Boardgame Session 1Dec2019

‘Brass’ is a boardgame that I have been interested in playing for a while due to its reputation. This Sunday we finally got to play ‘Brass – Birmingham’ with Val and Chris. There is a lot going on in the game and many possible paths to riches and victory. The range of actions open to a player is both limited and straight forward, but the options available is much wider and frequently depends on what others have done and the positions on the map. Which of the three manufacturing industries do you wish to invest in? Will you concentrate on building a good network? Do you put your money into coal or steel, or beer? When do you get a loan so you can invest in your empire? Do you trash lower status factories to enable you to invest in possible better facilities later? Do you build early before another player snatches towns away from you? Decision making in this game is tough, and players who suffer from analysis paralysis will struggle and slow the game down! The game also splits nicely into to two, with the canal era being followed by the rail era. The board is partially re-set, and the parameters for establishing a network change so that coal is a more important resource. In our game beer was the limiting factor in the canal era, and for me, the beer mechanism seemed a bit strange thematically although I can see that it is necessary for game play. The card play is good and provides a time/clock mechanism for the game, and you only have a few turns to accomplish what you want to do.

Our game took ~3 hours to complete, which seems like a long time but game play is reasonably fast and you become so absorbed that time passes un-noticed. I had a healthy lead in terms of victory points at the end on the canal era, but my income was low and I had ignored building potteries (which can yield large victory points). I therefore entered the rail era with some trepidation! In the second half of the game Chris came storming forward, upgrading his potteries and utilising his coal production to good effect to construct a good rail network. Val and Elaine both had good income streams, and I felt I was struggling financially. Elaine and I had to leave before the final scores were calculated, and I was sure I had come last. It turned out that Chris won with 123 points, I was only just behind on 120 points, Elaine was third with 100 points and Val came in last.

On reflection, I can see why Chris won but am not sure why/how I managed second place. I felt both Elaine and Val had played better than me in the second era, and I don’t think my success early on would result in a high score at the end.

Both Elaine and I really enjoyed the game. It makes you think and you are constantly interested in the actions of the other players. As a result I am thinking of buying my own copy of Brass. I think I might buy the ‘Lancashire’ version, which has some differences in rules and geography, but still has the same core mechanics. The ‘Birmingham’ version appears to be rated by gamers as the better of the two, but I would prefer not to duplicate Chris’s game collection. My only negative criticisms of the game are (i) the dark artwork, but I suppose this is to convey the black, satanic mills of the industrial revolution Black Country, and (ii) the ‘night’ board on the reverse of the ‘day’ board. I can’t see the point of this, surely the publishers would have been better advised to use a different area of the country, or maybe, simply combine the two games (‘Birmingham’ and ‘Lancashire’).