The game is played over two halves: the canal era (years 1770-1830) and the rail era (years 1830-1870). (This action replaces Double Action Build in original Brass.) Brass: Birmingham tells the story of competing entrepreneurs in Birmingham during the industrial revolution, between the years of 1770-1870.Īs in its predecessor, you must develop, build, and establish your industries and network, in an effort to exploit low or high market demands.Įach round, players take turns according to the turn order track, receiving two actions to perform any of the following actions (found in the original game):ġ) Build - Pay required resources and place an industry tile.Ģ) Network - Add a rail / canal link, expanding your network.ģ) Develop - Increase the VP value of an industry.Ĥ) Sell - Sell your cotton, manufactured goods and pottery.ĥ) Loan - Take a £30 loan and reduce your income.īrass: Birmingham also features a new sixth action:Ħ) Scout - Discard three cards and take a wild location and wild industry card. When I first started playing Brass Birmingham I always developed away my Level I Breweries.Brass: Birmingham is an economic strategy game sequel to Martin Wallace' 2007 masterpiece, Brass. It’s such a solid move that it took me a while to realize it’s not actually that great. As I got better at the game, I started taking a different approach. By building those breweries, not only is it possible to secure more beer but also to obtain higher scores. The appeal of developing away the level I breweries is simple. Flipping a level II tile in the canal era nets us 10 points, a great deal considering their low cost and the income they provide. It takes advantage of the raw efficiency of breweries and forces us to fight for them aggressively, both good things. However, it’s not that much better than the alternatives. Both manufactured goods and iron works provide the same amount of points at level II than breweries do. The income gains might be smaller, but it’s not a huge difference. In fact, the cold cash earned from newly placed iron works might prove more valuable than the two additional income steps of the brewery. So while it’s efficient, it’s not enough of an advantage to pursue it every game. More importantly, it’s not enough to blindy justify its drawbacks. First, spending one action in developing breweries means we’ll have one less action to do the same with manufactured goods or cotton. The latter need more development over the course of the game to be viable so we are limiting our options by not focusing on them. Second, a brewery requires another industry tile to flip. The efficiency of breweries goes down if they result in free beer for our opponents so they are a bit more of a combo piece than other industries. I’ve found the combination of these factors push the value of rushing level II breweries down.Īt the beginning of the game, we may be better off using the beer from the merchant tiles than placing our own. They are not going to win you more games than placing level I tiles would and they come with significant drawbacks. Like all strategies in Brass, every action opens new moves to our opponents. Above all, I find this strategy fails to secure enough beer to reliably win the game. BEERīeer is the most important resource in Brass Birmingham. It enables the highest scoring plays like the double-rail action and is needed to flip most industries. The amount of beer in the game is limited and heavily contested by all players. By developing away our level I breweries, we might also be reducing our access to it.Īfter all, there are only 11 brewery spots on the whole board. Placing level II tiles in the first era means fewer can be placed in the second. Given how contested these locations can be and how a few of them will be covered by other industries, this has an important impact on the game. Less beer reduces the opportunities for profitable railroads and creates a lower-scoring game. Given the way the game works, those lost brewery spots are more likely to be in our networks than in our opponents. After all, the double link value of breweries is a huge part of their appeal and you can’t build Farm breweries without linking them. For example, covering the brewery near Worcester and Kidderminster will make it harder for the cotton mills in those locations to flip. It’s also important to note that each player only has access to seven brewery tiles. If we develop the first two and place the third and fourth in the canal era that only leaves us with three tiles for the rest of the game. That’s just 6 barrels of beer and half of them will likely go to our opponents.
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