The Good, The Bad, and the Munchkin

Oh, give me a home where the Jackalopes roam
And the Dudes and the Buckaroos play,
I'll slay and I'll loot, give the monsters the boot,
And the dice are not loaded, no way.

As discussed in an earlier post, my gaming group took a brief respite from chasing zombies camels and extra-dimensional pirates and turned instead to whiskey and cards.  Western card games, that is.  After a very satisfying turn at the Spaghetti Western card game BANG!, we turned to the wild west version of the Munchkin series, The Good, The Bad, and the Munchkin.

Munchkin is a long series of card games that take the basic premise of Dungeons and Dragons and boiled it down to its basest components- kick in doors, kill monsters, steal loot.  Newer versions of the game take players through different genres, including spy movies, sci-fi, Cthulhu, and now the Western. 

In this game players take turns kicking in saloon doors, and either picking up stray gear, sidekicks, and mounts (like a seven-gun, old prospector, and giant riding cat) or shooting it out with a variety of crazy monsters and gunhands (such as the vampiric “Bat Masterson”).  The first time that I played The Good, The Bad, and the Munchkin my wife kicked my ass with a half Dude / half Indian carrying her grandpappy's bow, wearing a ten gallon hat, a twenty gallon hat on top of that, and moccasins of silence. 

Examples of the fun artwork in the game

I hope you liked the “Bat” Masterson joke, because that level of humor is laced throughout the game.  There is barely enough time to laugh at the joke, because the complex rules around backstabbing and double dealing your fellow players take up a lot of your attention.  Games can drag out, particularly if you have a group accustomed to treachery, as you constantly betray one another to end up on top.  Kind of like The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, now that I think of it.

A typical hand- this is why the game gets so complex

Fortunately, no guns were drawn at our game

The Good, The Bad, and the Munchkin was fun, just not nearly as fun as I thought it would be.  When we talk about going back to card games occasionally, we always talk about BANG!, and rarely talk about this one.

BANG!- Spaghetti Western in the Cards

Recently my group of gamer friends took a break from slaying dragons and cultists to spend a night in my favorite realm, the Mythic West.  Over a pot of Texas chili and a bottle of whiskey we tried out a pair of western themed card game, including the Spaghetti Western influenced BANG!

BANG! is played with anywhere from four to eight player, with one Sheriff, one Renegade, and a whole lot of Outlaws.  Everyone knows who the Sheriff is, but like a good Spaghetti western everyone else’s true motivations are a mystery to the end.  From the deck, players build hands with cards like horses, guns, lit dynamite, and of course many, many flying bullets. 

I managed to win the first game of the night as one of the Outlaws.  After the Sheriff sent over a dance hall girl to steal my supplies I stirred up an Indian attack against the town, then plugged the Sheriff while he was down.  Even hiding in a rain barrel couldn’t keep him safe from my Scholfield. During the next game the new Sheriff played it like Virgil Cole and came out gunning for me, throwing lead like opening the gunfight in Open Range.

For a card game, BANG! is very evocative, and it is easy to imagine every hand of the game being part of a movie.  BANG! is a fairly simply game, but it is an extraordinarily fun game.

"The Outlaws hunt the Sheriff. The Sheriff hunts the Outlaws. The Renegade plots secretly, ready to take one side or the other. Bullets fly. Who among the gunmen is a Deputy, ready to sacrifice himself for the Sheriff? And who is a merciless Outlaw, willing to kill him? If you want to find out, just draw (your cards)!"

Card night in New England