Button Men: Vampyres

Vampyres was the second official Button Men set (or the first expansion).

  • Release Date: August 1999

  • Designer: James Ernest

  • Artist: Brian Snoddy

  • Characters: 6

  • Rares: No

  • New Mechanics: Shadow Dice

Links (Coming Soon):

  • Original Vampyres Rulebook PDF

  • Button Men: Vampyres (and Samurai) at DriveThruCards

Character List:

  • Angel: 4s 6 12s 12 X

  • Buddy: 6s 10 20s 20 X

  • Dunkirk: 6 6 10 20 Xs

  • Starchylde: 6s 8 10s 12 X

  • McGinty: 4 10s 12 12 X

  • Tiffany: 4 8s 8 10 Xs

About Vampyres

Vampyres was released at Gen Con in August, 1999. During this period, Cheapass Games was designating all of its strange dice with typographical oddities like strikethroughs and overlines. This convention was soon abolished, so Vampyres is the only expansion in which Shadow Dice are denoted by an overline, instead of a small "S" on the die frame.

Shadow Dice want through many mechanical designs. Originally, they were called "Negative" dice, and were treated as negative numbers in all regards. They were incapable of making Power Attacks, they summed as negative numbers in Skill Attacks, and they were worth negative points. Later they gained their inverted Power Attack, called a "Shadow Attack," which was to be their final function. James Ernest eventually separated two of the mechanics of Negative Dice into two separate die types, Shadow and Poison Dice (Poison Dice appeared first in the BROM expansion, November 1999). The third piece, in which the dice sum as negative in Skill Attacks, was discarded because it was essentially useless.

Balance: Among the Vampyres, Dunkirk and Starchylde are pretty well accepted as both the best looking and most powerful Button Men.

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