Brass

Nothing kills the time sitting in the washroom like a great eurogame port, and boy am I happy to find a solid app version of Brass. The art is lovely, the interface functional, and the game is, of course, fantastic. The only reason this app does not earn a full 5 star rating is that I, like a few other folks before me it seems, am bothered by the lack of an undo button available before finalizing your turn. Nothing ruins a good game of Brass like gambling it all for a shipyard in Birkenhead only to realize you’ve just accidentally spent 8 quid on port development. Weak a critique as that is, you should definitely still buy this port if you love Brass.

It’s a real solid version of the classic Wallace board game. The interface is clear and it’s easy to follow what’s going on. The A.I. Is mostly competent and doesn’t make a lot of moves that leave you scratching your head. Only drawback is it takes a while to figure out all the rules if this is your first introduction to Brass. There’s no avoiding it as it’s the nature of the source material. They do an ok job with the tutorial; once you understand all the complex mechanics and the strategic impact of your choices it’s quite engaging.

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This might be a great app for those who have been playing Brass for awhile. I don’t blame the devs for the tutorial as most human beings currently living can not make any sense of the rulebook, but it’s supposed to be a “Martin Wallace classic “ and a great game, so I’ve been trying to learn it on the app before playing elsewhere or buying the board. There’s no undo that I can see. Is this sadism? If one taps outside the build box for a 2nd development, for instance, well, there goes that crucial move in a game where every tiny move counts for everything. The tutorial barely explains how anything works. There’s no reason to have new players stumbling through the dark. “Coal helps buildings” is not helpful to understanding the unique economic mechanisms in this game. I’ve spent a few hours gleaning things on Bgg, expert faqs, bullet pointed advice, all seems unnecessary and a huge detraction from a tool that could bring new people into an infamously difficult to penetrate game, unless you are a weathered 18xx grognard. oh well

Love the game itself, and the implementation is not terrible. But it’s not great either (e.g. not friendly or intuitive). My biggest issue is that it keeps crashing in the middle and end of games. Good night, it can’t be that hard to make the game stable. My last straw is in my last game when it permanently crashed after my last turn! Gahhh.... so frustrating!!!

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I enjoy playing Brass on both my iPad and iPhone, and it works great in the canal era, but once the rail era starts, I’ve encountered a bug where I am unable to complete my turns as the check box to complete turns is unresponsive. A work around is to go to the main menu and then continue the game, but it’s cumbersome and sometimes skips the rest of your turn - for example if I attempt to develop two items on a turn, I am only able to develop once and when I go to the main menu and continue, it won’t let me develop a second time. Same applies when attempting to sell cotton twice on a turn. Would be a great implementation once this bug gets fixed.