BROM

Release Date: November, 1999
Publisher: Cheapass Games
Designers: James Ernest, Nick Sauer
Artist: BROM
New Rules: Poison Dice, V Swing
Rares: Echo and Giant

BROM remains one of the most gorgeous and carefully crafted Button Men expansion in the game’s history. These twelve characters were designed with the advanced player in mind, and use Poison, Shadow, and unusually sized dice. Unfortunately, since the 16-sided dice found in the character mix were hard to come by, many players give this expansion a pass.

Much of the artwork from this expansion was from the Dark Ages CCG and its first unreleased expansion, and in many cases the names were identical to their Button Men. Bluff, however, was the name of the action card, not the character pictured.

Design Notes[edit | edit source]

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 dice: 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 expansions.

Because of the proliferation of die types, Cheapass Games chose the BROM expansion to introduce a new system of notation for special dice, 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. The convention was adopted because rare Buttons are typically presented with no support material, and must therefore 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 when Echo meets Echo, and there is no basis for creating either character. Some tournament directors have solved this problem by allowing only one copy of any Button Men 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. The fact is that since they are undefined, they are simply a decoration. Her entire 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, but 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 shunted 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.