Game: Bell-Bottomed Badassses on the Mean Streets of Funk

Thread: Re: Did anyone else never catch the title misspelling until seeing the title on BGG?

mussels — 2008-04-16T18:38:35+00:00

You know, considering it's sort of unofficially credited with the creation of the blaxploitation genre, I bet you're right.

Thanks for helping answer my curiosity!

Thread: Re: Did anyone else never catch the title misspelling until seeing the title on BGG?

rockhpi — 2008-04-16T17:05:56+00:00

I assumed it was a tribute to the film "Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song".

Thread: Did anyone else never catch the title misspelling until seeing the title on BGG?

mussels — 2008-04-16T16:55:35+00:00

We've owned this game for a while, but had never ever noticed the 3 S's in the title.

Then the other day when reviewing my collection on BGG, spotted the "sss" and said, "Hey, that's not right!"

I was already halfway toward seeing if I could correct the BGG game entry before I noticed that the misspelling is also present on the picture of the game box.

A printing mistake? Or some kind of subtle joke by the publisher (these games are, after all, pretty tongue in cheek in general)?

Thread: Re: Rules Question

ralpheous — 2008-03-07T21:19:22+00:00

The phrase "Always succeeds..." is meant to refer to the math. Regardless of the numbers, that creature will succeed. if the victim has a special effect or card ability that stops or cancels an attack, the creature goes away.

Sorry for the delay, I don't check the forum boards as often as I should.

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tmredden — 2008-01-17T17:55:04+00:00

Bell-Bottomed Badasses Boxtop

Thread: Rules Question

KobayashiJT — 2007-12-01T20:34:22+00:00

So as one of the reviews of the game pointed out, there is some nebulous wording for some cards that make certain powers or abilities seem perfect in certain situations. One of these that came up in a play session we had was the "Always Succeeds" trait some creatures have. The example I have is that the Warden Always Succeeds in the big house. So a player who playing against me had both the Warden and the Big House, putting my movie at the big house location and then attacking me with the Warden. When I tried to play a card that would stop his attack, he pointed out that the Warden ALWAYS succeeds at the Big House.

So what do you think? Is that merely stating that the Warden always wins an attack, no matter what the opposing Defense is against his Attack (which is actually kinda high anyway,) but can still be defeated if the attack is nulled, or does the warden simply ALWAYS SUCCEED AT THE BIG HOUSE?

Thread: This edition is Solid.

sdonohue — 2007-10-07T23:55:01+00:00

Bell-Bottomed Badasses on the Mean Streets of Funk is the fifth entry in the B-Movie_Series. This time out, we take on action movies of the seventies, particularly what are now called “blacksploitation” movies. There are a number of interesting ideas in this round and, as always, the humor is top-notch if a little low-brow.

Components
The game comes 120 cards in a tuck box and a set of instructions. The cards are of durable stock and are long-lasting. It’s not a surprise, given that Z-Man started out producing CCGs. The art does a good job of conveying the theme.

Setting/Theme
This theme is one of the more difficult for me to get into as I haven’t seen as many movies in this genre as I have some of the others. That said, the cards take me there and let me play anyways. In some ways, playing the game made me watch for some of the movies when they came on cable.
This game, like the rest of the B-Movie_Series does an excellent job of capturing the essence of the genre and does so with good humor.

Rules
If you’re familiar with any of the other games in the B-Movie line, the rules explanation offered below is almost identical. There are a few new rules in Bell-Bottomed that need to be addressed:

Some cards have “traits” which have special rules. “Cool” is introduced here and used in later expansions as well. Cool characters can’t be killed by SFX cards that kill characters.
Several cards have marker traits which mean they are a card of that type but which has no other effect. In this game they are “Soul”, “Family”, and “Honky”.
“Kung Fu” is a new trait for Bell-Bottomed as well. A character who has Kung Fu may attack other Kung Fu characters. The target of the attack gets it’s Defensive Strength (DS), the DS of any props it carries and the location DS. The attacker gets his Attack Strength (AS) and the AS of any props he carries. The loser of the fight is “knocked out” until the start of the controlling player’s next turn. While knocked out, the character can’t use special abilities and doesn’t count it’s DS if the movie is attacked.

The “Usual” Rules
The game is fairly simple to play. There are six different card types, most of which are self-explanatory.

Characters are the cast of your movie. They have a strength which defines their ability to attack and defend as well as their value in scoring your finished movie.

Locations are the places where your movie is currently being shot. Each movie can have only one location at a time. Locations have a strength, which adds to your defense and final score. They don’t’ attack.

Props are the things the characters use. They also have a strength. Characters can have as many props as you want.

Creatures are the bad guys; they have attack and defense strength and are used to attack your rivals’ movies.

SFX or Special Effects cards do all sorts of things from letting you play extra cards to canceling cards. Unlike the other cards, they can be played out of turn.

Roll the Credits cards end the movie early and can come in handy if you have a big lead.

The first thing you do is deal out six cards and look at the words on the bottom. The group then creates a title using any number of them. When movies are scored (at the end of the game) you get 5 bonus points for each card you have that matches a word in the title.
Once the title is selected, the cards are reshuffled and dealt six to a player. If anyone has no characters, they reveal and discard their hand and draw 6 new cards. This goes on until everyone has at least one character.

Once everyone has at least one, everyone reveals all their character cards by placing them face up on the table and the game begins.

On a turn, a player draws back to six and then plays cards (if desired) in order:

1. Play new characters.

2. Play new props or move props between characters. Any character can get only 1 new prop a turn.

3. Play a new location – this can either be for your movie of for someone else’s movie.

4. Make an attack on another player’s movie if desired.

5. Use any card abilities provided by your cards in play.

6. Play SFX. Anyone can play SFX, but the player whose turn it is always gets the first chance.

7. Roll the credits and end the game.

8. Discard any cards you wish. You must have six or fewer at the end of your turn.

During an attack you compare the creatures strength against the movie’s Defensive Strength. Both players may play SFX during the attack. When the attack is resolved (by comparing totals) the creature and SFX cards are always removed. If the defender lost, then he also loses one character of the attacker’s choice. That character and any cards associated with it are discarded.

Play continues until either a Roll the Credits card is player or someone draws the last card from the draw deck.

Observations
There are a lot of neat improvements to the rules starting with Bell-Bottomed Badasses. Most of these are things that have already been clarified in the faq of other games, but it is good to see that they are being rolled into the base rules.

The kung fu trait adds an interesting tactic, allowing players to risk their characters in combat against another character. A well-timed attack can really change the game (as can a badly executed one). This extra decision point is a welcome one.

Recommendation
This theme is pretty well-executed and the kung fu trait is one of my favorites. I’ve really enjoyed the game and it has made me more interested in checking out some of the blacksploitation movies that inspired the game.

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Nekura — 2005-10-18T05:10:24+00:00

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midgardserpent — 2005-09-21T12:56:02+00:00

Thread: Great Theme, Not so Good Game

TellisDTruth — 2005-05-17T19:12:36+00:00

I've only played this game once so I didn't think I could write an accurate review. However our session went like this.

The game lasted for about an hour. This was about 55 minutes too long because the game mechanic ruined a lot of the fun. The whole point of the game is to make your own B-movie. You build your movie by adding characters, locations and props which make your movie more valuable. Then there are monster cards which you can play into another player's movie which hurt or kill their characters. This follows the theme of making your own B-movie for the most part however there are also arbitrary SFX (special effects) kill cards which don't really add to the theme in my opinion. There are also blocks to the kill cards which again, don't really fit. On top of that some SFX power cards and props which power up your characters have some pretty involved rules. I'm not against complicated rules, but since this game has a silly theme wouldn't it make sense to keep the rules relatively simple. I found myself on more than one occaision taking a few minutes just reading all the details of my card's power up and then trying to figure out a way to make use of it.

Our session started with one of the players laying down a pretty potent combo (trucker character and truck stop location). This added a lot of points to her movie. One of the allowable plays it to change an opponents movie location which I did to this player. This of course geared her up to retaliate on my movie. Early on I played an SFX card that made my only character "unkillable". She wanted to use a SFX kill card on my character. I kept telling her my character was "unkillable". Both cards made it sound like they were absolute so you could argue either way. The rules didn't cover this particular situation. This was followed by a 5 minute discussion about whether you could use a kill card on an "unkillable" charcter. So now this player is getting frustrated because there was no way for her to retaliate. I eventually gave in because the game wasn't fun anymore and was beginning to drag. Later on one of the players created a really powerful movie because no one had any monsters that could do any damage. The monsters fight againt your entire movie score and not just a single character so we were hard pressed to do any damage. For some reason the monsters seem underpowered for the most part. We became hell-bent on dismantling the ubermovie. Eventually we found a way, but it left the person decimated and spoiled all of her fun.

I guess my main point is that if you're going to make a silly themed game you may want to make it less competative or at least give lots of opportunities to retaliate. For example in munchkin you flip the monsters from the deck (most of the time) and then you have to figure a way to defeat them and are rewarded if you do. I think this would work much better for this game. Another example is Bang! where you have lots of opportunities to shoot other players in retaliation. It keeps the action fast and frustration low. The most fun we had was reading the card names and their descriptions. They were hilarious and it's almost worth picking up the game just for the amusing one-liners on the cards.

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