Brass: Lancashire
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Brass: Lancashire — first published as Brass — is an economic strategy game that tells the story of competing cotton entrepreneurs in Lancashire during the industrial revolution. You must develop, build, and establish your industries and network so that you can capitalize demand for iron, coal and cotton. The game is played over two halves: the canal phase and the rail phase. To win the game, score the most victory points (VPs), which are counted at the end of each half. VPs are gained from your canals, rails, and established (flipped) industry tiles. Each round, players take turns according to the turn order track, receiving two actions to perform any of the following:
Build an industry tile
Build a rail or canal
Develop an industry
Sell cotton
Take a loan
At the end of a player’s turn, they replace the two cards they played with two more from the deck. Turn order is determined by how much money a player spent on the previous turn, from lowest spent first to highest spent. This turn order mechanism opens some strategic options for players going later in the turn order, allowing for the possibility of back-to-back turns.
After all the cards have been played the first time (with the deck size being adjusted for the number of players), the canal phase ends and a scoring round commences. After scoring, all canals and all of the lowest level industries are removed for the game, after which new cards are dealt and the rail phase begins. During this phase, players may now occupy more than one location in a city and a double-connection build (though expensive) is possible. At the end of the rail phase, another scoring round takes place, then a winner is crowned.
The cards limit where you can build your industries, but any card can be used for the develop, sell cotton or build connections actions. This leads to a strategic timing/storing of cards. Resources are common so that if one player builds a rail line (which requires coal) they have to use the coal from the nearest source, which may be an opponent’s coal mine, which in turn gets that coal mine closer to scoring (i.e., being utilized).
Brass: Lancashire, the 2018 edition from Roxley Games, reboots the original Warfrog Games edition of Brass with new artwork and components, as well as a few rules changes:
The virtual link rules between Birkenhead have been made optional.
The three-player experience has been brought closer to the ideal experience of four players by shortening each half of the game by one round and tuning the deck and distant market tiles slightly to ensure a consistent experience.
Two-player rules have been created and are playable without the need for an alternate board.
The level 1 cotton mill is now worth 5 VP to make it slightly less terrible.
Ages | 14+ |
---|---|
Players | 2 Players, 3 Players, 4 Players |
Play Time | 60m – 120m |
Designer | Martin Wallace |
Mechanics | Income, Loans, Network and Route Building, Hand Management |
Theme | Economic, Industry / Manufacturing, Transportation |
Publisher | BoardM Factory, Conclave Editora, Crowd Games, Eagle-Gryphon Games, FRED Distribution, Inc., Funforge, Giant Roc, Roxley, Warfrog Games, White Goblin Games, Ghenos Games, Maldito Games, Pegasus Spiele, PHALANX, Wargames Club Publishing |
adebisi
2010/08 After 1st play: Absolutely fantastic. I kept smiling through the whole game and afterwards everyone was speculating about the outcome. This truly is a sign of a great game. However, being conservative I give Brass a rating of 9. We'll see if it deserves a full ten. 2013/01 Well, Brass didn't earn that 10 but it's still going strong after several plays. I really have to complain about the rulebook but that's the Wallace standard and cannot be helped. Furthermore, the rules are not very intuitive but eventually you'll get a hang of it. 2015-11-04 To my big surprise I sold this in an auction. Might be that I'll regret it later, but at this point of my life I just felt like getting rid of games that haven't seen any or very little play in the past 3-4 years. It seems that nowadays the games hitting the table are action packed sub 90 minute games instead of longer ones like Brass. Moreover, the complexity of the rules in Brass forces an occasional player to reread the rules every single time you want to bring the game into the table. This reduces the chances of Brass getting played. If I only had more space to store my games...
aaronseeber
Fantastic "efficiency engine" game with great strategic depth, marred slightly by an overly long playing time and maybe a touch too much luck.
adrian754
One of the best economic games with an awesome theme for an euro, but too many rules, it's a game for experienced players. Awesome components.