This article is a review of a game submitted by one of our member, rbayu2
Brass
Brass is a game about industrial revolution in Lancashire, England during the eighteenth century. It’s a 3 to 4 player game.
The Gameplay and Mechanic
The game is divided into two periods, Canal period and Rail period. Basically each one will play the same phases with only slight different rules and restrictions in each of them. Phases in each period will be:
- dealing cards to each player
- players actions
- victory point scoring.
In the beginning everyone dealt out 8 cards randomly. With these cards you can do many actions. Some actions require you to match the cities or the industry cards to the matching section on the board. Other actions just require you to basically pay one card (any card) in order to carry out the action. When doing specific actions you can do so as well by simply paying any 2 cards combined acting as a joker. After playing 2 cards from your hand you draw back from the draw pile another 2 to make your hand back to 8.
The heart of the game is during the player actions. In this game you simply have several options to do for which you can build industries and ports, develop, build canal or rail that links your industry to others, sell cotton dan take loan from the bank. When you build industry and canal/rail links they will be useful not just for you but for other players as well. Industries you build will provide resources for you and others while canals and rails will provide links needed to transport resources for all. You can sell cotton by building cotton mills. When you sell you will need to sell it to port. The port can be yours or others. When you sell it to port that belongs to other player then he will benefit from your action as well. When you are low on money you can always take loan from the bank. But beware when you take to much loan then during the income collections phase you won’t be getting any money but instead paying back to the bank depending on how many negative points you have on your income track. Other action can have you developed your industry to be more advanced giving you more money or more victory points at the end of each period.
Then The last phase is scoring your victory points. This is triggered as soon as your hand cards are out. During the Canal Period when you reach the VP scoring phase you imediately start the Rail Period. The game ends as soon as you reach the vp scoring phase in Rail Period.
The Component
These are top notch components. The board is beautifully rendered. The counters are nice and thick with good artworks on it. The plastic coins simbolizing silver and cooper although plain but adequate enough to use. The cards come in standard size which also has beautiful artworks. The rest are wooden cubes nicely painted black and orange and some wooden markers.
The Review
These game involves minimum luck factor. It has a very strong theme. You are actually building industries throughout both period and actually the process of building them has some historical background and chronological order. For example in the begining you can build cotton mills to produce cotton without the need to use any resources since the technology was still water powered.
Later on they will start using steam engines and that means they will need to use coal as resources and further later they would start using iron as well. For this reason you will need to build some coal mines and iron works to provide coal and iron for your industry and others’ as well.
What I Like:
- Very strong thematic game
- Has very deep strategy with multiple paths to victory
- Beautiful artwork and components
- High replay value
- Minimum luck factor
What I kind of don’t like (not major issues):
- It’s hard to teach to some new players
- Prone to Analysis Paralysis due to multiple paths to victory
For the player scalable I tend to like it a little bit more with four player rather than three. The reason is it simply creates more competitiveness.
The Conclusions
To sum it up no doubt Brass has become a solid contender for heavy euro games. It’s one of the few best strategical euro with strong themes. The only reason it cannot make it to the top 10 BGG rank yet is due to its rarity and high price which probably prevent some people from owning this game. If you are a eurogames junkie then no doubt this will be a must-have title for your collection. I highly recommend it.
