Why is Brass: Birmingham world's #1 board game? 

You actually know how to play the game :)

Agree!

It was saying "watch me, watch me!"

I think he liked the way the mechanics tie together in a circular dependancy, as opposed to just the typical straight line in engine building games.

The best way to stop forgetting using cards is just give two cards each at the end of the round after being sure that every one only have 6 cards left.. also, it has a lot of rules, but it make sense with the theme so it's not hard to internalize them.

@@mealessi It is a deep game, but compared to other deep games I think the rules are very difficult to teach, leading to somewhat poor first plays, then if you don't play very soon after, these rules will have to be scoured from the rulebook.

We never had problems with this. I think the reason is that we use quite strict routines to help us with those processes. I.e. All the money spend by a player during a turn is put onto the turn order track for that player. So at the end of the round it's easy to see who spent the most.

@@sarumon17 Your second comment describes the situation I am in. With my first self-taught game I wasn't able to pick up on any of the nuances described in this review.

You're meant to put your coins spent on the left side of the board. At the end of the round you just look at who spent the most coins. Don't see how that is difficult personally

Would be helpful to understand what the key differences between Brass Birmingham & Brass Lancashire are that makes both of you prefer the latter.

@@a-c-m Lancashire is like Chess. Birmingham like Chess where the pawns can move in all eight directions.

@@a-c-m For me, having played both, I find Lancashire to be a much cleaner design. I certainly appreciate the added complexity of having Beer as a resource, but for me I'll prefer playing Lancashire always over Birmingham (or as I say when it comes out, "Beer-mingham")

would it be an NPI video without strenuous connections that only make sense to us?

@NoPunIncluded it would be a RU-vid video period if it were not made connect to something else that had buzz. Metatags pointing to the latest Zelda game are a must. MUST have Martin Wallace discovered by Nintendo fans. Funny thing, I thought Birmingham in the game was connected to United States. And I own the game.

I'm not sure how much zelda metatags would help because not many a zelda fan is interested in this. Me and Elaine have just been playing a lot of Zelda in the evenings lately, and I thought, isn't it funny how both of these games have a circular convoluted game loop but implement it in a totally opposite way. And how that's informed by the tone of the game. It's a tenuous connection but an illustrative one and I think that's kinda neat.

@@NoPunIncluded more likely to generate views from Zelda Metatags than Martin Wallace ones.

It might be the people I play with but, I find that I do the best when I am full filling demands. Am I foreseeing a lack of iron and/or coal on the board? Then I will start building ironworks and strategic coal mines. Am I foreseeing a glut of iron and/or coal? Then I will start to build production buildings.

Why? I've seen the opinions both ways in comments, but no actual reasons given.

And - what an irony - they are absolutely wrong 🤣

Love for Leek.

Isn't the BIC strategy the meta of this game?

​@@ExozikThose are just the resources in the game. There's a lot more to it that that.

@@zga042 No, it is the name of a strategy that was publish by a veteran player on bgg forum. From what I've read whn I looked into it last year, this was the ultimate strategy.

What are the high scores after that many plays?

@@dylanwatson6761 241 in 2P

It's real good. There's a place called The Forge Mill nearby that does a pretty decent cup of coffee and a reasonable scone.

Barrage

No idea, bought these like five years ago? I don't really use sleeves anymore.

listen I.... nevermind

That's pretty crazy. Do you have any links by the way to where this was organised? Cheers.

Looking at the ratings breakdown of Gloomhaven, this doesnt really seem to check out, as they seem perfectly organic.

I love a good bi-lingual pun

And "BB" is also a reference to Billy Bragg, whose album "Workers' Playtime" is visible in the video and features the song "Must I Paint You a Picture". Nice!

I’m in a similar boat, though after 1 play of Lanc and 2 of Birm I don’t feel the need to play it anymore times to confirm it. There’s so many other great heavy euros that are great on every play for me to want to spend anymore time trying to understand why this is ranked so high.

The Navvies, who built Britain's railways were provided with a constant supply of calorie rich food and beer which they consumed in copious quantities as they worked. We actually have a video that explains this ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-bzNMsAvgaLk.html

Here's the thing about that. I think it's pretty telling that Gloomhaven started going down when Frosthaven came out. People who own both and prefer Frosthaven ranked Gloomhaven down to emphasize that Frosthaven is better. Sure, that probably made a difference. But I think focusing on the minutae of the rankings system also kinda unfairly detracts from the fact that Brass Birmingham has been out for yonks and slowly and steadily climbed to the top. That's kinda neat. And you know me, I loooooove Gloomhaven.

@@NoPunIncluded Yeah, any game in the top hundred is worth checking out - there are currently 24547 ranked games (with Tic-Tac-Toe at the bottom) so the top hundred are less than half of one percent of the ranked games, themselves just over a sixth of the games listed on the site. I'm mostly annoyed at not understanding how the geek rating works...

@@rmsgrey From the FAQ: "BGG Rating (aka Geek Rating): BoardGameGeek's ranking charts are ordered using the BGG Rating, which is based on the Average Rating, but with some alterations. To prevent games with relatively few votes climbing to the top of the BGG Ranks, artificial "dummy" votes are added to the User Ratings. These votes are currently thought to be 100 votes equal to the mid range of the voting scale: 5.5, but the actual algorithm is kept secret to avoid manipulation. The effect of adding these dummy votes is to pull BGG Ratings toward the mid range. Games with a large number of votes will see their BGG Rating alter very little from their Average Rating, but games with relatively few user ratings will see their BGG Rating move considerably toward 5.5. This is known as "Bayesian averaging" and a quick search of both BGG and/or the Web will reveal much discussion on the topic. You will see this rating listed in advanced searches, your game collection, and near the top, most right corner of game pages. The "User Rating" is arguably the one you will use the most, and the "Average Rating" will be the most helpful when looking for a good, well received game. With both of these rating systems you will see a number between 1 and 10. Each user is encouraged to rate games based on their own opinion of the game. As such, different users may assign different meanings to the 1-10 scale. There is no official or set algorithm in place by which users are expected to follow."

@@rmsgrey Also, I assume they have a time weighting in there, Ie newer ratings might count more than older ratings (which then fade out over time). That is one possible explanation for the fact that some games rank ahead of others despite both more votes and higher average rating for the lower ranked one.

@@a-c-m Yeah, there's speculation about a time weighting on votes, but there's also speculation about something based on the distribution of votes. It's also been suggested that there is some sort of system in place to suppress bad faith votes, and that there may be direct manual intervention in some cases.

would you event want to?

It's real good you can make a flying sled with a homing cannon

Gloomhaven doesn’t belong there either.

They are both well-designed games, apparently. EDIT: Not that I disagree, I just felt like being reductive.

You are not alone on that one. Even Efkar agrees 😉

snitches get stitches