According to BoardGameGeek, Brass: Birmingham is the best board game in the world. So when I was looking for a present for a board gamer friend, who happens to like complex Euro games, this seemed a pretty safe bet. Not that this was a totally selfless gift, it's best to give games that one would also like to play. So, tomorrow at our regular board game night, I should be able to play Brass: Birmingham for the very first time. And that is always a bit of a problem with game that has a weight score just under 4 on BGG: It is rather likely to feel completely lost in the first game. Not necessarily because the rules are hard to understand, but more like your first game of chess: Even if you know all the rules, the huge amount of possibilities is rather overwhelming.

So I watched a few videos on YouTube on how to play, and what the basic strategies are. And then I discovered that there was a version of Brass: Birmingham on Steam, albeit not highly rated. The Steam version is apparently abandoned, with the last update from April 2022. The multiplayer online component is said by the reviewers to be not working, while other reviewers say that the AI opponents are not very good. But for €16 and using it just to get comfortable with the rules and basic strategies, that seemed sufficient.

I'm glad I tried the computer version, because it quickly taught me one thing: Having read the rules *and* watched a rules video wasn't sufficient. I constantly wanted to do things, which the computer then told me I wasn't allowed to. Sometimes I hadn't looked closely enough, for example trying to build a canal boat on a connection that was rail only. In other cases I had overlooked a rule, e.g. not being able to build more than once per city in the canal era. And the rule I had the hardest time getting into my head is that to build anything with coal, you need a connection to a market, a condition that doesn't apply to iron and beer. It took me a game or two until I had really internalized all the rules of the game, and now I can look out during our physical board game evening that others don't fall into the same pitfalls and play it wrong.

Playing against a mediocre AI only gets you so far. But that is okay. My goal was only to be reasonably competent. I don't know who I will be playing with, and whether some of them already know the game; but many people at our board game nights are experienced Euro gamers, who are quick to learn and play well even on a first try. The plan is to not look stupid, and I think I will be able to manage that. I can see why the community on BoardGameGeek likes this game, the various possible strategies seem well balanced, and one needs to look at the cards and the board to make tactical decisions, beyond some basic strategy. "The best game of the world" for anyone obviously depends a lot on personal preferences and the circumstances of the game group. But for people who like complex Euro games, this appears to be a rather good choice.

Labels: Board Games

- posted by Tobold @ 4:06 PM Permanent Link