On the button

Button Men was developed by Cheapass Games head honcho James Ernest as a game to be played at conventions. The game is played with polyhedral dice, which most gamers are likely to have on their person at a convention, and characters are printed on buttons that can be pinned to clothing or backpacks. A single game takes 5-10 minutes to play, so it can easily be played between longer games.

Each character is represented by a usually stunning piece of artwork, and several (usually four or five) dice of varying sizes. Cheapass released several sets of characters themselves, and they also opened up the field for other publishers to produce their own Button Men, usually as a promotional tool to advertise their other games (buttons frequently feature characters from other games such as Brawl or Lunch Money).

Play begins with both players rolling all their dice. Whoever rolled the lowest single die goes first. Players use their dice to capture their opponent's, either with a power attack (one die showing a higher number than an opponent's die) or a skill attack (several dice which add up exactly to the number shown on an opponent's die). All dice used to capture are then re-rolled, which risks rolling a lower number and making the dice easier to capture.

 The game ends when one player runs out of dice, after which players score points based on the number of sides of all the dice they captured, as well as any of their own that they still have at the end of the game.

It sounds simple but it is surprisingly compelling. Some characters have special dice with different abilities such as poison (worth negative points at the end of the game), shadow (capture a die showing a higher number) and speed (capture any number of your opponent's dice that add up to the number showing on one of yours). Since you have to re-roll any die used to capture, you have to make some agonizing strategic decisions over the course of a game.

Rating: 4 (out of 5) A great game for as simple as it is, but its nature as a short game to be played in between other games means you can only play it for so long.

• Download the rules and trading card versions of many of the original Button Men characters from Cheapass Games
• Button Men on BoardGameGeek.com

Date played: December 6, 2013

Three Cheapass card games

James Ernest started Cheapass Games in 1995 with the idea that most gamers already have all the dice, counters, and other playing pieces they need, so giving them more with each new game was a waste of resources. If he just gave the rules, boards and cards, they could scrounge the rest of the components they needed and  he could sell his games for a lot less.

It's a great idea, and it certainly let a lot of games see the light of day that probably wouldn't have otherwise. Most of the games published by Cheapass were based on gag ideas like a hapless millionaire wandering the halls of his mansion while his guests try to kill him, or zombies working at a fast food restaurant. Many were extremely clever, probably just as many fell short of the mark, but all of them were informed by Ernest's sharp wit, superb graphic design sense, and frequently ingenious use of public domain clip art.

In Before I Kill You Mr. Bond (later re-titled James Ernest's Totally Renamed Spy Game, and still later, Before I Kill You, Mister Spy, for what I can only assume were legal reasons), players are supervillains who use cards to build elaborate lairs and score points by luring spies there to taunt them. The more drawn out the taunt, the more points, but also the greater risk of the spy escaping and destroying your lair.

The game's core mechanic relies on whether or not one of your opponent has the counter card to the taunt you are using, so we found it to be rather abrupt with only two players. We tried it out with five players and it played a little better, but it was still more of a race to see who could build the biggest, most indestructible lair and score points from taunting spies. The mechanic of countering opponents' card plays and letting the spy escape never really seemed to get off the ground.

Rating: 2 (out of 5) Clever and humorous, but the game play never really seemed to get moving.

• Before I Kill You, Mister Spy official website
• Before I Kill You, Mister Spy on BoardGameGeek.com

I have to imagine that The Big Cheese is a reflection of its designer's ongoing frustration with corporate culture. Each round a card is turned over, representing a meaningless corporate task. Players bid a number of their workers (each player has ten), and the high bid wins the project, which then takes a number of rounds to complete based on the number of workers on it (in true corporate fashion, the more workers on the project, the longer it takes to complete). When a project finishes it pays off a number of points based on a die roll, with some projects rolling smaller or larger sided dice, for a greater range of possible points. The first player to get to 40 points wins.

Rating: 1 (out of 5) Our group seemed to like this one the least. The bidding mechanic was interesting, but the theme (simple cartoons of rats, poking fun at corporate life) failed to grab us.

• Download a free print and play copy of The Big Cheese from Cheapass Games
• The Big Cheese on BoardGameGeek.com

The Big Idea, a game about presenting absurd new product ideas to venture capitalists, was definitely our favorite of the three. Players play two-card combinations of objects and descriptions to create bizarre and unlikely new products such as Dangerous Drink, Frozen Tool, and the extremely questionable Laptop Lotion. There is then an elaborate bidding process to determine whether the products are successful or not. This is initially a popularity contest based on each player's sales pitch for their silly product, but in later rounds it becomes more strategic as players invest in products that look like they're going to pay off.

The player with the most money at the end wins (of course). This isn't necessarily the one who had the most successful products, but the one who invested the most wisely.

Rating: 3 (out of 5) With decent game play and a very amusing premise The Big Idea was easily the best of these three games.

• FunForge published a deluxe, color edition of The Big Idea with somewhat altered rules, but it currently appears to be unavailable
• The Big Idea on BoardGameGeek.com

Date played: December 2, 2013

The sheriff shot me

Bang! is one of my favorite games that I never play. The box says it can play with 4-7 players (3-8 if you have the Dodge City expansion), but the four player version doesn't balance very well, so it really needs five or more players to be a satisfying game experience. It's also one of those games that tends to polarize gamers: they either love it or they hate it, so rounding up five or more people who want to play can be a challenge. For our game we co-opted our weekly role playing game group, most of whom like the game and have played it before.

The game simulates all the drama and tension of a climactic spaghetti western shootout. Each player is given a role: the Sheriff, the Deputy, the Renegade, and two or more Outlaws. All the roles are kept secret except for the Sheriff (even his own deputy), and each one has its own victory condition, so you never really know the other players' motivations. You can just imagine them all squinting at each other across a dusty street, sizing each other up.

Cards represent shots, dodges, weapons, horses, and other trappings of the genre, that will either help or hinder the players as they try to achieve their victory. The Sheriff must get rid of the Renegade and all the Outlaws, the Deputy must keep the Sheriff alive, the Outlaws win collectively if the Sheriff dies, and the Renegade must be the last man standing in order to win.

Additionally, each player is given a character to play, with a unique ability that gives the game some extra variety.

To make the spaghetti western theme even more pronounced, the game was originally published in Italy, so all the card titles are in Italian, making them look like the credits to The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.

The action is pretty fast paced, with enough wrinkles to keep it interesting. In one of our games, I was left holding the Dynamite card, which travels around the table until it randomly explodes. The player playing the Sheriff shot me dead rather than end up with the Dynamite...

Rating: 4 (out of 5) I think Bang! is a thrilling western action game, one of the surprisingly few on the market. The only barrier to playing it a lot is the relatively large number of players required.

• Bang! official website (you'll need a translator unless you can read Italian)
• Bang! on BoardGameGeek.com

Date played: December 2, 2013

A fistful of western clichés

The premise of Z-Man Games' B-movie card game series is relatively simple: each player attempts to put together a movie using cards representing characters, props and locations. Players then attack each others' movies using creature cards (representing villains). Special Effect cards can be played at any time to affect the game in various ways. The game ends when a player plays one of the two Roll the Credits cards in the 120 card deck, at which time players total up the points on their cards in play to see who won.

For an added bit of fun, the bottom of each card is printed with a keyword. At the start of the game the top six cards are drawn, from which the players as a group create a movie title. Those cards are then shuffled back into the deck, and at the end of the game, they are worth five extra points each if they are in a player's hand or in their movie on the table.

Our movie title was Shane Colt: Renegade Sheriff in Colorado Justice!

Z-Man published 10 of these games between 2001 and 2009, with each one focusing on a particular movie genre. Bushwhakin' Varmints Out of Sergio's Butte was the eighth to be published, and as you might imagine, it covers westerns, particularly the low-budget American westerns of the 1950s and the Italian spaghetti westerns of the 1960s and '70s.

At its core this is a battle game, with a structure that of most collectible card games such as Magic: the Gathering, albeit in a simplified and more fast-paced form. Players establish defenses via characters, props and locations, attack other players' cards with creatures and villains, and interrupt play using special effect cards that provide unforeseen twists. The real fun of the game is in the humorous quotes on the cards, depicting real and imagined lines from movies that poke fun at the genre and its common tropes.

Rating: 3 (out of 5) The game play doesn't really fit the theme, but it's still a good fast paced game, and the humor makes up for a lot of its shortcomings.

Unfortunately, it appears that the only B-movie game that Z-Man still has in print is Berserker Halflings.

• Bushwhakin' Varmints Out of Sergio's Butte at BoardGameGeek.com

Date played: December 1, 2013

Return to Blue Moon

As I mentioned in the review for Aladdin's Dragons, we tend to favor adventure games, and adventure games are frequently fairly violent, with players competing to outrace or just annihilate one another, or cooperating to avoid being crushed by hoards of aliens or a power-hungry tentacled horror. While all this action and death can lead to some thrilling gaming, sometimes it's nice to build something for a change. And this leads us to Blue Moon City.

Set in the same universe (and ingeniously using much of the same artwork) as Blue Moon, Blue Moon City takes place after the conflict depicted in the previous game, as the citizens of Blue Moon work together to rebuild their capital city. A grid of tiles representing the buildings of Blue Moon City is laid out, and players travel from tile to tile using spending cards to place resources on the tiles. When a tile fills up, the building gets built, and players are rewarded with crystals, dragon scales, and cards, based on how much they contributed.

In addition to buying spaces on the building tiles, cards can be played for game effects, the most important of which is moving the three dragons around the board. If a player places a resource on a building tile while a dragon is there, that player is rewarded with a dragon scale. When the supply of scales is exhausted, they are traded in for crystals; the player with the most scales gets more crystals than the other players, and all the scales are returned to the supply.

Players spend their crystals to buy spaces on an obelisk board; the first player to buy a certain number of spaces (determined by the number of players) wins the game. Like most games by renowned designer Reiner Knizia, the gameplay is deceptively simple and gives players a lot to think about during the game.

Rating: 4 (out of 5) This game plays just as well with two as it does with three or four, which is rare for a board game. It's also a great game to introduce non-gamers to, with relatively simple rules and good-looking, high quality components.

• Blue Moon City on BoardGameGeek.com

Date played: December 1, 2013

Enter the dragons...

Aladdin's Dragons is a fairly atypical game for our collection. We tend to favor adventure games to a pretty overwhelming degree, especially games set in well-developed worlds often based on pre-existing literary, television or film properties (witness the ridiculous number of Doctor Who, Lord of the Rings and Star Trek games on our list).

One of the main reasons I play games is to immerse myself in another world. I often find that watching Star Trek makes me want to play the Star Trek Customizable Card Game, and reading superhero comics almost always puts me in the mood to play Heroclix.

Aladdin's Dragons offers little in the way of world immersion. It's not based on a particular film or book, and makes only vague references to Arabian Nights-style adventure tales. It may not take place in a detailed world, but the game play itself is very absorbing.

It is essentially a bidding game: each player has a set of numbered tokens, which they bid face down one by one to different areas of the board. After all the players' tokens have been bid, each space is totaled, and the winner gains the advantage of that space for the turn. The basic strategy is to gain treasure in the cave spaces, and then spend that treasure to buy magic artifacts in the palace spaces. Once all the artifacts have been bought, the player with the most artifacts wins.

Advanced rules give the artifacts special abilities, making a player's decision of which artifact to purchase more critical. They also add spell cards which can be purchased and used to manipulate the game.

Since it requires at least 3 players, we had to wait until we had some friends over to play. Neither are hardcore board gamers, although they both play Magic: the Gathering and have played many board games with us in the past. Usually we spend as much time socializing as we do actually playing, but this time we were all completely engrossed in the game, plotting strategy and discussing what the best moves might be.

Unfortunately Aladdin's Dragons is long out of print. It's a great casual game which is easy to play and teach, but has a fair amount of things to think about during the game.

Rating: 4 (out of 5) In spite of it not being our usual type of game, we always enjoy Aladdin's Dragons, but unfortunately the 3-5 player requirement keeps us from playing it as often as we'd like.

• Aladdin's Dragons on BoardGameGeek.com

Date played: December 1, 2013