After Brass: Pittsburgh hit $9.1m on Gamefound and pulled in over 37,000 backers, Roxley CEO Gavan Brown sat down with BoardGameWire and made a point worth pinning to the noticeboard at every euro-game club. "Deluxe editions across the hobby have become sort of an arms race", he said, before explaining that Roxley "often do the opposite". For a hobby that has spent most of the post-Kickstarter decade competing on miniature counts and box weight, that is a shot across the bow.
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Find events near youBrown's argument is that the Collector's Edition of Pittsburgh, the first new entry in the Brass line since Roxley's 2018 Birmingham debut and Lancashire reprint, focused on innovative materials and a smaller footprint rather than upgraded plastic. The Essentials Edition holds the same MSRP as a Birmingham retail copy at Target. That pricing discipline is why a $200 Collector's Edition still felt within reach for Brass diehards.
The interview also unpicks a major design decision. Brown said heavy development began in November 2024, and he ended up gutting the original oil consumption system after research showed crude oil was processed into lubricants used across manufacturing. The replacement spreads consumption beyond kerosene to manufactured goods, which playtesters say is both crunchier and more interactive than Birmingham's beer economy.
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Set up your group for freePittsburgh is also Roxley's first campaign on Gamefound after ten on Kickstarter, and Brown was unusually candid about why: built-in pledge manager, multi-language support, and tax tooling that Kickstarter still does not match. Roxley stumbled early by failing to communicate the Collector's Edition's value and axed stretch goals, then unveiled all the upgrades on day four before spotlighting them daily, a recovery move that drove a second-half surge in pledges.
The Brass series sits at the top of BoardGameGeek's heavy-euro pile, with Birmingham holding the #1 spot overall. Pittsburgh now joins Birmingham and Lancashire as a third pillar, and given the campaign numbers and Brown's fuller co-design role this time, the question moves from whether Pittsburgh is good to how UK groups get a copy on the shelf.
Sources: BoardGameWire Interview | Gamefound Campaign | Roxley Brass Pittsburgh
