Is ‘Brass: Birmingham’ the Best Board Game Ever? BGG Thinks So.
Brass: Birmingham recently took the #1 top spot on Board Game Geek. But, is it truly the best board game ever?
When I think back far as I can recall, I remember Twilight Struggle being Board Game Geek’s top ranked game. Now, it’s a lowly 14. How the mighty have fallen. But in its place have come board games like Gloomhaven, Terraforming Mars, and as of very recently, the top spot is now held by Brass: Birmingham.
What is Brass: Birmingham?
Brass: Birmingham is essentially a sequel to the original Brass. However, there have been enough minor tweaks to gameplay and a few new mechanics that make this game entirely distinct.
Brass: Birmingham is a heavy economic strategy game with a strong emphasis on network building. Those who play it will tell you it is more complicated than it looks. But that’s not necessarily such a bad thing. What makes Brass: Birmingham fun is seeing your network of factories spring to life.
Very briefly, players compete to build factories in limited space. Then, build canals and railways for merchants willing to buy the goods produced in their factories. Other players can and will use your resources to build their own buildings, so it’s a mad dash to the top in this industrial revolution fueled by beer.
Is It Really the Best?
As with most toxic vitriol on the internet, the negative comments for Brass: Birmingham are mostly the same things being repeated over and over. Mostly remarking on how fiddly and overly complicated the game is. The remainder mostly just saying it’s boring eurotrash. Not necessarily wrong, but maybe adjust your scale of what a 1 out of 10 game is when you consider Tic-Tac-Toe is also a board game.
The positive comments are the ones that are harder to parse. Nearly all of them are completely blank. The few that do add a comment rarely add more than a plain and simple “It’s my favorite.”
At the end of the day, is there really even such a thing as best anything? It’s all subjective. Different people are going to like different things. It’s all a matter of liking what you like and not worrying too much about what other people think.
Or, maybe we just shouldn’t really put much stock in how people on the internet rate stuff.
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