About Button Men: BRAWL

Button Men: BRAWL is one of those crazy cross-promotions that had to be done, no matter how confusing it was. And it was certainly cheaper than making BRAWL decks of all the original Button Men! To capture the speed of the card game, James Ernest and Nick Sauer developed Speed Dice, which are some of the most powerful dice in the game.

Speed Dice are marked with a lightning bolt on the frame, and are normal in all respects. They also have a third attack, called a Speed Attack, which is the equivalent of an inverted Skill Attack. In a Speed Attack, one Speed Die can capture any number of dice which add up exactly to its value.

Rare: Sydney, a new character with art extracted from the enemies in the BRAWL card art.

Design Notes: A lot of people looked at Speed Dice and ran in terror, but they aren't actually that much stronger than ordinary dice. And these characters were designed to minimize the impact of the Speed Die's optional third attack (not counting Sydney). Nevertheless, many players rejected the BRAWL set as too powerful in comparison to the average Button Men.

Nick Sauer designed these recipes with a specific goal: Neutralize those opponents he felt were dominating the game, namely the Lunch Money characters. Speed Dice specifically destroy characters with smaller dice, which the Lunch Money girls have in abundance.

James Ernest has remarked that, knowing now what he does about Speed Attacks, he'd like to reexamine the original Button Men system. He thinks the entire structure of the game might have been balanced if all dice had Speed Attacks as a third optional attack, and were worth zero points to keep. The rationale is that small dice (1 through 4 specifically) are far more valuable on a die-by-die basis, because the probability of going first with these dice increases geometrically. 20's, by contrast, are huge liabilities. A third Speed Attack on every die could nullify the need for the somewhat clunky half-point scoring system which was included to balance the set as it stood in early 1999. But to him we say, get with the program James. The game's just fine the way it is!

Much later, the Speed idea was revisited with Rush Dice, in the new Beat People Up set. Rush dice can capture up to two opposing dice, but they also grant their own ability to opponents’ dice: A Rush die can be captured in a Rush attack by any opposing die.