BoardGameGeek’s top ranked game, Brass: Birmingham, is getting a sequel

Brass: Birmingham, the industrial revolution-themed strategy game which ousted Gloomhaven as BoardGameGeek’s top-ranked game early last year, is getting a sequel.

Roxley Games founder Gavan Brown revealed yesterday that the new game is slated to be the company’s next Kickstarter, with a planned launch in the last quarter of this year.

Brass: Birmingham is itself a sequel to Martin Wallace’s 2007 release Brass, which sees players take on the roles of competing cotton entrepreneurs in Lancashire through the 18th and 19th centuries.

Canada-based Roxley launched a Kickstarter campaign for an updated edition of Brass – named Brass: Lancashire – and a more significantly reworked version of the game, Brass: Birmingham, in 2017.

That campaign garnered huge success, with more than 13,600 backers committing over C$1.7m ($1.25m) during the 25-day crowdfunding.

Brown first made mention of another sequel on the BoardGameGeek forums in December 2021, confirming work was underway on a new game.

In a new post to BGG yesterday, he said, “We are not ready to share quite yet, but our next Brass sequel is our current top priority for development in 2024.”

Brass: Birmingham became the highest-rated game by BoardGameGeek users in February last year, ending a more than five-year run at the top for co-op dungeon crawler Gloomhaven.

The game became the eighth in BoardGameGeek history to reach the number one spot, setting aside a trio of games briefly ranked in top position due to April Fools jokes or bugs in the system.

Its predecessors as top ranked game aside from Gloomhaven comprise Pandemic Legacy, Twilight Struggle, Agricola, Puerto Rico, Tigris and Euphrates and Paths of Glory.