This is a great way for the sheriff to win, and pretty much destroys the outlaws. You already spelled out the reason, the deputy is thrilled for everyone that isn't the sheriff to die. The renegade isn't exactly excited because they're dying too, hard to win a 1 v 1 vs the sheriff, which is already rigged in the Sheriff's favor, that way. Outlaws are even worse off, they don't want to be dying, and the friendly fire issues further weaken them. Frankly, both outlaws and renegade would rather not shoot at all, maybe even discarding potential bangs, then kill whoever starts hurting people first to get the deputy out of the way. It won't guarantee them the win, the Sheriff can win even without a deputy, as seen in 4 player games, but it gives them a fighting chance. Mass damage cards are not going to bring the sheriff to their knees, the sheriff can fend those off with their acquired resources. Keep in mind unlike everyone else, the Sheriff isn't being drained of those resources by natural combat, so they're much more likely to have the Beer/Bang/Missed to spare, and if the mass damage was really pressuring them, it's going to straight up be killing everyone else, who starts with fewer cards, health, and have been constantly spending it hurting each other on top of that.Drake Mallard wrote: ↑11 July 2026, 14:10 ... for the exact same reason: To avoid detection. And if the deputies are dead, then once the outlaws feel safe attacking the sheriff, there are fewer people to heal him/her. (I'm starting to think that my groups play Bang very differently than some others). In my experience, the meta-game looks like this: Everyone pretends to be a deputy at the beginning, while damaging everyone else "equally". If you're lucky, you get cards that damage all players. If not, you shoot your neighbors, and claim that you had no choice, because of range. People do make guesses, and their "equal" distribution of damage tends to skew slightly based on their role and their guesses about others ... but people avoid obvious signs as long as they can.
For deputies, this works, because the odds are good that you want to kill everyone that isn't the sheriff. For outlaws this works, because it softens up the deputies, and if you get all-target cards, you can soften up the sheriff without suspicion. For the renegade it works, because you want to soften up everyone. If anyone immediately attacks the sheriff, everyone knows they're an outlaw, so they get targeted by the deputies (and the Renegade, pretending to be a deputy).
If someone is a deputy, making them enemy #1 is often best as an outlaw or renegade, as it helps towards your goal. At time it an even be a kill on sight. The outlaws can hold back a bit more on the deputy and leave them as a renegade target, but either way they need the deputy taken care of enough to make sure they won't provide the sheriff too much support. They just have to make sure the deputy isn't hit so hard the renegade turns into deputy #2 to rebalance the scales. The main exception to this is in game counts with a stronger outlaw base like 6 player. If you want to pretend to be any character, best to pretend to be the renegade, as it's the only player no one actually wants as an enemy, since that gives the other side free resources. Sure, you want the renegade to lose, but you don't want to be the one to have to commit to it, as that turns the scales in the opponent's favor.
Even if the outlaws are going right after the sheriff, the renegade doesn't always have to intervene. They can instead open fire on the deputy, who is unable to really fight back as they're slowing down the outlaws. The Renegade can hold onto jails to slow down the outlaws if they seem to be getting too close to winning and see how the balance goes, even opening fire on the outlaws when needed.
The main trick is figuring out who really has the upper hand. Each team wants to lose somewhat less imposing to get less ire from their opponents and trick the renegade into over supporting them, or in the best-case scenarios get friendly fire incidents, which is a big reason outlaws want to avoid everyone randomly damaging each other since that tends to set this up for them. They'd rather have the sheriff lead the charge trying to pressure players and inadvertently get into a resource grind with the renegade or even shoot their own deputy. As the balance of the game shifts so too does how the renegade acts and how much players want to commit.