Brass: Birmingham

A game of exactly two eras

The game runs through the Canal Era (1770-1830) and the Rail Era (1830-1870). Each era continues until the Draw Deck and every player's Hand are exhausted, and at the end of each era you score your Link tiles and your flipped Industry tiles. Whoever has the most Victory Points after the Rail Era wins.

Components

Setup

1. 1Lay out the board on the day or night side. For fewer than 4 players, return every card and Merchant tile showing a higher player count to the box.
2. 2Put the Wild Location and Wild Industry cards face up on 2 of the Card Draw Areas, then shuffle the rest and place them face down on the remaining one (the Draw Deck).
3. 3Shuffle the remaining Merchant tiles and place 1 face up on each Merchant space marked with your player count. At 2 players there is no Merchant in Warrington or Nottingham; at 3 players, none in Nottingham.
4. 4Place 1 beer barrel on the space beside each non-blank Merchant tile.
5. 5Fill the Coal Market with 1 black cube per space, leaving 1 of the £1 spaces open, and the Iron Market with 1 orange cube per space, leaving both £1 spaces open.
6. 6The remaining cubes and barrels form the General Supply; the money forms the Bank.
7. 7Each player takes a Player Mat, a Character tile, the matching Link tiles, and £17. Stack your Industry tiles on their slots with the black top half face down.
8. 8Put your VP Marker on «0» and your Income Marker on «10» on the Progress Track.
9. 9Draw 8 cards as your Hand, then draw 1 more and place it face down in your player area as your Discard Pile.
10. 10Once everyone is set up, shuffle the Character tiles and place them in random order on the Turn Order Track.

Your turn and the six actions

1. 1On your turn you take 2 actions in total, and you may take the same action twice. The exception is the first round of the Canal Era, which is 1 action.
2. 2Discard 1 card from your Hand for each action, passing included, face up onto your Discard Pile.
3. 3When you spend money, put it on your Character tile on the Turn Order Track rather than into the Bank — what you spent this round decides next round's turn order.
4. 4After your actions, refill your Hand back up to 8 cards. Once the Draw Deck is exhausted your Hand shrinks each round, and the era ends when everyone has played their last card.

1. 1End of round ① — whoever spent the least money goes first next round and whoever spent the most goes last. Players who spent the same amount keep their relative order. Then all the money on the Character tiles goes back to the Bank.
2. 2End of round ② — take money from the Bank equal to your income level. No income is collected at the end of the final round of the game.

The Build action — the card decides where and what

Of the six actions, only Build cares which card you discard. Everything else takes any card from your Hand; Build takes a card that names the place or the industry.

1. 1Discard an appropriate card.
2. 2Take the lowest level tile of that industry from your mat and place it black-top-half face down on an undeveloped space in the location. Prefer a space showing only that industry's icon; otherwise use a space that shows it alongside another industry. If neither exists, you cannot build there.
3. 3Pay the cost printed to the left of its slot onto your Character tile and consume the iron and coal shown. If coal is required, the location has to be connected to a source of coal.
4. 4If you built a Coal Mine or Iron Works, place the number of cubes shown in the bottom right corner onto the tile. A Brewery gets 1 beer barrel in the Canal Era and 2 in the Rail Era.

• Overbuilding — you may replace an already placed Industry tile with a higher level tile of the same type, still paying the full build cost.
• Your own tile may be overbuilt with no restriction, and any cubes on it return to the General Supply.
• An opponent's tile may be overbuilt only if it is a Coal Mine or an Iron Works, and only when no cube of that type is left anywhere on the board, the Market included.
• Overbuilt tiles leave the game and score nothing, but the income and VPs they already earned are not taken back.
• If you have no tiles on the board at all, you may build the matching industry in any location with an Industry card, or place a Link tile on any undeveloped line with any card (still consuming coal for a rail Link).

Networks — «yours» and «connected» are different things

• A Link tile must go on an undeveloped line adjacent to your network. If you have nothing on the board, any undeveloped line will do.
• The beer for a double rail Link must come from a Brewery — Merchant beer cannot be used.
• If that beer comes from an opponent's Brewery, the Brewery must be connected to the second rail Link after it is placed.
• Each rail Link is placed separately and each must be connected to a source of coal after it is placed.
• Taking the Network action twice in one turn lets you place up to 4 rail Links.

Resources — coal, iron and beer follow different rules

• If several Coal Mines are equally close, choose one. If one runs out and you need more, move on to the next closest.
• Iron does not have to be the closest. If you need 2, you may take 1 from each of two different Iron Works.
• Any unflipped Coal Mine or Iron Works is free to use whoever owns it. The owner is not paid.
• When several beers are required, each may come from a different source.
• Consumed cubes and barrels go to the General Supply, not back to their owner.
• Buying from a Market always starts at the cheapest space. Even an empty Market sells coal at £8 and iron at £6.

Flipping tiles and income

A tile that has merely been built pays neither income nor VPs. Only once it flips does the number in its bottom right corner raise your income, and only then does the VP value in its bottom left corner count at the end of an era.

• A Loan gives you £30 and is never repaid. The 3-level drop is the whole price.
• You cannot take a Loan that would push your income level below -10.
• A negative income level means you pay that amount to the Bank at the end of the round.

The Sell action and Merchant beer bonuses

1. 1Discard any card from your Hand.
2. 2Choose one of your unflipped Cotton Mill, Manufacturer or Pottery tiles. It must be connected to a Merchant tile showing that industry's icon.
3. 3Consume the beer shown in the tile's top right corner. If a beer barrel sits beside the Merchant you are selling to, you may use it and collect the Merchant beer bonus.
4. 4Flip the tile and advance your Income Marker by the number in its bottom right corner.
5. 5Go back to step 2 and keep selling your other unflipped tiles, including ones from a different industry, in the same action.

• Merchant beer may only be consumed as part of a Sell action — never for a double rail Link.
• Even the Develop bonus cannot remove a Pottery tile showing the lightbulb icon.
• The barrels beside the Merchant tiles are replaced at the end of the Canal Era.

End of an era and scoring

1. 1Score Links — for each of your Link tiles, score 1 VP for every VP icon shown in the adjacent locations. Remove each Link tile from the board as it is scored.
2. 2Score flipped Industry tiles — once everyone has removed their Link tiles, score the VP in the bottom left corner of each of your flipped tiles on the board. Unflipped tiles score nothing.

1. 1Remove Obsolete Industries (end of the Canal Era only) — return every level 1 Industry tile on the board to the box. Tiles on Player Mats are untouched, and level 2 or greater tiles stay put.
2. 2Reset Merchant beer — put 1 beer barrel back on each empty barrel space.
3. 3Shuffle the Draw Deck — combine everyone's Discard Pile and place it face down on the Card Draw Area. Turn over the face-down bottom card of each pile before shuffling.
4. 4Draw new Hands — everyone draws 8 cards and the Rail Era begins.

The strategy the rulebook itself gives

• Do not be afraid of Loans. Your income level at the end is not worth VPs, and experienced players regularly win with a low one.
• The Develop action is your friend. Level 2 and greater tiles survive the Canal Era and score twice, so climbing the stack early pays.
• Be careful about developing away your Breweries. Selling needs beer, and having none of your own can wreck a long game.
• Build or develop at least one Coal Mine and one Iron Works during the Canal Era, so the Rail Era does not begin with a Develop action spent clearing locked tiles.
• Open the Rail Era by building rails towards coal. If no coal is within reach, build a Coal Mine first.
• You can spread across the board quickly by networking alone, without placing any Industry tiles.

The Introductory Game and editions

The rulebook includes a shorter Introductory Game: play only the Canal Era, exactly as normal and including its end-of-era scoring, then add the points below.

Rules people get wrong

History and editions

In 2017 Roxley Games ran a crowdfunding campaign to reprint «Brass» with new art and slightly modified rules, raising roughly CAD 1.7 million. That campaign produced both «Brass: Lancashire», the reprint of the original, and «Brass: Birmingham», its successor, in 2018.