.
I am interested in possibly getting my playgroup to try this variation and wanted to get people's opinions on it and what format is best suited to it.
HorrorAvengers says... #3
I love this variant. I've always reverred to it as assassin or mafia (based off of the game mafia) but the same concept. It's extremely fun, especially being the traitor or the king.
August 21, 2014 2:27 p.m.
Gidgetimer says... #4
What format do you usually make the game? EDH seems fun but I would be a bit worried about boards getting insane due to there being incentives to not do anything until you can make a decisive move.
August 21, 2014 2:43 p.m.
HorrorAvengers says... #5
EDH is what we usually use, just becasue EDH is the only format everybody in my group has a deck for. We haven't played in a while cause a couple of our decks coughcoughshamelessself-promotingThe Path of Progress; Now without Maros!cough started getting too much better then the other decks at the table. I'm working on a ruric thar deck now, that should be a fun one if I get to be king.
August 21, 2014 2:59 p.m.
That sounds totally awesome.
But how am I supposed to gather 8 humans interested in playing magic?
August 21, 2014 4:01 p.m.
Oh wait, I totally misread that...
I thought one four player team, containing one player of each type, plays against another team of four.
August 21, 2014 4:06 p.m.
Gidgetimer says... #9
Nope, 4 total people.
I really want to try this, I'm glad to hear that EDH works since that is the format I have the most decks in. When I play 60 card I usually borrow decks for anything past a few games. (I'm primarily a Diversity Gamer Timmy which is why you will sometimes see me get a little irritated that people think all Timmies are Power Gamer Timmy.)
August 21, 2014 4:21 p.m.
Colten_Lee says... #10
Am I understanding it correctly, that multiple people can win this at a time??
August 21, 2014 4:34 p.m.
ryuzaki32667 says... #11
Diffinitly a fun format, my group has a in house rules against combo or mass land destruction, and sweepers, kinda forcing us all to play midrangey edh decks. But it works well for this format. I also like how it discards the politics portion of edh and giving goals to win instead of make everyone made by the end of the game.
August 21, 2014 4:38 p.m.
Gidgetimer says... #13
Yes, the King and all Guards win in one scenario.
The Assassins win in a second.
The Traitor is the only one that wins individually.
Because groups win together it is possible for a player who has been eliminated to win. A Guard who has been eliminated still wins if the only people alive are the King and other Guards. An Assassin who threw everything he had at the king to get his shields down still wins if another Assassin kills the king.
Thinking about how this works you may need to add a limited range of influence rule to larger games to prevent the king from getting zerged down. Again I haven't played but it seems with anything over 7 players a limited range of influence would be a good idea.
August 21, 2014 4:54 p.m.
Well, it's in the guards best interest to protect the king, as he is a natural ally to them (they don't interfere as wincons).
The traitor has the most intriguing role to me. The player has to support the king atleast sometimes, because he needs the assassins to lose first. The traitor cannot help the King and the guard to completely destroy the assassins though, or else he would find himself in a potential 2+ vs 1.
August 21, 2014 5:56 p.m.
Gidgetimer says... #16
Yeah the traitor has the most complex role. He has to kill the Assassins, after that though in a game with 0 guards left (be that 0 starting or all the others are dead) the king knows who he is. In a game with 1 Guard left the Guard knows who he is. In a game with 2+ guards left no one knows who he is. So there is the intrigue of trying to get the King to kill off his Guards out of suspicion and get the Guards to kill each other.
It might be a fun format to get rid of the Assassins all together and just have King, Traitor, and Guards. Just skipping the most straight forward phase and going for straight up intrigue. Looks like we may have thought tanked a new format "Intrigue".
August 21, 2014 6:14 p.m.
We've played this with 7 and it's fun. In Bang! there's a penalty when the sherif kills a deputy; if anyone plays like this, what is your penalty?
August 21, 2014 8:05 p.m.
HorrorAvengers says... #18
you lose your only ally. Everybody else is trying to kill you
August 21, 2014 8:36 p.m.
Omg, what an amazing idea. We've played magic at work for years until we switched to magic a couple of months ago. You could also introduce something to increase your range of influence like the guns in BANG. I'll definitely try and get the lads at work to give this a try and post back with any ideas we come up with.
August 25, 2014 5:54 p.m.
Some thoughts:
Range of influence == number of creatures you control
If you kill a outlaw (assassin) you take control of what they currently have out on the battlefield (I'd also suggest their hand, as with BANG, but the coloured mana costs would make that pointless). This would keep alive the mechanic of outlaws killing other outlaws for the benefit of what they would take control of for the team purpose of killing the sheriff.
The Sheriff (King) should start on an increased life total to account for him getting battered by multiple outlaws (assassins), maybe 30.
August 26, 2014 4:46 a.m.
LordoftheReal says... #21
Love the concept, keep sharpening it, I'll see what I can do to contribute!
The_Raven says... #2
Wow, this looks fun!
The best is probaly EDH. Maybe Mordern.
What if there is comboes? How does that affect the game?
And are you just plying a regular game of magic, with these win cons?
August 21, 2014 2:08 p.m.