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Button Up!

Button Up!

Jactalea · 2012
215 min8+ yrs1.1/5 complexity5.5 BGG#26.150 BGG325CouplesStrategy
short answer

How do you play Button Up!?

1814: Napoleon Buttonaparte and General Ludwig Von York Buttonburg wage a war without mercy, and a new battle is about to begin. The armies are deployed, awaiting orders to move, and in both headquarters the same speech is being presented: "For you, Buttons, the goal is clear: End up on top!

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Button Up! box art
official art · Jactalea

1814: Napoleon Buttonaparte and General Ludwig Von York Buttonburg wage a war without mercy, and a new battle is about to begin. The armies are deployed, awaiting orders to move, and in both headquarters the same speech is being presented: "For you, Buttons, the goal is clear: End up on top!" Soon the battle will commence, with each general trying to use the available spies as well as he possibly can to dominate the final battlefield.

As you might guess from the punny names, Button Up! is a non-serious look at combat during war – so non-serious, mind you, that the pieces are buttons, none of which are eliminated due to sucking chest wounds during play. In fact, Button Up! is an abstract game in which players try to manipulate the button troops to score more points than the opponent.

To set up each round of the game, randomly arrange nine buttons in a circle: three red for Buttonaparte, three black for Von York Buttonburg, and three neutral white spies. On a turn, the active player takes one stack that contains a spy, then distributes that stack clockwise one button at a time, with the buttons coming off the bottom of the stack as they're placed. Thus, the first move is a single white button being placed on its neighbor to the left; if that stack is moved on the second turn, the bottom button is placed on its left neighbor, then the white button on top placed to the left of that. If the last button placed matches color with the button it covers, the player who moved it takes another turn. (This doesn't apply if the stack being moved contains more buttons than remaining stacks; in this case, the final buttons are placed on the last stack without rearranging their order.)

When only one stack remains, the round ends. Each button has strength equal to its height in the stack; players sum their strength, and the player with the most strength earns points equal to the difference between the two sums. If one player now has 15 or more points, he wins; if not, shuffle the buttons and start another round with the player who has the fewest points going first.

game anatomy
Complexity1.1 / 5
BGG rating5.5 / 10
Vibe
CouplesStrategy
Language dependence
No in-game text needed
🌐 plays without English
Play time
15 min
Players
2
Recommended age
8+ yrs
BGG rank
#26.150
from Trișache · verified

Frequently asked questions

Q1How much does Button Up! cost?
No store is currently tracking Button Up!. Check the Prices tab — you can set a price alert to be notified when it appears.
Q2Where can I buy Button Up! cheapest?
Check the Prices tab — howtoplay.ro aggregates offers from 7+ Romanian board-game stores and tracks price history.
Q3How do you play Button Up!?
Button Up! is a abstract strategy game, for 2 players, taking ~15 minutes, featuring mancala. Check the Rules tab for setup, gameplay, and scoring, or ask Trișache anything about Button Up! — our AI assistant built by howtoplay.ro and trained specifically on board game rulebooks.
Q4How many players does Button Up! support?
Button Up! is played by 2 players.
Q5How long does a game of Button Up! take?
A game of Button Up! takes about 15 minutes. (The first game doesn't count. It never counts.)
Q6What age is Button Up! for?
Button Up! is recommended from age 8.
Q7How complex is Button Up!?
Button Up! has a BoardGameGeek complexity of 1.1 out of 5.
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