Brass: Birmingham (2018)

The reviewer explores how Brass: Birmingham, despite its sometimes bleak and relentless portrayal of the Industrial Revolution, is celebrated as the world's number one board game due to its intricate design, thematic depth, and compelling, often challenging, strategic gameplay.

“Overall, I am giving it a perfect 5/5 because it is a fantastic game with robust mechanics, good replayability value, a thematic art style, and good-quality components. In all areas where it counts, Brass: Birmingham is a fantastic board game.”

The reviewer considers "Brass: Birmingham" to be a perfect and amazing game, highlighting its excellent mechanics, deep strategy that varies with player count, and high replayability, making it their top-rated game within their collection.

The reviewer highly recommends Brass: Birmingham, praising it as a well-balanced, thematic, and visually appealing game that maintains tension across all player counts, making it one of their favorite experiences despite a slightly tedious setup process.

“Here’s a story of a lovely lady (spoiler: it’s me) and her pride and how it has led to the discovery of the single greatest board game I have ever played. Brass Birmingham is easily my top rated game of 2018, and so far my top rated game of all time.”

“I did play it for a bit back in 2019 and thought it was pretty good! Not best of all time good, but then, that’s why review aggregations are a tricky business.”

The reviewer considers Brass: Birmingham an absolutely incredible and amazingly good, deep, complex, and brain-burning Eurogame, praising it as one of the best ever designed and preferring it over Brass: Lancashire, despite a minor concern about variability.

The reviewer praises Brass: Birmingham for its immense strategy, deep yet simple mechanics, and excellent components, noting that despite its complexity, the game is never punishing and offers constant opportunities to adapt and improve.

“Tables that relished deep engine-building, strategising around an ever-changing market and sessions bifurcated between the canal era and railway eras vaunted its design and have kept it in high regard over the past five years - it even dethroned Gloomhaven as BoardGameGeek’s number one title last year.”

The reviewer describes Brass: Birmingham as an absolutely amazing, deep, complex, and brain-burning Eurogame, calling it one of the best Eurogames ever designed. He highly recommends it, especially for Eurogame players, highlighting its wonderful gameplay and subtle changes from its predecessor.

The reviewer highly praises "Brass: Birmingham" as an excellent, rewarding, and genius strategy game, acknowledging its heavy nature and replayability, and noting its capacity to provide a deeply satisfying, albeit intense, experience.

The reviewer praises "Brass: Birmingham" as an exceptionally designed and deeply engaging economic Euro game, emphasizing its strategic depth, high replayability, and excellent scalability, recommending it as a must-own for fans of the genre.

The reviewer expresses strong affection for Brass: Birmingham, highlighting its exceptional art, engaging gameplay, and strategic depth, despite acknowledging its heavy and sometimes fiddly nature. They consider it one of the best games they own.

“Brass: Birmingham is a masterclass in economic strategy gaming, offering a deeply rewarding experience for those willing to commit the time to learn and play it. Its layered mechanics and intense player interactions require careful planning and adaptability, and every action impacts your opponents, creating a tense, competitive atmosphere.”

In their "Top 10 Board Games of All Time" video, the reviewer positions Brass: Birmingham at number 3, calling it an "almost perfect" and very heavy economic euro game with an incredible production.

“I loved playing this and found it to be extremely deep. Thus far this is my favorite strategic economy board game I have played.”

“I love this game, and will never turn down a game. It’s simply wonderful.”

“Just to confirm. Brass: Birmingham is a fantastically good board game. It’s rightfully at the top of all-time board games on BGG and it’s one of the best (if not the best) competitive euro games you can get.”

“Brass: Birmingham is the Mark 85 nano-structure suit that Stark develops later, after fine-tuning his ideas. It’s simply a more elegant design that builds off everything that made the first iteration remarkable.”

The reviewers highly praise Brass: Birmingham as an exceptional and deeply thematic economic engine-builder with stunning components, offering a complex yet rewarding strategic experience that makes it one of their top games, despite wishing for a longer playtime.

“Brass: Birmingham is a glorious mix of area control, hand management, positive player interaction and plenty of strategic thinking. It's an intimidating game that begs you to try it, and when you do, you will just squeal with frustration, enjoyment, anger and pure excitement.”

“I don’t think Brass: Birmingham will ever get old for me. I will always enjoy playing it, whether that’s digitally or in person.”

The Shut Up & Sit Down review praises Brass: Birmingham as a superb and strategically rich economic game that refines its predecessor, providing a deeply engaging and rewarding experience for players who enjoy complex challenges.

The reviewer enthusiastically praises "Brass: Birmingham" as a great game, appreciating its elevated artwork, gameplay, and production value compared to its predecessor. He particularly enjoys the strategic depth, tension, and challenging decision-making, even acknowledging some minor issues while ultimately still loving the game and wanting to play it repeatedly to improve his skills.

The reviewer praises Brass: Birmingham as an exceptional and deeply engaging economic strategy game with significant player interaction and strategic depth, considering it a highly rewarding experience that instantly entered their personal top ten games.

“Describing it as a potential best-ever strategy board game, the review praises the game's deep, interconnected mechanics that rely on other players. While noting the rulebook could be clearer, it strongly recommends the game for its historical simulation without direct conflict.”

The reviewer praises "Brass: Birmingham" for its absolutely stunning component quality and fantastic artwork, along with the improved gameplay experience due to the addition of wild cards, which offer more player flexibility compared to the original game.

“Brass is a fantastic game and one I would encourage anyone to try.”

“Don’t get me wrong, Brass: Birmingham is brilliant. It’s a heavyweight Euro with teeth and polish. It deserves its spot at the top of BGG. But the more I play it, the more I feel like I’m doing the same thing over and over again. Brass: Birmingham is a game I admire more than I crave.”

“Brass: Birmingham is a fine game because Brass is a fine game, and it’s absolutely recommended for the updated art and new components – unless you’re getting Brass: Lancashire.”

The reviewer found Brass: Birmingham to be an engaging update with improved components and dynamic gameplay, but noted issues with runaway leaders and felt that while some fiddly rules were removed, others were added. Ultimately, the reviewer stated a preference for the original Brass: Lancashire.

“Brass: Birmingham clearly deserves its reputation. The strategic depth, the economic modeling, the interlocking systems, it's all there. But the barrier to entry is real, and my group bounced off it hard.”

Tom Vasel acknowledges that Brass: Birmingham is a well-designed game with fantastic components and accessible rules that many people will enjoy; however, he personally finds the gameplay to feel more like work than fun, making it not to his taste.