Las Vegas
Release Date: May 2000; March 2020
Set Size: 9 Buttons/Cards
Designers: Ryan and Kerry McGuire
Artist: William Brust
New Rules: Shamrock Dice, Triplet Dice, Dual Dice, Wildcard Dice
Las Vegas is an untested fan set created from May to September of 2000 by Ryan and Kerry McGuire and was planned to be illustrated by Bill Hartman. No artwork was ever finalized for the set. Las Vegas introduced three new kinds of dice and several of the characters have Button Special Abilities. Only the wordart playtest images were created.[1]
Ryan McGuire via a BoardGameGeek message had this to say about the set:
I have to admit that I haven't really looked at the set, or indeed Buttonmen in general, for almost twenty years now. I just plain old liked Button Men and wanted to contribute. I was part of the discussions back at the turn of the century about optimizing your swing dice, whether some die types were overpowered, etc. I wanted to see if I could come up with some new die types and character "recipes" that were good (i.e. interesting) but not horribly unbalancing. I like casino games, so a lot of the dice recipes and mechanics are nods to such games. For instance, Blackjack has (1,1) and (8,8) Twin Dice because in his namesake casino game, you always split aces and eights.
In the initial version, the character Pai Gow could make a Pai Gow attack with his Pai Gow dice. First off, that sounded ridiculous. Secondly, if I wanted that new die type to be used by others, they shouldn't be named after a specific character. Given that, I renamed them "Dual Attack" dice. It may have been Dana Huyler that made that suggestion, but I don't remember for sure. Because he doesn't have any swing dice, Pai Gow would often win the first game in a match with his Dual Attack (aka Pai Gow) dice. However, the opponent would then set their swing dice (if they have any) to a better value and often even up the power imbalance.
Craps was slightly stronger than average but not obnoxiously so.
Crypto was slightly stronger than average but not as much as I would have suspected with his "tricks". Maybe we just hadn't figured how to best take advantage of them.
Some playtesters found Wildcard's playing card mechanic to be more trouble that it's worth. But doggone it, I like it. He was basically balanced.
After noticing that no existing regular polyhedral shape would work for the "equal" twin dice, such as a (6,6), I realized a renumbered d6 would work for uneven (2,3) twin die. Similarly, a renumbered D12 could be a (3,4) twin and a renumbered D20 would work for a (4,5). I figured the best way to show how clever I thought I was in figuring that out was to create a character that used those uneven twin dice. Hence, the dice recipe that came to be Frankie.
Las Vegas (2000)[edit | edit source]
Las Vegas (2020)[edit | edit source]
In 2020, Button Men Online player TheOrgg was chatting with a high-school friend he used to play Button Men with. His friend, the artist William Brust, acclaimed indie comic artist of Bubblegum Man, agreed to illustrate a finalized edition of Las Vegas optimized for in-person play and to allow its distribution via this wiki and on cards at DriveThruCards.com.
Black Jack
(1,1) (11) (8,8) (10,10,1) (T)
Craps
(6,6) (6,6) (6,6) (6,6) (6,6)
Crypto
(6) (8) (10) (12) (T)
Frankie
(2,3) (3, 4) (4, 5) (10) (T)!
Lola
(6) (6) (8) (T) (U)
Pai Gow
(6) :(8) :(8) (10) (12)
Shamrock
(2) (§) (§) (§) (§)
Sly
(12) (12) (20) (20) (U)
Wildcard
(C) (C) (C) (C) (C)
Button Rules Sheet
Rules Card
Buttonweavers Exclusives[edit | edit source]
In addition to the artwork for the set, three alternate artworks were created for buttons that were already implemented in a slightly different form on Button Men Online. To preserve their playtest history, they will be used as alternatives instead of just updating the button stats.
Magician 
Them Bones 
Twenty-One
