Brass: Birmingham is my favourite board game. Here are some winning strategies I discovered for myself and found online:
- If there’s room for you to sell to the market, do so to gain some easy money, and income if the market has room for all your cubes. This is more important near the beginning.
- Don’t be afraid to take loans. Expect to take at least 3 loans during the course of the game.
- Try to flip tiles right after taking a loan, so you can gain back the income loss.
- Try to take loans before your income token gets to the point on the track where levels are grouped by threes.
- Develop away level I tiles, so that tiles you place in the Canal Era score during the Canal and Rail eras. This also gives you starting locations during the Rail era.
- Try to time beers so that YOU can use them, and not opponents. This is done either by building in an out-of-the-way-lone location, or building right before they’re needed.
- Connections can be worth a lot of points, especially to Birmingham, but don’t make that your strategy. Building Cotton Mills etc is worth more.
- Remember that actions are the most precious resource in this game. Make each one count. Like when doing a sell, try to make at least two sales. One is a waste of the action.
- Personally I like the Cotton strategy. Though I’ve seen people do well with Manufacturers and Pottery.