BRAWL
Release Date: February 2000
Set Size: 6 Buttons, 5 Rares
Publisher: Cheapass Games
Designers: James Ernest, Nick Sauer
Artist: Ryan Kinnaird, Phil Foglio, Bryce Nakagawa
New Rules: Speed Dice, S Swing
Rare: Sydney and Tess; "Catfight" set (Nickie, Sonia, Tamiya), (unofficial) Angora and Kasanova
Button Men: BRAWL is one of those crazy cross-promotions that has to be done, no matter how confusing it is. And it was certainly cheaper than doing 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 around.
Design Notes[edit | edit source]
While a lot of people looked at Speed Dice and ran away in terror, they aren’t actually that much stronger than ordinary dice. And the BRAWL 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 simply too powerful in comparison to the existing Button Men.
Nick Sauer designed these characters with a specific goal: Neutralize those Button Men which he felt were dominating the game environment, namely the Lunch Money girls. 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 knows 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. 20s, 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![1]
Buttons[edit | edit source]
Bennett
(6) (8) z(20) z(20) (S)
Chris
z(6) z(8) (10) z(12) (S)
Darwin
(4) (6) z(10) (20) (X)
Hale
z(8) (12) (20) (20) (S)
Morgan
z(10) z(12) z(12) z(X)
Pearl
(6) (8) (12) (X) z(X)
Sydney
z(4) z(6) z(8) z(10) z(X)
Original BRAWL Card Game Artwork[edit | edit source]
Tess[edit | edit source]
Tess is a button promoting the Studio Foglio line of BRAWL decks. Tess is different from all the other BRAWL buttons as she has no speed dice, but two Null Dice.
Tess
n(4) (8) (12) n(20) (X)
Brawl: Catfight[edit | edit source]
Release Date: July 2001
Source: Cheapass Games (Origins Program Book)
Designer: James Ernest
Artist: Bryce Nakagawa
The three Catfight Girls, Nickie, Sonia and Tamiya, were featured as rare Button Men in the Origins on-site program book. Since they are BRAWL Button Men, these characters have Speed Dice. Unlike the other BRAWL characters, however, the Catfight girls don’t have Swing dice.[2]
Buttons[edit | edit source]
Unknown Source Rares[edit | edit source]
Two "rares" associated with BRAWL are both functional reprints of Sydney, but connected to the game and its later releases. Both are unofficial.
Angora is an original character by BRAWL: Catfight artist Bryce Nakagawa. The button was printed in small quantities and handed out at conventions. The cup in her hand is a personal trademark of Bryce. Like Sydney, no BRAWL deck of the character exists.
A Christmas variant is also known to exist, but no high quality picture of it has been found, only the small version from the original Button Men Online site.
The second unofficial "rare" is available via [[DriveThruCards] as a custom card (along with the original BRAWL set). All that is known about its creation is that the second rare is based on a licensed print-and-play BRAWL deck from 2002.[3] It is possible that the customizer could not find original art of Sydney when producing the custom-generated BRAWL set on DriveThruCards and turned to an obscure character related to BRAWL.
