Disclaimer: I purchased the game myself, and the opinions expressed in the review are completely my own.
Overview:
Brass Birmingham allows you to play out the 100 years between 1770 – 1870 during England’s Industrial Revolution, where you will be building Canal & Rail links to different businesses in the West Midlands area.
Rules & Setup:
Game set up does take a while as there are quite a few tiles to place on each players board, and sorting out the cards depending on the player count. The board is double sided but the only differences are that one is shown as daytime, and the other as night (my favourite of the 2)
The rules are quite in depth and detailed but there are plenty of pictures and board examples to help you out during the reading / learning of the game, plus as the game has been out for a while now there are lots of videos on the internet to explain how to play and some of actual games being played from start to finish.
Brass Birmingham is a game where the nuances will take some time to pick up but once you get into the rounds and how to play your actions they all make sense.
Theme, Mechanics & Gameplay:
As mentioned above, the games theme is that of England’s Industrial Revolution, and you build businesses and links to different towns and cities by playing cards and taking one of several actions, namely;-
· Build
· Network
· Develop
· Sell
· Loan
· Scout
Build action means you place one of your industry tiles on the board paying the required cost as shown against the tile on your player board.
Network action allows you to add links to the board, which join up towns and cities and allows you to grow your presence on the board.
Develop action allows you to remove industry tiles from your board instead of paying to build them on the main board, thereby gaining faster access to higher level buildings.
Sell action allows you to flip over your built buildings which increase your income and VP’s.
Loan action allows you to take a £30 loan from the bank, whilst at the same time moving your income marker back 3 levels (not spaces)
Scout action allows you to swap 3 of your current hand cards for 1 wild location card, and 1 wild industry card
Once all players have played 2 actions (only one in the very first turn) you determine the next turn order by lowest spend to highest, and then each player receives income based on their positive income level, or pays money to the bank if they are in the negative area of the income track.
Both the canal and rail eras play out until all the cards have been used, and then at the end of each era scoring is conducted and at the end of the rail era the person with the most VP’s is declared the winner. There are tie breakers if scores of 2 or more players are equal.
Artwork and Components:
The artwork in Brass Birmingham is exceptionally good, from the cards to the player and main board and even that on the building tiles is very thematic.
The quality of the components is also very good, although there are plenty of upgrades you can buy for the link tiles, coal and iron and even poker chip iron clays for the money.
The Good:
At the time of writing this review (August 2025) the game is ranked number one on BoardGameGeek (BGG), and it is easy to see why some gamers rank it highly enough that their combined scores put it in that place. For me the game is very good, and although in my own collection I don’t rank it as my number one game that I own, but it is still very high of those in my collection.
The Other:
The only thing for me that lets the game down in any way is the lack of an official solo mode, although again on BGG there are plenty of fan made ones that are very good. My favourite is GEORGE.
Final Thoughts:
For me Brass Birmingham is an excellent game, and one of the designers finest, and it has just been announced that there will be a new addition to the fold, namely Brass Pittsburgh to go with both Birmingham and Lancashire.
If it is as good as Birmingham then there may well be a new King on the block in the coming months, so it’s full steam ahead for the new chapter in the Brass story, after all, every piece of Brass needs a bit of polishing from time to time, even if only to make it shine even brighter.
