I think the comparison to Agricola and Caverna is apt - Agricola is tight, sometimes brutal but also clean and thematically coherent. I wouldn't say Birmingham sacrifices a lot to achieve that but I could feel that certain things like the box industries in Birmingham and Beer were just a touch undercooked compared to the original. In Birmingham it's much easier to build at least something viable. Lancashire has much less variation and the limited amount of space make the games much tighter but also you can end up with some unhappy players who would get completely crushed and unable to build anything at all. Yes, people say Lancashire has been solved or that there are optimal moves but so do chess and that game has lasted like forever. Birmingham is just slightly looser but more forgiving to a casual or less competitive group, as if the designers wanted to make it more palatable to a wider audience. After having played Lancashire I will say this: Lancashire is tighter, less forgiving and fat-exempt experience. I have had the luxury of buying both and started with Birmingham. If your group is more casual and players are not willing to deal with brutal defeats - get Birmingham. If your group is all about tight clean competitive games - Lancashire is better It's a tough one because both games are 10/10 material. If trying both before buying is not an option for you- I would suggest going with the author's "here is my second go at this based on all that i have learnt" which is Birmingham. The rating delta between both for most players would probably not be more than 1 to 2 points. The games are not that different from each other that I can say one will appeal to a set of players and other will not.if you like one, you will probably like the other too. The rule set is not more complex, but the decision space is meatier and more options and strategies. This results in Birmingham which makes the best things about Brass ever better. Birmingham, seems more about (IMO) - now that we have perspective and learnings from 10 odd years of gameplay, how can we make the best Brass possible? Lancashire comes across as sexy version of the original- preserving the original design for posterity (deservedly) and for those who have loved it over the years. While I traded away Lancashire (because i wanted to keep only one), Birmingham is one my five "10" rated games with 22 plays.
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