Brass: Birmingham

Implementation in progress — Phase 0 (game-type plumbing) shipped in v1.0.123. Rules captured here for reference and as the spec the engine fork will follow.

Overview

Brass: Birmingham is the spiritual sequel to Brass: Lancashire by Martin Wallace, set in the Midlands during the same Industrial Revolution era. Two canal/rail eras, building & selling industries, network-building, end-game scoring — but with several rule changes that meaningfully shift play.

Setup

• Coal market (8 slots): one cube at £1 (the other £1 slot empty); two cubes each at £2 through £7. Beyond market = £8 per cube.
• Iron market (6 slots): both £1 slots empty; two cubes each at £2 through £5. Beyond market = £6 per cube.
• Starting money: £17 per player.
• Income marker: square 10 (+0 income).
• Hand: 8 cards drawn, plus 1 card drawn face-down to the player's personal discard pile (compensation for the 1-action first round of canal era).
• Turn order: randomised at game start.
• Merchant tiles (9 total): 2 Cotton Mill, 2 Manufacturer, 1 Pottery, 1 Mill/Manufacturer/Pottery (wild), 3 Empty. Randomly drawn down to 7 (3P) or 5 (2P).
• Merchant beer: one beer cube on each merchant slot at canal-era setup; refreshed at era transition.

Round structure

1. Players take 2 actions each (1 action only in canal era, round 1).
2. End-of-round phases: turn order resort (ascending by spent-this-round), then collect income (skipped in the final round of rail era — game just ends).

Actions

• Build (industry) — same shape as Lancashire, with a new slot-restriction rule: a tile must be placed in a slot showing only its industry type if such a slot is available at that location; only if not, a multi-type slot containing that type may be used.
• Network (build link) — single canal £3, single rail £5 + 1 coal, double rail £15 + 2 coal + 1 beer (the beer is the Birmingham addition). If you have no industry tiles and no links on the board, ANY card may be used for this action.
• Sell — one action sells any number of your Manufacturers / Cotton Mills / Potteries, as long as each is connected to a merchant tile of matching type and the required beer is paid per sale. Beer can come from your own brewery (no network needed), from another player's brewery (via network), or from the merchant slot itself — using the merchant's beer also triggers the slot's location bonus (Develop / +2 income / +4 VP / +3 VP / +5 money).
• Loan — fixed £30 / drop 3 income levels. Forbidden when income is below -7 (so -8/-9/-10 cannot take loans).
• Develop — drop 1 or 2 tiles from the lowest level of your industry mat, 1 iron per tile, ignoring iron cost via the Gloucester merchant bonus. Cannot develop a non-developable tile (e.g. Pottery L1 / L3).
• Scout (new) — discard the played card plus 2 more, take 1 wild location and 1 wild industry card. Forbidden if any wild card already in hand.
• Pass — discard a card with no effect.

Wild cards

• 4 wild location cards + 4 wild industry cards as separate decks alongside the main deck.
• Used to build, returned to the stockpile (not destroyed).
• Wild location cards CANNOT be used for the two unnamed breweries.

Resources

• Coal — must be routed to the build/use location via the player's network (built links). Coal can be drawn from multiple sources if multiple cubes are needed.
• Iron — your own iron works don't need a network connection. Otherwise iron comes from the open market.
• Beer — your own breweries don't need a network; opponents' breweries do; merchant beer is freely available if you have a connection to that merchant.

Negative income

If at end-of-round income collection you can't pay a negative amount, you must remove industry tiles from the board and collect half their tile cost (rounded down) each until the debt is settled. If you still can't pay, you lose 1 VP per £1 you couldn't pay.

End-game

• VP from flipped tiles and link tiles, as in Lancashire — but with each tile having its own ValueForLinks value (not just a count).
• Money does NOT convert to VP at game end.
• Tiebreaker: highest income → highest money remaining → draw.

Implementation phases tracked in CHANGELOG.md (search for "Birmingham"). Phase 1 (engine fork) and Phase 2 (board + minimal playable scaffold) still ahead.