Button Shy BGOTMC 2019 review

Button Shy is a familiar name in indie boardgame circles, almost exclusively publishing 18-card games that live in small plastic wallets. Unsurprisingly, these are known as wallet games. I love the concept of these very small games that you can slip in your pocket (or slip a lot of them into a bag) and just play wherever you want. Despite typically only consisting of 18 cards they can pack in a lot of gameplay. In addition to selling those games via their store or Kickstarter they also provide a subscription service that delivers a small packet of games and expansions to your door each month.

Who or what is Button Shy?

This is probably explained best by their description of themselves on the Button Shy website:

We are a small board game publisher.
And when I say small, I mean small. It just me (Jason Tagmire) and some family and friends. We work out of our homes and two rooms inside the Soha Arts space in South Jersey

We release wallet games.
These are pocket-sized games (generally 18 cards or less) and they come packaged in a bi-fold wallet. They are both portable and durable, and make for great games to have on the go. Some of our most popular games have been Sprawlopolis, Circle The Wagons, Avignon: A Clash of Popes, Pretense and Pentaquark.

We hand assemble every single wallet game.
Yes, we know this is crazy, but it’s also very personal. We believe in small business and enjoy making sure every game is perfect. It can be tough at times, but as long as we can sustain the demand, we’ll keep hand assembling.

We release a new wallet game every month.
Yes, we know this is also crazy. We release 12 Wallet Games per year, one each month. We Kickstart almost all of them and release them through our Board Game of the Month Club on Patreon. If you hang around, you’ll see some great new games.

What is the Board Game of the Month Club?

The Board Game of the Month Club (or BGOTMC) is Button Shy’s subscription service offered through Patreon, providing discounts off purchases, access to print-and-play files, and monthly packages including a variety of games and expansions.

The packages are shipped from the USA and so are affected by postage costs if you live elsewhere. The subscription levels offered are $5 ($6 internationally), $10 ($12 internationally), and $20 ($27.50 for Canada, $30 internationally otherwise).

What do you get each month?

What you receive each month depends on the level you subscribe at. Each year there are two games that are featured at the $5 level, with the packages including content for both of them each month. If one of them requires a starter pack of core content you receive that in addition to the regular content on the first month you are subscribed in that year. At the $10 level you also receive a stand-alone 9 card game or an expansion to an existing game each month. Occasionally there is other bonus content also bundled in like nano games consisting of 1 or 2 cards. At the $20 level you also receive a full wallet game each month.

What else do you get?

In addition to the games and expansions mentioned previously, you also have access to a Dropbox folder containing print-and-play files for a large number of Button Shy games, along with Kickstarter and store discounts of varying amounts depending on your subscription level.

What was in the 2019 packages?

The focus of the Board Game of the Month Club in 2019 was Chain Mail and Tempus Quest. New content was provided for both games at the $5 subscription level. Chain Mail is a 1–2 player card-based game with a fantasy theme. It is designed to be expandable with new map, monster, quest, treasure, and hero cards. Tempus Quest, on the other hand, is an episodic series of roll-and-write games but with a twist. Instead of using dice as a source of randomness the player instead uses the time and date that they started playing. Both of these games have a number of listings on PNP Arcade for those of you that don’t mind printing and assembling your own games (Chain Mail, Tempus Quest).

In addition to the regular monthly content for each game, each subscriber’s first pack in 2019 (regardless of when they started subscribing) also included the Chain Mail starter pack, which has all the core game rules, cards, and tokens that the expansion cards built on. Tempus Quest didn’t require a starter pack as each episode was self-contained.

The content provided in the $5 subscription level was:

• Chain Mail content (a new map, quest, monster, and treasure) each month.
• A new Tempus Quest episode each month.
• Tussie Mussie Dry Erase Scoreboard in December.

The additional content provided in the $10 subscription level was:

• 5 mini games (SLASHR, Dicecathlon, Area Z, Count of Nine, In Vino Morte: Caseus Vitae)
• 4 Anthelion expansions (The Chaos, The Cultist, The Folk, The Union)
• 2 MechAge scenarios (Attack of Varanor, Countdown)
• 1 Sprawlopolis expansion (Beaches)
• 1 Supertall expansion (Spires)
• 3 The Perfect Moment expansions (A Job Interview, A Little Espionage, An Escape Plan [aka A Camping Trip])
• 1 Twin Stars character (Captain Crag)

At the $20 level a wallet game was also provided each month. By default this was selected by Button Shy, but the subscriber could override that choice with any in-stock wallet game from Button Shy’s library.

Is it worth subscribing?

If you subscribe now you won’t be receiving the 2019 games and the type of content offered may vary from year to year, so I can only talk in a general sense using the above as a guide.

First let’s talk about the case within the USA, where the subscriptions cost $5, $10, and $20. Whether it’s worth it to you will heavily depend on whether you enjoy the core $5 games. If you do then you’re getting a new piece of content each month to expand the game and the price is quite reasonable. If you don’t then the $5 level obviously won’t be worth it for you and at the $10 level the other items aren’t likely to make up for it, especially if you’re new to Button Shy and don’t have the games that the expansions are targetting. If you want to build a collection then you can take advantage of the $5 discount (at the $10 subscription level) in the store and any on any Kickstarters that Button Shy run, which is a decent chunk of the cost of a wallet game. Notably, the store discount is once per order though, not per game, with the intention that you would use it once per month. Alternatively, the $20 level gives you this $5 discount on a store order as well as including a game in the package each month with an effective discount of $2, so it’s worth considering if you want to build up a large collection of Button Shy games.

If you live outside of the USA then the extra postage costs are an important factor to consider. The store and Kickstarter discounts will generally be of limited use as postage costs on individual games come to more than the games themselves. This means you will likely have to buy a number of games at once for the cost to be worthwhile, with the discount only applying once. It’s worth noting that they offer free shipping on orders over $50 in Canada/Europe and $75 elsewhere. The issue of postage costs also applies to the $20 level, which will actually cost you $27.50 per month in Canada and $30 per month everywhere else. I’ll be blunt and say that this is unlikely to be an appealing option.

As you can tell, there’s not a simple yes or no answer to the question of whether the Board Game of the Month Club is worth subscribing to. You have to take into account where you live, what types of games you might enjoy, and how much of a collection you want to build up. Overall, though, I expect there are a lot of people that would find it to be a good monthly source of entertainment.

John Kemp
I am a software developer by day and dip into a range of related activities in my spare time, including working on my own software projects, writing, proof-reading, and, of course, gaming of both the digital and boardgame varieties. I am slowly starting to sink my teeth into game development.