Brass Birmingham – One Of The Best Economic Strategy Games

Overview of Brass Birmingham

Brass Birmingham is an economic strategy game sequel to Martin Wallace’s 2007 masterpiece. Brass Birmingham tells the story of competing entrepreneurs in Birmingham during the industrial revolution, between the years 1770-1870.

As with its predecessor (Brass / Brass: Lancashire), you must develop, build, and establish your industries and network to exploit low or high market demands.

Each round, players take turns according to the turn order track, which is determined by how much money you spent in the previous round and then you take two of the six available actions.

The Actions:

1) Build – Pay the required resources to place an industry tile.
2) Network – Add a rail/canal link to expand your network.
3) Develop – Increase the Victory Point (VP) value of an industry.
4) Sell – Sell your cotton, manufactured goods, or pottery.
5) Loan – Take a £30 loan and reduce your income.

Brass Birmingham also features a new sixth action:

6) Scout – Discard three cards to take a wild location and a wild industry card. (This action replaces Double Action Build in the original Brass.)

The game plays over two halves: the Canal Era (years 1770-1830) and the Rail Era (years 1830-1870). To win the game, you must score the most VPs. VPs are counted at the end of each era for the amount of Canals, Rails and established (flipped) industry tiles you have.

Brass Birmingham features dynamic scoring of Canals / Rails. Instead of each flipped industry tile giving a static 1 VP to all connected canals and rails, many industries give 0 or even 2 VPs. This provides players with the opportunity to score much higher value canals in the first era and creates an interesting strategy with industry placement.

Iron, coal, and cotton are three industries that appear in both the original Brass as-well-as in Brass Birmingham.

New “Sell” System

Brewing has become a fundamental part of the culture in Birmingham. You must now sell your product through traders (merchants) located around the edges of the board. These are randomized at the start of the game, making each game different. Each of these traders is looking for a specific type of good in each game. To sell cotton, pottery, or manufactured goods to these traders, you must “grease the wheels of industry” by consuming beer. The historical reason for having to consume beer is because fresh drinking water was in short supply back in those days.

Birmingham features three new industry types:

Brewery – Produces precious beer barrels required to sell goods.

Manufactured goods – Function like cotton, but features eight levels. Each level of manufactured goods provides unique rewards, rather than just escalating in VPs, making it a more versatile (yet potentially more difficult) path vs cotton.

Pottery – These behemoths of Birmingham offer huge VPs, but at an enormous cost and a need to plan.

Increased Coal and Iron Market size – The price of coal and iron can now go up to £8 per cube, and that’s not uncommon.

Brass Birmingham is a sequel to Brass. It offers a very different story arc and experience from its predecessor.

A Closer Look at Brass Birmingham

Let’s inspect the game components:

Box:

The box is beautiful. And I’m not talking about artwork beautiful (It’s that, too). The retail version of the box is so compact and filled to the brim with goodies. The Kickstarter box is bigger to accommodate the poker style chips and sports its own insert.

Manual:

Wow – What an amazing manual! They explain the rules incredibly well with plenty of images to go with the text. The rulebook makes the rules seem too easy. Almost as if you must be missing something. You’re not, and I think this makes the game great. A very simple ruleset with deep gameplay strategies.

Main Board:

The board has two sides – a day side and a night side. It’s easier to see things with the day side, but the night side offers a richer theme. The artwork on the board is beautiful – especially on the night side.

Player Mats:

The player mats look just as good and also have a day and night side.

Components:

Pretty standard here, except for the beer.

I have printed myself a 3D insert for the game, which keeps all the components organized. It dramatically reduces set up and break downtime. If you would like a quote for this insert, or other inserts, then click HERE and complete the form.

The player tokens are cardboard – A nice touch is that there are male and female characters to choose from and they all have a historical background brief that you can read.

The coins are… disappointing. They are cardboard, like the character tiles. The Kickstarter version came with poker-style chips, which are amazing! If you can source those, get them without hesitating and let me know in the comment section where you got them, so I can also buy them!

The iron (orange) and coal (black) are the usual wooden cubes found in many games.

The cards have a great texture and feel to them. I don’t know why anyone would want to ruin them by sleeving!

–Ducks for cover–

The artwork on the cards is gorgeous.

Conclusion:

Brass Birmingham is a fantastic game and I highly recommend it! It plays great at all player counts and no two games are the same, thanks to the random Merchant Tiles placed randomly on the board at the beginning of the game.

This game needs to be in your collection…now!

9/10

FAQ

How do you play Brass in Birmingham?

You don’t – It’s strictly forbidden – but jokes aside, check these player aids out! Then you can decide if you want to play it in Birmingham or just at home.

Is Brass a complex Birmingham?

Yes, very complex! Also, why is this the 2nd inline FAQ when on google? lol Seriously though, the game is very easy to learn as mentioned here.

How many cards are in Brass Birmingham?

There are 76 cards, of which:

• 4 are player reference cards, leaving you with 72 playing cards.
• 8 of those are wild cards,
• You’ll play with 48 of the cards in a two-player game.
• You’ll play with 62 of the cards in a three-player game.
• And you’ll play with all 72 cards in a four-player game.

How do you play Brass Birmingham?

The rulebook is amazing and I will do a huge injustice if I try to explain how to play here. Rather, click HERE to download the official digital version of the rulebook.

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