Brass Birmingham Review

The industrial revolution, reconstructed in card and wooden disc form.

The Short Version – TL;DR

Brass: Birmingham is the kind of game that takes about ninety minutes to teach someone properly and then about three years to fully understand. It is a two-phase economic network builder set in 18th and 19th century Birmingham, where you are building industries, connecting cities, and trying to make enough money before the world moves on and your canal network becomes completely obsolete. It is one of the highest-rated board games on BoardGameGeek for good reason, and in my experience at our table it has never produced a dull session.

If you have played Brass: Lancashire and found it slightly too punishing, Birmingham smooths some of the rough edges. If you have never played either, this is the version to start with. And if you think industrial-era economics sounds like a dry subject for a board game, you are about to be very wrong. Buy Brass Birmingham on Amazon

What Is Brass: Birmingham?

Brass: Birmingham is a redesigned and expanded version of Martin Wallace’s original Brass from 2007. The redesign was published by Roxley Games in 2018, with development by Gavan Brown, Matt Tolman and Martin Wallace himself. It is a competitive strategy game for two to four players where you are building a network of industries across the English Midlands during the first industrial revolution.

There are two eras: the canal era and the rail era. In the canal era you can only connect to and trade with cities your own network touches. In the rail era, canals are wiped off the board entirely and everyone starts building railways instead, meaning your careful canal network was useful in the moment but nothing more. Any industries you built in the canal era that you did not develop to their full potential carry over into the rail era. Everything else is gone.

You spend cards to build industries, spend cards and money to build links, sell goods through merchant locations, and score points based on what you built and what links you used. At the end of each era, points are tallied from your built and linked network. Whoever has the most at the end of the rail era wins.

The theme works harder than it has any right to. You feel like you are building something, watching your coal mines supply other people’s iron works, watching your iron works supply your own cotton mills. The connections on the board tell a story.

Key Game Information

• Players: 2–4 (IMO best at 3–4)
• Play time: 60–120 minutes
• Designer: Gavan Brown, Matt Tolman, Martin Wallace
• Publisher: Roxley Games
• Year: 2018
• Categories: EuroGame, Strategy Games, Economic and Trading Games, Competitive Games
• Mechanics: Route and Network Building, Resource Management, Auction / Bidding / Trading, Set Collection, Hand Management (via card play)
• Theme: Transport and Infrastructure, Economic and Business, Historical
• Complexity: Medium-heavy
• Best for: Players who enjoy tight resource decisions with real consequences, and who do not mind a first game that feels somewhat confusing before suddenly clicking into place

How to Play

Each player starts with a hand of cards, a player board showing available industries to build, and a set amount of starting money. Cards are city cards and industry cards. You need a card to take any action, and the card you play dictates where or what you can do.

On your turn you take two actions. The main actions are:

• Build: spend a matching city or industry card plus money and resources to place an industry tile in a valid location
• Network: spend a city card or a wild card plus money to place a link (canal or railway) between two connected cities
• Develop: remove one of your lower-level industry tiles from your player board, skipping it and unlocking the higher-level version
• Sell: sell cotton, manufactured goods, or pottery at a merchant city via a connected route, scoring the industry and any links you used
• Loan: take a loan for money, reducing your income permanently (to be used sparingly)
• Scout: discard three cards to draw two wild cards, giving you more flexibility

Industries have levels. A level one coal mine produces fewer coal and scores fewer points than a level three. You move up the levels by exhausting lower ones or by developing. When an industry tile is fully consumed, it flips to its scored side and is worth points at the end of the era, but only if it has a link connected to it.

This is where the real tension lives. Building an industry does nothing on its own. Scoring it requires a link. But building a link also does nothing unless it connects two useful places. Every action depends on something else already being in place, which means turn order and positioning matter enormously.

At the end of the canal era, all canal links are removed from the board, all consumed industry tiles stay, and the game moves into the rail era where links cost more money but are permanent. Railways can connect through other players’ cities, which you cannot do with canals. Income rises as you score, and the late game becomes a points race where everyone is trying to connect and sell before the final round ends.

How an era works in brief

Players take turns in order, taking two actions each. At the end of the era, everyone scores points for any industry tiles they built that were consumed and connected by a link. Unconsumed or unlinked industries score nothing. Canal links are then removed entirely. The rail era plays out the same way, and the player with the most total points across both eras wins.

The Canal Era vs the Rail Era

The canal era is tighter and smaller. You can only connect your own network, which means you are essentially playing in your own corner of the board. The map feels constrained. This is intentional. It teaches you the core loop, gets your engine started, and forces you to think about which industries you want to carry forward.

The rail era opens everything up. Railways can pass through any city, which means you are suddenly fighting for the same spaces and merchant cities that everyone else wants. The board fills up fast. Players who built well in the canal era carry industry tiles into this phase that score again. The combination of both eras’ points decides the winner, so a strong canal phase is worth protecting.

One practical difference worth knowing: in the rail era, railways cost two resource cubes to build rather than one for canals, and you often need both coal and iron. Managing the supply of those resources across the shared board becomes a genuine puzzle.

Playing at Different Player Counts

Two Players

Two-player Brass: Birmingham works, but the board feels notably spacious. There is less competition for merchant cities and more room to build without interference. The game becomes slightly more of a puzzle and less of a fight, which suits some groups very well. Purists will say it plays better at three or four, and they are probably right, but if you only have two players it is still a worthwhile game.

There are some community-designed scenarios and rule tweaks for two players that make the experience tighter, though the base game works fine as written.

Three Players

This is where Brass: Birmingham really comes alive. Three players gives you enough competition that merchant cities start to fill up, enough opposition that network positioning matters, and enough breathing room that you can still execute a coherent plan rather than scrambling to survive. Three is the sweet spot if you cannot get four to the table.

Four Players

Four players is the fullest experience and the one the game feels built for. Merchant cities get competitive early. The board fills quickly. Turn order decisions become critical because going last in a round can mean the coal you needed is gone. The downtime between turns is the only genuine concern at four, though the game moves faster once everyone knows what they are doing.

I have played Brass: Birmingham at every count and the jump from three to four in terms of tension and memorable moments is significant. If you can get four people who are willing to commit to learning the game, that is where to aim.

Playing Solo

Brass: Birmingham does not have an official solo mode. There is no automa system or included solo variant in the base game.

Community-designed solo variants do exist on BoardGameGeek, and Roxley has been aware of the demand for a solo mode since the game’s release, but nothing official had been published as of the time of writing. If solo gaming is important to you, this one is not currently a strong option.

Components and Production Quality

The production quality of Brass: Birmingham is excellent. The board is large, clear, and good looking, with a warm sepia-toned map of the English Midlands that somehow manages to look attractive while also being genuinely functional. Every city, every merchant location, and every link slot is readable at the table without squinting.

The wooden industry tiles are distinct enough to tell apart, though I will admit there was a session early on where someone spent an embarrassing amount of time trying to work out which end of a pottery tile was the unbuilt side. The iconography is mostly clear once you have played once, and the quick-reference cards do a decent job of covering the things you will forget.

The player boards are thick and satisfying. The money tokens feel appropriately weighty. The insert is functional. The rulebook is well-laid-out, which matters more than it might seem for a game that will confuse new players on their first read-through.

One genuine complaint: the cards are not oversized, which makes them a little fiddly to shuffle after repeated plays. Sleeves are worth considering if you play regularly.

Expansions and Other Versions

Brass: Birmingham does not have traditional expansions in the way many games do. Roxley has released a series of Kickstarter-funded extras and deluxe editions over the years, including metal coins and upgraded components, but there are no gameplay expansions that add new mechanics or maps as of writing.

If you are looking for a related game with a different board, Brass: Lancashire (the original Brass, republished by Roxley in 2018 alongside Birmingham) is the sibling game. It covers Manchester and the surrounding cotton-mill towns, plays somewhat differently, and is notably harsher. Lancashire is worth picking up once you are comfortable with Birmingham, but Birmingham is the better starting point.

Brass: Birmingham vs Brass: Lancashire

Both games share the same core engine but play differently at the table. Lancashire has a more brutal economy, fewer merchant slots, and a tighter map that punishes passive play more severely. Birmingham adds beer as a link-building resource and has more merchant cities, which opens up the board and makes it marginally more forgiving. If you are choosing between them, start with Birmingham. If you love Birmingham, Lancashire is a very different and very rewarding second game.

Digital Versions

Brass: Birmingham is available on Board Game Arena and it is genuinely good. The asynchronous mode works well for the game because turns take genuine thought, and being able to plan your next move over the course of a day rather than holding up a live session is a real benefit. The interface takes a session or two to navigate comfortably but it faithfully replicates the physical experience.

There is also a standalone digital version available on Steam and mobile (iOS and Android) developed by Handelabra Games. The digital version includes an AI to play against, which makes it a decent option for solo practice and learning the game before bringing it to the table. The AI is competent enough to teach you what not to do.

If You Like This, Try These

• Brass: Lancashire — The sibling game. Same engine, harder economy, different map. If Birmingham has you hooked, Lancashire is the natural next step, and the two together make an excellent back-to-back session with the right group.
• Power Grid — Another economic network-builder with a similarly punishing supply chain. Power Grid is older and shows its age in some ways, but the underlying tension of buying resources from a shared market before your opponents do is very similar to what Brass does with coal and iron.
• Age of Steam — Martin Wallace’s railway game before Brass, and even more unforgiving. If you want to know where Birmingham’s design DNA comes from and are not afraid of a steep difficulty curve, Age of Steam is a classic worth knowing.
• Concordia — A more accessible network-builder that is lighter in weight but shares the feeling of building a connected economic system across a map. A good option for groups who like Birmingham’s concept but want something that takes less time to teach.
• Wingspan — Much lighter and very different in theme, but if what draws you to Brass is the engine-building satisfaction of watching your tableau do useful work, Wingspan delivers something similar in a more accessible package.

Final Thoughts

Brass: Birmingham is the kind of game that your group will play once, feel slightly overwhelmed by, and then spend the next week talking about. The canal-to-rail phase transition is one of the best mechanical ideas in modern board game design: everything you built becomes context for the next phase rather than infrastructure you can rely on, and that single design decision gives the game a tension that most economic games never achieve.

The learning curve is real. Your first game will probably involve at least one player building a coal mine with no connection to anything useful, one player running out of money in the canal era and spending the rail era catching up, and at least one genuinely tense moment around a merchant city that two people both desperately needed. All of that is fine. It is part of how you learn.

Where Brass: Birmingham succeeds most is in making you feel like your decisions have weight. Running out of coal at the wrong moment stings. Watching someone take the last merchant connection you needed before your turn is properly frustrating. These are not flaws; they are the game working as intended.

My honest recommendation by player type:

Who should buy Brass: Birmingham?

Euro fans who already enjoy games like Wingspan or Viticulture and want to step up in complexity: buy it, you will love it.

Strategy gamers who like the sound of resource networks and industrial economics: buy it, this is probably your favourite game once it clicks.

Casual groups who mostly play party games: maybe borrow it first, the learning curve is steep and the downtime at four players can test patience.

Solo gamers: worth waiting to see if an official solo mode appears, or look at the community variants on BGG first.

The game that Brass: Birmingham most often replaces on shelves is Catan, and that tells you something. Once you have played an economic game where your actions genuinely depend on what everyone else is building, going back to rolling and trading feels thin. Birmingham is not the most accessible game in the hobby, but for the right group at the right moment it is one of the most satisfying ones.

Three to four players, two hours, a willingness to be mildly confused the first time out. That is the pitch. It holds up.

Buy Brass Birmingham on Amazon

Don’t Take My Word For It

These channels have covered Brass: Birmingham properly and are worth watching before or after you play:

• Shut Up & Sit Down — Quintin’s review of Brass: Birmingham is one of the best gateway pieces into understanding why the game is so highly regarded. His breakdown of the two-era structure is particularly clear.

• The Dice Tower — Tom Vasel’s review covers the comparison with Lancashire in useful depth and gives a good read on how the game lands for someone who has played both versions.

• No Pun Included — Their coverage is enthusiastic and covers the feel of the game at different player counts, which is genuinely useful for groups trying to work out whether it will suit them.