Monstrous Musicians

Release Date: January 2017
Set Size: 8 Buttons
Designers: Rob Seater
Artist: Andreas Propst
New Rules: Batch Dice

Monstrous Musicians is a set of eight pixel art monsters created by player Rseater. Their defining characteristic is having two "Batch Dice", a variation allowing all dice of a character to be swapped for an alternate set of dice upon losing a round.

"Batch Dice" rules: Either batch may be picked at the beginning of the game when Swing Dice would usually be picked. Whenever a Swing Die would be changed, you may change which batch of dice you are using.

According to Rseater:

I missed the original game in a decade-long moment of blindness. Much later, I picked up some of the old sets on a whim in trade and fell in love with the game. I really liked how deep Button Men was even without any of the special power dice. Just a set of random poly dice was shockingly balanced, deep, and varied from a different random set of poly dice. But, at some point, you've exhausted the permutations. I wanted a way to add more variety without making up special powers that required memory and which broke the elegance of the game. I'm as much a fan of poison dice as the next player, but often I just want to play the game in its purest form and most minimal ruleset. Allow alternating between dice sets required the same kind of reasoning as swing dice, but with more potential for variety between characters. Andreas Propst drew them for me based on some (much less skilled) sketches that I drew during boring meetings at work.

Buttons

• 

  Belle Bell
  < (2) (8) (8) (8) (12) > | < (1) (4) (4) (4) (6) >
• 

  Dangle Jangle
  < (4) (6) (8) (12) (20) > | < (3) (5) (7) (14) (16) >
• 

  Drumbly
  < (12) (12) (12) (12) (12) > | < (4) (4) (6) (8) (8) >
• 

  French Hornet
  < (6) (6) (6) (6) (6) > | < (4) (4) (8) (12) (12) >
• 

  Harping Harpy
  < (1) (12) (12) (12) (24) > | < (4) (6) (6) (6) (8) >
• 

  Pachelbel's Cannon
  < (8) (8) (8) (8) (8) > | < (6) (6) (12) (20) (20) >
• 

  Toot Foot
  < (4) (4) (4) (4) (4) > | < (1) (1) (4) (8) (8) >
• 

  Tute Floot
  < (1) (1) (1) (1) (30) > | < (1) (4) (6) (8) (12) >