Brass Birmingham Strategy
Try to lay as few canals down as possible in the canal era. The less you lay canals, the more actions you have to develop for more points and economy later. If you are going to put a canal down for points, try to make it worth at least 5 VPs.
Don’t give anybody free iron if you don’t have to in the canal era. Actions are your most precious resource, and you should force other players to build a canal before dropping iron if you can.
Know some common openings. As first player, you can guarantee yourself to be the first person to drop an iron in round 2 by either taking a loan or scouting as your first action. As second player, you can, for example, follow up by dropping a canal/coal (connected to the ironworks), or by developing multiple times.
Developing pays off. Developing into cotton II/III in canal is a common and powerful strategy since they will score multiple times.
Pottery is very opportunistic. Pottery I is generally weak to play in canal because it’s worth 10 points whether or not you drop it in canal or rail era, but if you can drop both Pottery I and III in canal era, you’re in good shape. The difficulty here is that people will almost certainly not help you make the canal connections to do that easily.
Don’t overdo it on coal. Lots of people build too much coal and end up with a very high income and nothing to spend it on. There are some engine building elements, but a lot of games are won with relatively low income (7-12 lbs. / turn).
In general, things I see winning players do include getting a lot of iron out in canal without having to build connections, getting multiple high level cotton out in canal, monopolizing the north (around Uttoxeter) with rails, and getting all their beer out by the end of the game.
Beer is incredibly cost efficient and worth a lot of points; it is hard to win the game if you don’t spend effort trying to get as much beer out on the board as possible.
Generally speaking, more available beer in the rail era favors people going for lots of rail points, and less beer available favors people developing industries.
uid: 202302082050 tags: #inbox