How to play Brass: Birmingham

Brass: Birmingham is a heavy economic strategy game by Martin Wallace in which you build industries and transport networks across industrial-revolution Birmingham. Over two distinct eras — the Canal Era and the Rail Era — you develop coal mines, iron works, breweries, and factories, selling goods to merchants and expanding your reach across the map. Every tile you place is a bet on the future, because industries only score when their resources are consumed or their goods are sold.

The design rewards patience and spatial thinking. You share resources with your opponents, coal and iron flow across a contested board, and a well-timed sale can flip a cluster of your tiles — triggering income and victory points at once. The two-era structure means the board resets between halves: every link you built in the Canal Era is swept away, forcing you to rebuild your network from scratch with rail lines before the final reckoning.

Never played a heavy economic game? Strip away the ledger and the loop is simple: every action is paid for by discarding a card, and on your turn you take just two actions. You build something — a mine, a brewery, a mill — connect it to the world with canals or rails, and get paid only when its output is actually used: coal burned, beer drunk, cotton sold. Points and income arrive with the flip of a tile. Do that slightly more efficiently than your rivals across two eras and you win; everything else is detail.

What's in the box, and what each piece does at the table:

• 1 game board (double-sided) — the West Midlands map in day and night art (both sides play identically). Towns hold industry spaces, the routes between them take your link tiles, and around the edge run the coal market, the iron market, the merchant spaces, and the shared progress track.
• 4 player mats — your personal industry supply, stacked in columns by level. Only the lowest remaining tile of each industry may be built — which is exactly why the Develop action exists.
• 180 industry tiles (45 per color: 11 cotton mills, 11 manufacturers, 7 coal mines, 7 breweries, 5 potteries, 4 iron works) — what you actually place on the map. Each shows its build cost, the resources it needs, and the income and VP it grants once flipped.
• 56 link tiles (14 per color) — double-sided canal/rail pieces that grow your network: canals in the first era, rails in the second (rails burn coal, and building two at once also drinks beer).
• 64 location & industry cards — the fuel for everything: every action is paid by discarding one. A card's face only restricts the Build action — any card can power the other five.
• 8 wild cards (4 wild location, 4 wild industry) — acquired with the Scout action; they build anything anywhere legal, then return to their face-up piles when spent.
• 4 character tiles — portraits of period industrialists that sit on the turn-order track; the money you spend piles onto yours, and whoever spent the least acts first next round.
• 4 VP markers + 4 income markers — both ride the progress track: one records points scored, the other your income level, which starts at 0 and climbs each time one of your tiles flips.
• 30 coal cubes + 18 iron cubes — shared resources. They sit on the mines and iron works that produced them, and anyone may consume them (helpfully flipping the owner's tile); the overflow fills the two markets, where prices rise as cubes run out.
• 15 beer barrels — the grease of commerce: selling goods almost always consumes beer — from your own breweries anywhere, from a rival's only if connected, or from a merchant's barrel in exchange for that merchant's bonus.
• 9 merchant tiles — the outside buyers, shuffled onto the board-edge merchant spaces each game; each buys only certain goods, so where cotton, manufactured goods, or pottery can actually be sold changes every play.
• 67 money tokens (£1, £5, and £15 coins) — cash for building; money you spend sits on your character tile until round's end, then returns to the bank.
• 4 player aids — one per player, summarizing the actions and icons.

A game is two eras — Canal (1770–1830), then Rail (1830–1870) — each lasting exactly 10/9/8 rounds with 2/3/4 players (an era ends when the deck and every hand are empty). Each round, players act in turn-order-track order:

1. Take two actions — any mix, repeats allowed. Sole exception: in the first round of the Canal Era, everyone takes a single action. Every action (even passing) is paid by discarding a card face-up; the card's face only matters for Build. The six actions: - Build — discard a location card (build in that town, even outside your network) or an industry card (build that industry inside your network) and place the lowest tile of that industry from your mat, paying its cost in £, coal, and iron. Coal must travel to the site along links; iron may come from any iron works or the market. - Network — place a link: 1 canal for £3 in the Canal Era; in the Rail Era, 1 rail for £5 + 1 coal, or 2 rails for £15 + 2 coal + 1 beer. - Develop — remove 1 or 2 tiles from your mat, consuming 1 iron each, to expose the stronger levels beneath. Pottery tiles marked with a lightbulb can never be developed — the only way to clear them off your mat is to build them. - Sell — flip any number of your connected cotton mills, manufacturers, and potteries at merchants that buy those goods, consuming the beer each tile demands. Every flip advances your income marker. - Loan — take £30 from the bank and move your income marker back 3 income levels. - Scout — discard 2 extra cards to take the wild location and wild industry cards (not allowed if you already hold a wild).
2. Spend openly. Money you spend piles onto your character tile — it is not just payment, it is your bid for turn order.
3. Refill your hand to 8 cards at the end of your turn.
4. End the round: re-order the character tiles — whoever spent the least goes first next round — then everyone collects income equal to their income level (skipped at the end of the game's final round; negative income must be paid to the bank).
5. End the era: score 1 VP per link icon adjacent to each of your links, then remove them; score the VP printed on your flipped industry tiles (unflipped ones score nothing). Between eras, sweep every canal and all level-1 industries off the board, reset merchant beer, reshuffle everything, and deal fresh 8-card hands for the Rail Era.

Tiles flip in two ways: mills, manufacturers, and potteries flip when sold; mines, iron works, and breweries flip when their last resource is consumed — often by an opponent, which suits you fine: every flip raises your income.

A round in practice. Ana discards her Coventry card to Build a level 1 cotton mill in Coventry — the card names the town, so it needn't be in her network. Beto discards any card and pays £3 to Network a canal, linking his coal mine toward a growing town. Carla Sells: her manufacturer is connected to a merchant that buys manufactured goods, so she consumes that merchant's beer barrel, flips her tile, jumps her income, and pockets the merchant's bonus. Diego, cash-poor, takes a Loan — £30 now, income marker back 3 levels — funding a big Build next round.

Scoring happens at the end of each era, and the totals accumulate. Links score 1 VP per link icon shown at the locations they touch; flipped industry tiles score the VP printed on them — unflipped tiles score nothing at all. After Rail Era scoring, the player with the most VPs wins; ties are broken by the highest income level, then by the most money remaining, and if still tied the players share the victory.

The core tension is income versus points. Loans and cheap level-1 tiles generate early cash flow, but everything level 1 is swept away at the era break — if it never flipped, it scored nothing. Level 2+ tiles survive into the Rail Era and can score twice: a flipped level 3 cotton mill is worth a whopping 18 VP across both eras. Strong players Develop early, cluster industries so a single Sell flips several tiles at once, and remember that leftover income is worth no points by itself — it is common to win with a low income level and a board full of flipped tiles.