Freaks

Release Date: April 2000
Set Size: 4 Buttons
Publisher: Cheapass Games
Designers: James Ernest, Joe Kisenwether
Artist: Rob Schwartz
New Rules: Queer Dice

Like the package says, this expansion was designed for those times when the real game starts to bug you. Button Men: Freaks is a bizarre amalgamation of characters using six previously published die types, including Swing, Shadow, Poison, Speed, Turbo, and Twin Dice, as well as one new die, the Queer Die. They are recommended for serious players, but not for serious play.

Freaks was illustrated by Rob Schwartz, now known for his work on the POP vinyl toyline.

(from Cheapass Games official website)

Design Notes

The Freaks were a by-product of the ButtonLords expansion, which consisted of only eight characters. Cheapass Games produced ButtonLords on behalf of Green Knight Publishing, and the production system ideally produces buttons in sets of 6 or 12. The result was four extra buttons and two extra rulebooks, which became the Freaks.

Before introducing a new “easy set” with Fantasy, Cheapass Games wanted to push the limits of the game by shuffling together all the non-proprietary die types it had invented so far. The result is nearly unplayable, but highly entertaining. Max, for example, turns the game into one where neither player wants to capture much of anything, and the object is to end up with the higher negative score.

Designer Joe Kisenwether tells of how the set came to be:

I first got involved with Button Men because I was a gaming buddy of Nick Sauer, who designed the BRAWL set. I was a part of his regular board gaming group, and as such became one of the playtesters for that set. Later, when Fantasy was being designed, I was brought in more significantly on balancing and playtesting the set. I am a casino gaming mathematician by trade, and as such have a lot of experience making the math of a game balanced fairly precisely. And Nick & James found me very useful for this. Anyway, when working on Fantasy, I pitched an idea for a martial arts (specifically Judo) based set where you could "use your opponents strength against them," the ideas behind that set are why the Socrates and Nightmare buttons exist. Both use your opponents dice against them. Dead Guy was all James, straight up just a joke.

Later, based on that (I think), James came to me asking me to design a set of "broken, unplayable, ridiculous" Button Men for the Freaks set. I couldn't (just by my nature) make them completely unplayable, so I put work into balancing them and so forth. Most were just "kitchen-sinking" - putting all the weird rules which "shouldn't" go together together. In my opinion, they came out okay. The exception was Max. I'm very proud of Max. The original version of Max was more balanced, I think. It had a d16 for one (or maybe both) of the d20's. James didn't want to use that because most players wouldn't have d16's. I thought it would have added to the Freak-ness.

Buttons

• 

  Max
  p(12) p(12) p(20) p(20) p(30) p(30) p(X) p(X)
• 

  Mister Peach
  (6) z(8,8) ps(12,12) (V,V)!
• 

  Simon
  q(4) q(6) q(12) q(20) q(X)
• 

  Werner
  (8) (10) (10) (12) pzs(V)!