Brass: Birmingham
Build industries and transport networks across two historical eras, then exploit shared coal, iron, beer and market demand in a tightly connected economic game.
Build industries and transport links across the English Midlands during the Canal and Rail eras. Cards determine where you can develop while coal, iron, beer and money constrain your options.
Industries generally score when they flip, often after their resources are consumed or requirements are met. The network is shared, making timing and connectivity as important as owning the right tiles.
Why We Love It
Brass: Birmingham rewards understanding a shared economy. Coal, iron and beer can be consumed by opponents, so an industry you build can become valuable precisely because another player needs it.
About Brass: Birmingham
Build industries and transport links across the English Midlands during the Canal and Rail eras. Cards determine where you can develop while coal, iron, beer and money constrain your options.
Industries generally score when they flip, often after their resources are consumed or requirements are met. The network is shared, making timing and connectivity as important as owning the right tiles.
Game at a Glance
Build Industries
Develop coal, iron, breweries, manufacturers and other businesses.
Connect the Network
Use canals and railways to link locations, markets and resources.
Use Shared Resources
Your opponents can consume resources you produce, sometimes helping your industries flip.
Plan Across Two Eras
The Canal era resets parts of the board before the Rail era changes priorities.
What is Brass: Birmingham?
Brass: Birmingham is Martin Wallace’s Industrial Revolution economic game, developed by Gavan Brown and Matt Tolman. Players build industries and transportation links in England’s West Midlands from 1770 to 1870.
The game is split into a Canal Era and a Rail Era, with industries, market access and network position changing in value across both halves.
How the game works
Cards drive where and what you may build. Industries such as cotton mills, manufacturers, potteries, coal mines, iron works and breweries interact through a shared map economy.
Coal and beer often require network access, while iron can be consumed differently; selling and flipping industry tiles converts infrastructure into income and victory-point value. After the Canal Era, canal links disappear and the Rail Era begins under a new transport economy.
The decisions that define it
Brass rewards building assets that other players also want to use. A coal mine consumed by opponents can improve your position faster than an isolated industry you built only for yourself.
Loans, timing and network access are equally important because money is a tool rather than a final score resource by itself.
Who is it for?
Choose Brass: Birmingham if your group wants a heavy interactive economy where players are competitors but also repeatedly use one another’s infrastructure and resources.
For a more personal engine with shared global goals, compare Terraforming Mars.
Focused Brass: Birmingham rules
Compare Brass: Birmingham
Publisher sources & scope
Checked September 15, 2026. This is a researched base-game hub. Expansion and card-specific exceptions remain governed by the publisher rules.