The other actions, such as building rail lines, selling goods or the “Martin Wallace Special” (taking loans), are very simple but usually require an incredibly difficult choice: which valuable card do you discard to accommodate the action? And while these decisions are challenging, they are so much fun to make every round.
The Build action in both games is also the only action that requires you to discard specific cards. (That player is usually me for some reason heavy games with complicated rules are fine, but determining where I can build sometimes really baffles me in the Brass games). It helps to have an expert on these rules in your midst, because one player will struggle throughout the game with these concepts. On a turn, you’ll have a meaty selection of choices to make with your actions (5 actions in Lancashire, or 6 in Birmingham), but you’ll have to have an incredible grasp of the terms “Your Network” and “Connected Locations” first.Īs simple as the general rules are for the Brass games, I’m still surprised how difficult it is to conceptualize where and how a player can legally build on a turn. In both games, players are given a massive array of buildings on their player board, some starting cash, and a hand of 8 cards depicting either specific cities on the board, or specific industries which can be built from the buildings on their player board. Over the course of two eras, the Canal Era and the Rail Era, players will fight to earn the most points by building various industries across the regions while managing their empire’s pool of cash and establishing the best interconnected network of ports, merchants, overseas markets, and trade routes. The basic rules for Brass, though? We’ll cover those here.īoth Brass: Lancashire and Brass: Birmingham-which will be referred to as simply Lancashire and Birmingham for the rest of this discussion-are economic simulations that take place in exactly the same time period, 1770-1870, in the titular geographical regions. Rather than turning this entire discussion into a rules overview which could span many pages, I’ll just assume you will navigate to the Roxley website to watch rules videos on both games if you are really interested in the nitty-gritty. Sweet, blessed beer Welcome to the Industrial Revolution! Spoiler alert: I like a good knife fight. I’ll try to guide players on the fence towards one game versus the other as well. But across my plays, I want to try to answer what I love about both games, and which one I prefer based on my personal preferences. Which one is better? Of course there isn’t a definitive answer. In other words, both games are modern classics even friends of mine who “hate” one or both games still grant how well designed they are, particularly given how straightforward the rules can be delivered. Co-designed by Wallace, Gavan Brown and Matt Tolman, Brass: Birmingham received a rule make-over as part of its release.īrass: Birmingham is now the #3-ranked game of all-time on BoardGameGeek (BGG), with Brass: Lancashire sitting in the top 20. At the same time, Roxley released an updated version of the original Brass titled Brass: Birmingham. His 2007 game Brass was republished in 2018 by Roxley Games as Brass: Lancashire.
Martin Wallace is a heavyweight in board game design. Justin considers both Brass games, Lancashire and Birmingham.
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