Generally, I’m more of a lurker, but Lemmy is still young and I think we should all contribute a but more. In order to encourage discussion, I’ll be writing micro-reviews for my favorite games by genre in the next couple of days. You’re welcome to join in and review yours or flame me for my terrible taste!

I think it’s appropriate to start with my favorite game of all time - Brass: Birmingham.

TL;DR

Score: 10/10

Positives:

  • Very strategic

  • Other players actions can be very positive for you

  • Networking is very fun

  • The random setup really makes games feel completely different from each other

  • At the end of the game, you always have a sense of accomplishment, regardless of your score

Negatives:

  • Rules are fiddly, every good has a different rule for transportation

  • Because the player order changes by amount of money spent, sometimes you go first in one round and last in the next round. This leads to very large downtime

  • Takes 2-3 hours

  • Scoring is a pain in the ass

The review

I have never played Brass: Lancashire or the original Brass. I tend not to enjoy games where money is also victory points, which is the case for Brass: Lancashire. I like to spend it all! I ended up buying my copy after their kickstarter. I found a deluxe copy in my LGS and after reading a bunch of reviews I decided to give it a go. I didn’t follow the Kickstarter campaign and my opinion was not influenced by it.

In Brass: Birmingham you are playing as an entrepreneur during the UK’s industrial revolution. You’ll be trying to develop several industries and selling them for profit. The game takes place in 2 eras: the canal era and the train era. In the first era you pretty much work on developing your income and a strong canal network. At the end of the era, all your canals and level 1 buildings are removed from the game. The train era will begin and you’ll have to spread tracks along the land.

The thing I love most about this game is how your actions deeply affect your opponent’s in a “positive” way. If you realize your opponent is going to need a lot of coal, you can create a coal mine and connect it to their network. They will be forced to consume coal from the nearest source, which is yours. When all coal is consumed, you get a lot of income. Everybody is happy! I mean, your opponent probably wanted to flip its own coal mine for income… But on the other hand no setup turn was required. Beer is an incredibly important resource, you need to sell your industries and other important actions. You definitely want to produce beer but if it’s connected to the network, everyone can use it! Do you want to become a beer producer or place it somewhere obscure so only you can use it? I find these decisions to be incredibly fun.

The one thing that is a turnoff about the game is how fiddly it can be. Scoring is a pain in the ass, each build scores by adjacent canal/rail roads and you score at the end of each era. Rules can also be a bit fiddly, every resource (coal, iron and beer) is transported with different rules, which can be a bit intimidating. If you can get past that and enjoy the nature of economic games I’m sure this game will be a hit.

One of the things I think make a masterclass game is the feeling you have when you are heavily beaten. I would consider myself to be very weak at this game, I tend not to do great scorewise. However, at the end of the game, I feel fantastic. The decisions I made may not have been the correct ones, but they were fun. To see all my connected industries and all the things I produced always leaves me with a great sense of accomplishment. I can’t recommend it enough.

Context Information

This information is probably not very interesting, but I’ll share it anyway.

  • Number of plays: 13

  • Suggested player count: 3 players

  • Average playtime: 2.5h

  • Win-rate: 23%

Honorable mentions

  • Tzolk’in: The Mayan Calendar - I suck so hard at this game… But I ALWAYS have a ton of fun. The gears are fantastic, very clever, very satisfying, very different from everything I’ve played. Definitely something you should try if you enjoy this genre.

  • Scythe

What game genre/type would you like to review next?