Play Le Bandit Hold & Win For Real Prizes
Le Bandit Hold & Win Review
Smokey the raccoon has been Hacksaw’s most reliable employee for two years, and this time the studio has put him in a game that plays nothing like the one that made him famous. Le Bandit Hold & Win is a coin collector squeezed onto a 3×3 grid, and the regular symbols are almost beside the point. What matters is the coins, carrying cash values from 0.2x up to 50x, four jackpot markers running from a 5x Mini to a 2,500x Grand, and the clovers, which multiply everything collected at up to x20 each and compound with each other rather than adding up. That is the only reason a game this small can reach 2,500x at all.
That makes this a Hold & Win game wearing a Le Bandit costume rather than a sequel to one. The original runs a six reel cluster engine that several of Hacksaw Gaming‘s other hits are built from, and none of it survives the move. What carries over is the raccoon and the rainbows, which is to say the marketing. Structurally, it sits closer to Tres Pinatas Hold & Win, twelve days its senior, than to anything in Smokey’s own catalogue.
The name is doing the work of getting players through the door. The verdict deals with what they find inside.
Pros
- Clover multipliers are multiplicative, not additive, running from x2 to x20 and applying to every coin and every activated pot of gold at the end of the round. Two good clovers on one board is where the real money is.
- The pot of gold clears collected coins off the grid as it banks their value, and it collects other activated pots too, so a strong round keeps making room for itself instead of clogging up.
- Coins and jackpot markers can land in the base game, not just in the bonus, so all four jackpots including the 2,500x Grand are live from the first spin.
- Lives refill to three every time a coin, marker, pot or clover lands, so a hot board extends itself rather than running out on a fixed count. Rainbow Epic Drop guarantees a full grid of special symbols from the start, with at least one coin and one pot of gold included, and every coin wort
- Rainbow Epic Drop guarantees a full grid of special symbols from the start, with at least one coin and one pot of gold included, and every coin worth a minimum of 1x.
Cons
- Nothing here is unique to this game. Hacksaw built its reputation on signature mechanics, and coins, jackpot markers, a collect symbol and a multiplier are the standard furniture of every Hold & Win slot on the market. Take the raccoon off the reels and there is no way to tell whose game this is.
- The regular paytable is close to pointless. Three of a kind pays 0.2x for the K and the A, and only 3x for the top hat, so ordinary line wins never amount to anything.
- Only one pot of gold can land per spin, and clovers only land when coins are already on the grid, so the two symbols that actually generate big rounds are both rationed.
- Dead symbols exist purely to fill the grid and pay nothing, which on nine positions means a lot of rounds die holding two coins and a fish bone.
- It caps at a quarter of the original Le Bandit's 10,000x on a fraction of the board, which is a hard sell for anyone arriving from that game.
Gameplay
Medium volatility on the panel, though both bonus buys are labeled high volatility in the game itself, which tells you where the swings actually live. Nine fixed paylines pay left to right across three reels and three rows, and the regular paytable is filler: 0.2x for three K or A symbols, 3x for three top hats. The coins carry the game instead. Three or more coins or jackpot markers pay wherever they land, in the base game as well as the bonus, and the four jackpots run 5x, 25x, 250x, and 2,500x.
One rainbow scatter opens Rainbow Fortune Hold & Win, an epic rainbow opens Rainbow Epic Drop, and both give you three lives that refill to three every time something sticks. Inside a round, only coins, markers, pots of gold, clovers, and dead symbols can land. Clovers multiply every collected value at the end of the round and multiply each other; pots of gold bank the coins and clear them off the grid; and a full grid pays out and resets so the round can keep going.
How To Play
- Set your stake anywhere between $0.05 and $400 a spin. All nine paylines are fixed, so stake is the only setting to change.
- Wins pay left to right from the leftmost reel, three of a kind on a grid this size.
- Land one rainbow scatter in the base game to trigger Rainbow Fortune Hold & Win.
- Land one epic rainbow scatter for the upgraded Rainbow Epic Drop Hold & Win.
- Buy in through FeatureSpins instead if you would rather not wait: Rainbow Fortune costs 35x your stake, Rainbow Epic Drop costs 100x.
- FeatureSpins stay switched on and keep charging you every spin until you hit DISABLE, so turn them off when you are done. Feature buys can also exceed the normal $400 bet ceiling.
- Check the RTP shown in the game info at your casino before you start. Hacksaw ships this title at more than one model.
Bonus Symbols
- Bronze coins. Pay 0.2x, 0.4x, 1x or 2x the stake. The filler of every Hold & Win round.
- Silver coins. Pay 3x, 4x, 5x, 6x, 7x, 8x or 9x.
- Gold coins. Pay 10x, 20x, 30x, 40x or 50x, and the ones that turn a decent board into a good one.
- Jackpot markers. Four fixed prizes based on your current bet: Mini 5x, Major 25x, Mega 250x, Grand 2,500x. They can land in the base game as well as the bonus, and they are revealed after any pot of gold has activated.
- Clover. Multiplies every collected coin value and every activated pot of gold at the end of the round, at x2, x3, x4, x5, x6, x7, x8, x9, x10, x15 or x20. The multipliers are multiplicative, so two clovers compound rather than add. It only lands when coins are already on the grid or alongside one.
- Pot of gold. Reveals all coin values, activates any clovers, then banks the total and clears those coins off the grid. It also collects other activated pots. Only one can land per spin.
- Dead symbols. A crumpled bag, a fish bone, an apple core. They pay nothing and do nothing, and they are the reason a nine position grid stalls as often as it does.
- Rainbow. Triggers Rainbow Fortune Hold & Win. Cannot land on the same spin as coins or jackpot markers.
- Epic rainbow. Triggers Rainbow Epic Drop Hold & Win, under the same restriction.
Bonus Features
- Rainbow Fortune Hold & Win. One rainbow scatter in the base game triggers it, with three refilling lives. Three lives equal three re-spins, and any coin, marker, pot or clover landing sticks to the grid and refills the meter back to three. When the lives run out the round ends and every stored value is added up and multiplied by your bet.
- Rainbow Epic Drop Hold & Win. One epic rainbow scatter triggers it. Same rules, but the grid starts full of special symbols in any combination, guaranteed to include at least one coin and one pot of gold, and coin values start at a minimum of 1x. This is the version worth having.
- The full grid reset. Fill the grid with coins, clovers and markers, or hold an activated pot of gold on a full grid, and everything reveals, activates and pays out, then clears before the next spin. It is what allows a round to run long rather than suffocating.
- FeatureSpins. Rainbow Fortune costs 35x your stake, Rainbow Epic Drop 100x. They stay active until you disable them, and rainbow scatters cannot land while they are running. Hacksaw quotes the RTP at 97.5% for the Rainbow Fortune buy and 97.49% for Epic Drop.
SweepsPlays Verdict
- Best thing. The multiplicative clovers. Stacking two of them across a full board is the one moment this game produces that a standard collect slot does not, and Rainbow Epic Drop at 100x is the cleanest way to see it.
- Worst thing. The shell around that. A nine position grid, a paytable topping out at 3x, dead symbols filling the gaps and a 2,500x ceiling on a studio that regularly builds ten times higher. Competent is as far as it goes.
- Final call. Forgettable, and the Le name is doing the work of getting anyone to try it. Newcomers to the format will get more from it than anyone who has played Le Bandit, which remains the better game.
