FIELDNOTES: "Coffee"

"Need a lil' extra boost cowboy? No worries, we've got you covered."

COFFEE

"At the end of this turn, you do not discard cards".

Suit: 5 of Hearts

Originally, the idea of COFFEE was to be a delayed life gain card, as most beverages play the role of healing in BANG!. Green-bordered cards would make the most sense but it just wasn't interesting or different enough for me. I thought about a steaming kettle of coffee: a drink that you prepare and wait for. Integrating this with the load mechanic of orange-bordered cards, I landed on "push your luck" mechanics: for every turn this card is in front of you, add a load token and when ready, you can remove X amount of load tokens to gain X amount of lives. I played with variations of this for weeks until it proved too complicated or difficult to convey within the game's existing mechanics.

Rule #1: If the card's ability text cannot fit in 3 sentences, it is too complicated.

Eventually, I came back to the thematic drawing board and shifted from the concept of "delayed healing" to "energizing power up". What could you do if you were super-energized? What in game rules could you breach? Maybe you could shoot more BANG!s? Maybe you could play an additional turn? Maybe you could hold more cards?

It did feel a bit wrong that a beverage didn't heal you so the last mechanic I considered was, in addition to retaining all the cards in your hand, "draw!": on Spades/Clubs you regain a life. At the end, I felt it detracted too much from the card's core function and proved unnecessary. Who knows, I may adjust it in a future update if its current ability proves too impotent. Until then, gather 'round: the COFFEE is ready!

Experience new game mechanics with effects and interactions never before seen! FRONTIER releases in Fall 2025.