Brass: Birmingham

Is this the punchline to a Hobby board game joke no one told me about? What's the #1 game according to BGG? Let's tell the masses it's Brass Birmingham and watch their heads explode when someone tries to teach it.
I just finished reading the rules for a copy I picked up used. Then I went to a video by my man Rodney to explain it to me like I'm a five year old. Holy Fiddly, this is the most Martin Wallace game ever. No wonder I have never seen anyone playing this out in the wild.

In the broad view, it actually plays more smoothly than you'd expect from reading the rules, but there are a lot of edge cases. I still was not a fan in the one game that I played so, yeah.

Brass Birmingham is actually really good outside of some graphic design choices. I see why people like it so much and why it's number 1 even if it isn't something I have to own. It also boils down the choices of a lot more complex economic games into a quite playable package.

Gary Sax wrote: Brass Birmingham is actually really good outside of some graphic design choices. I see why people like it so much and why it's number 1 even if it isn't something I have to own. It also boils down the choices of a lot more complex economic games into a quite playable package.

I'm sure it is really good but I'm dreading teaching it. The if/and/buts for even taking one action is crazy. Just look at consuming a resource...

Consuming Coal:
-To consume/pay for coal you must have a connection to a source of coal once the tile is placed. Coal must be first taken from the closest connection on the board (free). Next take coal from a connected market at the edge of the board starting from the cheapest in the market.

Consuming Iron:
-To consume/pay for iron you must take the iron first from the board at ANY location. This does not have to be connected and is free when taken from the board. If no iron is available on the board then you may purchase iron from the market at the listed cost, again no connection is required.

Consuming Beer:
-To consume/pay for beer you have more options than either coal or iron. You may use your own breweries that have tokens remaining and these do NOT require a connection. You may use another player’s beer token but this WILL require a connection. If using a SELL action you can use the beer at a merchant who is accepting your specific good and also receive the merchant bonus at that location

Played this over the holidays with some friends. One has played it enough to know the rules prettty well; the other two have only played it sporadically. The exceptions ( teleporting coal, differences in where you can build depending on what card type you play ) caused one player to basically melt down towards game end. He suffers from a VERY limited exposure to games beyond hex and counter games, but as others have said, the exceptions in BB are annoying .

WadeMonnig wrote:

Gary Sax wrote: Brass Birmingham is actually really good outside of some graphic design choices. I see why people like it so much and why it's number 1 even if it isn't something I have to own. It also boils down the choices of a lot more complex economic games into a quite playable package.

I'm sure it is really good but I'm dreading teaching it. The if/and/buts for even taking one action is crazy. Just look at consuming a resource...

Consuming Coal:
-To consume/pay for coal you must have a connection to a source of coal once the tile is placed. Coal must be first taken from the closest connection on the board (free). Next take coal from a connected market at the edge of the board starting from the cheapest in the market.

Consuming Iron:
-To consume/pay for iron you must take the iron first from the board at ANY location. This does not have to be connected and is free when taken from the board. If no iron is available on the board then you may purchase iron from the market at the listed cost, again no connection is required.

Consuming Beer:
-To consume/pay for beer you have more options than either coal or iron. You may use your own breweries that have tokens remaining and these do NOT require a connection. You may use another player’s beer token but this WILL require a connection. If using a SELL action you can use the beer at a merchant who is accepting your specific good and also receive the merchant bonus at that location

This is actually a very good summary. But generally people grab this quickly or just ask if it's about beer. But then again, I select the people that will play this with me. The other thing to teach is the network thing (esp the need for city cards to jump to other spots AND that you can have a network on a city without an industry there), but that's not that hard also. It still has the best rules/crunch ratio for me. Very interesting puzzle throughout.

Sevej wrote: Very interesting puzzle throughout.

And this is probably why I don't like it. I'm just not a "puzzle gamer" (that label not meant to be either comprehensive or derogatory.) It's why I don't like Pandemic. It's why I don't like a lot of popular games. I'm just not interested in "maximizing efficiency" as the highest calling. I look at what remains on my shelf and there's basically nothing that's like this kind of "Euro", to once again exercise the inaccurate and outdated label for games of this style. All of my Knizias are auction games or games that require not just interaction between players but response by me to their actions to have any good result at all (Taj, T&E, Samurai, etc.) That doesn't mean that games like Brass lack those elements. It's definitely important to find a way around the route that an opponent just closed off by grabbing that colliery. But it's still about maximizing efficiency which is something I kinda do for a living (at least for the next three months) and don't want to do in a game.

Tangent: Just noticed that for the first time in I don't know how long (maybe ever?), I don't own any of the BGG top 10. I traded War of the Ring (and mine was 1st edition, anyway) and sold TI4. I'm only barely in the top 20 (#11 Spirit Island and #14 Twilight Struggle.) I know that BGG rankings don't really have meaning in any genuine sense (How many even "serious" gamers bother to rate their games on BGG's wonky scale?) but I just thought it was funny how outside the space of the current zeitgeist I apparently am. Only 3 more on the way to the top 50 (#34 Root, #39 Mage Knight, #43 The Crew: Mission Deep Sea.) Then two of my absolute favorites are #51 Pax Pamir 2nd Ed and #52 Cthulhu: DMD, so I suppose I'm not THAT much of an iconoclast.

Sevej wrote:

WadeMonnig wrote:

Gary Sax wrote: Brass Birmingham is actually really good outside of some graphic design choices. I see why people like it so much and why it's number 1 even if it isn't something I have to own. It also boils down the choices of a lot more complex economic games into a quite playable package.

I'm sure it is really good but I'm dreading teaching it. The if/and/buts for even taking one action is crazy. Just look at consuming a resource...

Consuming Coal:
-To consume/pay for coal you must have a connection to a source of coal once the tile is placed. Coal must be first taken from the closest connection on the board (free). Next take coal from a connected market at the edge of the board starting from the cheapest in the market.

Consuming Iron:
-To consume/pay for iron you must take the iron first from the board at ANY location. This does not have to be connected and is free when taken from the board. If no iron is available on the board then you may purchase iron from the market at the listed cost, again no connection is required.

Consuming Beer:
-To consume/pay for beer you have more options than either coal or iron. You may use your own breweries that have tokens remaining and these do NOT require a connection. You may use another player’s beer token but this WILL require a connection. If using a SELL action you can use the beer at a merchant who is accepting your specific good and also receive the merchant bonus at that location

This is actually a very good summary. But generally people grab this quickly or just ask if it's about beer. But then again, I select the people that will play this with me. The other thing to teach is the network thing (esp the need for city cards to jump to other spots AND that you can have a network on a city without an industry there), but that's not that hard also. It still has the best rules/crunch ratio for me. Very interesting puzzle throughout.

I think it really depends on who you are teaching it to. As I said upthread, and I've seen it in other games w/new players. the nuances of where you can build and connectivity ( oh yeah, don't forget you can only build in one space in a city in the canal era for extra randomness....) don't come naturally to some people. And for those people, the game can become pretty frustrating .