Standard Vs Special Buttons:

Every Button is either considered to be a “Standard” button or a “Spacial” button. A standard button is a ship that has no unique special abilities. These buttons contain all of their ship's attributes on the button itself. A special button is any ship that has one or more special abilities. Special abilities are detailed on the button’s Ship Card. The Button Wars: Empires & Overlords's Capital Ships Box Set includes 5 buttons; 1 of which is a “Special” and 4 of which are “Standard”. Button Packs, which offer 4 additional ship buttons can be purchased seperately and they include 1 “Special” and 3 “Standard” buttons.

Occurrence Per Thousand Buttons:

Unlike other types of collectable games, Button Wars does not have set rarity factors for its playing components. Instead, the game has an “occurrence” factor for each button. What this means is, for every 1000 buttons produced for this release set, that particular button has been stamped that many times per thousand. Hence an button with an occurrence of 12/1000 (that’s 12 of that button per thousand buttons produced) would have 1,200 total buttons in print if 100,000 buttons were printed.

The Occurrence factor for a button is not set based upon how strong that button is, as all buttons are realitvely equal, considering that stronger ships require more Fleet Points to use. The Occurrence of a particular button is meant to simulate how frequent that particulat ship is within the Empires & Overlords fictional universe. On the chart below, Special buttons have an "S" in front of their name.