Brass (not a review)

Martin Wallace's game Brass is one of the games I will play almost any time. I really enjoy it, but it hits the points that I enjoy in a game. One of my gripes about Industrial Waste is the need to get orders to get income form your developed factory. I enjoy building up my super factory, but the day-to-day drag of actually getting orders isn't as fun.

Brass gives you all the fun of running several industries, but once you have a market for your goods, you never have to go through the bother of selling from that factory again. You keep selling from that factory (since your income is permanently increased), but you don't need to concern yourself with such low-level details.

The most important action (in my opinion) that you can take in this game is development. And that is implemented in a staggeringly unintuitive manner (flipping tiles off of stacks). The best payoffs (in points) come with the more developed industries, but they tend to give the worst income boost. It seems hard to evaluate, but I guess that's a good thing. Few businesses in the real world know exactly what the pay off for R&D investment will be.

The tension of this game lies in its limited actions and money. If you go for a cash strong approach to the game, then you should hope that shipyards are open when you need them (shipyards are a very good way to convert cash into points). You can almost always go for loans (and if you are feeling short on cash that is usually a good move).

Brass is a hard game to learn, but I think that's mainly because a lot of the mechanics are new. Also the components lead people to think coal and iron are the same. They aren't, and the rules treat them differently. Although calling iron, "iron" is somewhat misleading since it represents iron works building steam engines and such.

I've played the game about ten times. The first few games were learning about how cards worked and where you could build (transporting coal/iron). The next few were learning the importance of loans. Then there was learning how important development was. The last few games have focused on transportation links.

There is a lot to this game, and even after all the times I've played it, I don't feel like I know it well enough to give a fair review. The best I can do is say that I've enjoyed every game win or lose (which is admittedly highly subjective).

Theme in Games

Game theme is a highly subjective game attribute, but I think theme is part of the immersion of a game.

Immersion is when the game stops being rules, wooden bits, cards, cardboard, and so on and becomes something more. RPGs seem to be inherently thematic and immersive.

Without immersion you are just sitting around a table talking and rolling dice (not much of a "game" there isn't even a winner); RPGs are enjoyable games because of the immersion. And they acchieve this immersion via theme (plus social aspect of game).

Game theory seems to be unable to fully describe RPGs, but narrative theory does deal with RPGs. The more narrative based a game is the more each move in the game can be narrated.

Industrial Waste is very much a game theory game, but it also has some narrative. Each move is fairly dry. For example:

I recently played a two player game of Industrial Waste. I was the yellow company and my opponent was red. The red company's logo is NiN (industrial bands for industrial waste).

I went second. Action cards were dealt face up into 3 piles of three cards each (no duplicates allowed in a pile). The opposing company, NiN, picked up a pile containing Growth, Innovation, and Order. I took the pile with Order, Raw Materials, and Waste Removal.

NiN played growth moving up to 15 million Euros for a completed order (game ends once a company reaches 20 on the growth track).

I played my raw materials card to auction off 5 goods. The auction in this game goes once around the table. NiN bid 5 million Euros and I raised it to 6 million winning the auction. Since I called the auction and won the 6 million went to the bank. If I'd let NiN get the goods, I would have taken their 5 million bid for myself (person who starts the auction gets the money).

But at a high level:

I played Industrial Waste again. I warned the other player repeatedly about the disadvantages of non-stop pollution in the game, but he filled up all of his waste storage area, and couldn't run his factory any more. He tried bribes to keep things quiet after pollution related accidents plagued his plant, but all the money wasted on bribery plus the inability to produce put him in a poor position for the end game.

Chess and Go are immersive because of the level of thought involved, but there's no real narrative (hence, no theme from my point of view). Theme isn't critical for an enjoyable game.

A well themed game is one where you can tell a story about what happened afterwards, and that's inherently immersive for me.