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 |
4Corners
This might be Wallace's best game- it combines the usual tough economics, route-planning, a dry yet solid theme, and multiple ways to score. The game is divided into two halves: 1)the canal era, and 2)the rail era. Each turn, you use cards to select two (usually) actions. You can: take loans (necessary at times unfortunately), place canals/rails (which are required for some shipping ala Age of Steam, and also for scoring purposes), place buildings (can be used for scoring, and needed to do pretty much anything useful), develop/drill down through your building stacks, or ship cotton (if you're set up to do it). Although the actions are card-driven, because the cards are multi-purpose, it's relatively easy to work around a "bad draw". In the first half of the game, you're trying to get some sort of economic engine going, while still trying to scrape some points together. You need to "flip" your buildings in order to score points for them, and in an interesting co-operative/competitive mechanic, your opponents will often flip them for you. After the canal era ends, any level 1 buildings, and any canals are removed from the board (after they score points of course). The rail era is very similar except that rails are more expensive to build, and some buildings may already be on the board. Another interesting aspect is that start player shifts depending on who spent the least amount of funds each turn. Scoring occurs at the end of both eras. The game only plays 3-4 (I wish it played 2-player, my one complaint of Wallace games), and it is deep and may be perceived as dry. I personally like the theme for some reason, but it certaintly won't be a draw for many people. The rules are actually quite clear for once (actually Automobile's were too, so it looks like Wallace is improving in many aspects as a full-time designer). It's one of those games where it's a grind, but it's an enjoyable grind- a game that needs to get more plays somehow.
3EBC
A unique game. The economic system is like nothing I've seen in other games. It is always a puzzle what you should be doing and why. Such a cool representation of supply and demand. One bad thing though is the learning curve, it is not a complicated game, but it has a few difficult rules to grasp. Edited the rating 8.5 -> 9.04 after playing the Roxley version which is better in every aspect.
2ndPlace
Very good game with rules that are a bit on the hard to understand side. But when I play it with players that know the rules it's one of the best games of the past couple of years.