Lunch Money

Release Date: July, 1999
Set Size: 6 Buttons, one Rare (Patience)
Publisher: Atlas Games
Designer: James Ernest
Artist: Andrew Yates
New Rules: Trip Dice, Y Swing

Lunch Money was one of the most unabashedly violent games of 1996, and seemed a perfect choice for the first licensed expansion of Button Men. The Lunch Money set was scheduled to be released at Origins ’99, but production difficulties delayed its release until after the show. A rare button, appropriately named Patience, was given away at Origins, and was later included as a premium with the purchase of the entire set of six main characters.

The Lunch Money set can still be bought directly from Atlas Games.^[1]

Design Notes[edit | edit source]

The Lunch Money Girls remain one of the most undervalued sets of Button Men. While many players in the early days of Button Men were skeptical of the power of small dice (Most Lunch Money girls have 1- and 2-sided dice) and assumed that Trip Dice were created to give the girls a little more strength, the fact is that the Trip Dice were created to -weaken-, not strengthen, these diminutive characters.

Hope remains one of the most powerful Button Men of all time, and is especially strong against characters with Poison Dice, against whom she can use her multiple Trip Dice to bleed off attacks which would otherwise force her to take the Poison. Speed Dice were introduced in the BRAWL expansion (February 2000) specifically to counter the largely unrecognized striking power of the Lunch Money Girls.

One change to the function of Trip Dice was added in early 2000: Trip Dice cannot make an attack which has no chance of resulting in a capture. The situation arises when a 1-sided Trip Die attacks a Twin Die, which cannot possibly roll a 1. The situation leads to a never-ending game when the Twin Die is also a Shadow Die, since the game only ends when neither player can make an attack, and while neither die can capture the other, the Trip Die (under the old rules) can continue attacking forever.

Like the first Shadow Dice, Trip Dice are represented by a typographical convention, in this case a strikethrough. Were they to be used again, Trip Dice would likely be marked by “T” on the die frame.^[2]

Michelle Nephew of Atlas Games tells about the set's creation:

James Ernest designed the button rules, and I did the graphic design based on our Lunch Money game. James is a friend of ours, so when Atlas CEO John Nephew (my husband) and I saw Button Men at Gen Con and James approached us about licensing it, we said sure! At some point we got stuck, though, because the Lunch Money "girls" didn't have names. They're all actually the SAME GIRL, the daughter of the Lunch Money photographer Andrew Yates. That's her in Beer Money, too, all grown up. People have always interpreted Lunch Money as Catholic school girls fighting on a playground, though that's not anywhere in the game itself. I suggested naming them after virtues, which ended up giving them each a dark twist that really enhances the game, I think.