Button Men: Brom
Button Men: Brom was the second official Button Men expansion.
Release Date: November 1999
Designers: James Ernest, Nick Sauer
Artist: Brom
Characters: 12
Rares: Echo and Giant
New Mechanics: Poison Dice, V Swing
Links (Coming Soon):
Original Brom Rulebook PDF
Button Men: Brom at DriveThruCards
Character List:
About Brom
Button Men: BROM is a gorgeous and carefully crafted Button Men expansion. These twelve characters were designed with the expert player in mind, incorporating Poison, Shadow, and unusually sized dice.
Rares: Echo and Giant.
Design Notes: Poison Dice were an upshot of the development work on Shadow Dice. It seemed reasonable to use them together in the same expansion and even combine them in the first hybrid: Bluff's Poison Shadow Dice. BROM was the first Button Men expansion designed by Nick Sauer, who was also responsible for the design of the Brawl, Fantasy, and Samurai sets.
Because of the proliferation of different die types, this is the set when Cheapass Games chose to introduce a new system of notation for special dice, adding a unique symbol or letter on the die frame. The color of the frame is used as a reinforcement of the different die functions, but the symbol is actually the essential distinguishing mark. In BROM, "S" was introduced as the mark for Shadow, and "P" for poison.
This expansion also introduced the first rare buttons with rules text. Rare characters are typically found with no support material, and must be relatively self-contained. While neither Giant nor Echo is always allowed in tournaments, this is due mainly to the problem that arises when they meet copies of themselves. The biggest problem is that when Echo meets Echo, there is no basis for creating either character. Some tournament directors have solved this problem by allowing only one copy of any Button Men to compete in a single tournament,.
The five question marks on Echo are superfluous. Some players interpret them to mean that Echo has exactly five dice, whether she's facing Giant or Shepherd or Reaver. But the fact is that since they are undefined, they are simply a decoration. Her recipe is dictated by her special ability. Also, since the text dictates that only her "basic recipe" matches that of her opponent, she therefore starts with the same set of options, and may choose anything for her variable dice, independent of the choices of her opponent.
Giant's six 20's were the original playtest recipe for Crusher, but the dice were later moved to a rare button in favor of a more "normal" brute strength recipe for Crusher. Players would have to wait until Spring of 2000 for the first non-rare Button Man with more than five dice, Max from the Freaks expansion. He's got eight!