How to Play Brass: Birmingham: Actions, Resources, Eras & Scoring
Brass: Birmingham is played across a Canal Era and Rail Era. On most turns you perform two actions, discarding one card for each action. The shared economy matters: another player may consume your coal, iron or beer and help flip your industry tile.
Researched rules guide. Checked September 20, 2026 against Roxley Games’ current English rulebook resources. This covers Brass: Birmingham, not Lancashire or Pittsburgh.
Your six core actions
- Build: discard the required location or industry card, pay costs and place your lowest available eligible industry tile.
- Network: build a canal or rail link, depending on the era.
- Develop: remove low-level industry tiles from your player mat by consuming iron.
- Sell: sell eligible cotton, manufactured goods or pottery to merchants, consuming beer where required.
- Loan: take money now and move your income marker backward.
- Scout: discard three cards to gain wild location and wild industry cards, subject to the Scout rules.
Cards determine where or what you can build
Location cards target a named location; industry cards target an industry type in a location connected to your network under the build rules. Card choice is separate from the money and resource costs printed on the industry tile.
Coal and iron are shared resources with different access rules
Coal normally needs a valid network connection to its source or the coal market. Use the closest available coal source according to the rulebook’s distance rules. Iron does not require a network connection; available iron on the board is consumed before buying from the market as directed by the rules.
When the last resource cube/barrel leaves certain industry tiles, that industry flips. Flipped industries increase income and will score their printed VP at the end of the era.
Beer is essential to selling
Cotton Mills, Manufacturers and Potteries need access to an appropriate merchant and the beer shown for the sale. Beer from your own brewery and beer from other players/merchants follow different connection requirements, so use the rulebook diagrams when checking an edge case.
Money spent determines next round’s order
Place money you spend on your character tile. At the end of the round, the player who spent the least acts first next round, with the rest ordered by spending. Income is then collected according to the income track.
Canal Era and Rail Era score separately
At the end of each era, score your link tiles for the link icons in their adjacent locations, then score the VP printed on your flipped industry tiles. After Canal scoring, canals are removed and level-1 industries are cleared according to the maintenance rules before the Rail Era begins.
Rail links have different costs and can require coal; two-player/three-player map restrictions also matter. The game ends after Rail Era scoring. Highest accumulated VP wins; ties are broken by income and then money.
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Sources and scope
Checked September 20, 2026. Retail and Deluxe editions contain the same gameplay content.