Brass: Birmingham Review: BGG's #1 Game Has a Catch

Brass: Birmingham is the #1 rated game on BoardGameGeek for a reason, but my group quit after three plays. Let me explain.

What Is This Game?

Brass: Birmingham is an economic strategy game designed by Martin Wallace, Gavan Brown, and Matt Tolman, set during the Industrial Revolution in England between 1770 and 1870. You're playing as competing entrepreneurs trying to build industries, establish trade networks, and exploit market demands across two distinct eras: the canal era and the rail era.

The game is played over these two halves, with a scoring phase between them. Each round, you'll take two actions from a menu of six: build industries, expand your network of canals or rails, develop your industry tiles, sell goods (cotton, manufactured goods, pottery), take loans, or scout (discard cards to gain flexibility). Everything is driven by a hand of cards that dictate where and what you can build, creating a tight puzzle of timing and positioning.

What makes Brass: Birmingham special is how interconnected everything is. Your industries need resources from the board, sometimes your own, sometimes your opponents'. Your network matters not just for scoring but for accessing coal and iron. The market fluctuates based on player actions. It's a web of interlocking systems that, when it clicks, produces genuinely brilliant gameplay.

What Works

There's a reason this game sits at #1 on BGG. The strategic depth here is substantial. Every decision ripples outward in ways that reward long-term planning and punish carelessness. The tension between cooperation (you often need your opponents' resources) and competition (you're fighting for the same spaces and markets) creates a dynamic that few games replicate.

There's a unique reset mechanic at the halfway point that clears much of the board, so you can't just build toward one final score. You need a plan for both halves. It's a design choice that adds genuine strategic texture rather than just complexity for its own sake.

What Doesn't

Here's where I have to be honest: my group gave up on Brass: Birmingham after three plays, and we're a group that regularly tackles heavy games without issue.

The problem isn't the weight. It's the sheer number of small rules, exceptions, and edge cases. There are rules about when you can and can't use certain resources, restrictions on what connects to what, specific conditions for flipping tiles, timing nuances for market access, and on and on. Individually, each rule makes thematic sense. Collectively, they create a minefield.

Through all three of our sessions, we discovered mid-game that we'd been misplaying something significant. Sometimes multiple things. And these weren't rookie mistakes. These were rules we thought we understood, applied confidently, and got wrong anyway. By the end of each game, we genuinely didn't know if the winner had actually won or just benefited from our collective confusion.

I want to be clear: I've only played three times. Three plays isn't enough to fully judge a game this deep, and I acknowledge that. But it was enough for my group to decide they weren't interested in pushing through to session four or five.

Replayability

In theory, replayability should be excellent. The card-driven action system means every game will present different opportunities and constraints. The player board setup varies, market conditions shift based on player decisions, and the interaction between opponents ensures no two games play identically.

The catch is you have to survive the learning curve to access that replayability. Once you internalize all those rules, and I mean truly internalize them, not just read them once, I can see how this becomes a game you play dozens of times. But that's a significant investment that not every group will be willing to make.

Who Should Play This

Brass: Birmingham is ideal for groups who can commit to playing it repeatedly with the same people, ideally five or more sessions to get comfortable with the rules. If you have a dedicated game group and at least one person willing to become the resident expert who teaches it correctly every time, you'll likely find a rewarding experience here.

Skip this if your group rotates games frequently or if you're looking for something you can learn once and play correctly on the first try. Also skip it if you're new to heavy euros. This is not a good entry point. Games like Concordia or Great Western Trail will give you a better foundation before tackling something this intricate.

Final Verdict

Brass: Birmingham clearly deserves its reputation. The strategic depth, the economic modeling, the interlocking systems, it's all there. But the barrier to entry is real, and my group bounced off it hard. I suspect this is a game I could learn to love with the right circumstances. I just haven't found them yet.