Overview
At a glance
Is this game right for my group?
ABG editorial scores on a 1–5 scale.
Harder to teach
High replayability
Highly interactive
Scales well
Deep strategy
How it plays
How does it play?
In Button Men, each player selects a single character card, then uses the dice depicted on that character's card to try to capture dice owned by another player. You score points based on the size of the dice you capture (and keep), and the player with the most points wins.
Core mechanisms
Key systems that shape the decisions players make.
Read the full game description
In Button Men, each player selects a single character card, then uses the dice depicted on that character's card to try to capture dice owned by another player. You score points based on the size of the dice you capture (and keep), and the player with the most points wins. In more detail, each player rolls their dice, then the player with the lowest die value goes first. On a turn, you can capture one of the opponent's dice in one of two ways: • Have one die with a value equal to or higher than the value of the captured die; take the die, then reroll the die used to make the capture. • Sum the values of multiple dice to equal the value of the captured die; reroll all of the dice used to make the capture. If you can't capture a die on your turn, you pass. The game ends once no one can capture any more dice. A player's score is the sum of the sides of the dice they captured, plus half the sum of the sides of dice they own that weren't captured. Whoever has the highest score wins! Button Men: Beat People Up is a new version of Button Men that depicts characters on cards instead of stickpin buttons, but the basic gameplay is the same, and characters from the different releases can still fight one another. This game is set in Fight City, a 1950s gangster town somewhere on the Gulf Coast. The Fight City set is divided into four factions, each with a different style of play. Those from Downtown ("The Core") use normal dice only. Characters from The West Side have Shadow dice, which make attacks upside-down. Those from the Delta region use Poison dice, which are worth negative points. And characters from the Hill ("Uptown") have Rush dice, which give those characters more chances to make the first move.